Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Blockbuster Video-Rental Chain Will Shut All U.S. Stores

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Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 11-06-2013, 08:33 PM:

Blockbuster Video-Rental Chain Will Shut All U.S. Stores

Blockbuster LLC, the video-rental company owned by Dish Network Corp. (DISH), will close its remaining 300 U.S. stores, ending an era for a chain that was once a ubiquitous part of American shopping centers.

Blockbuster will shut the outlets by early January and discontinue its DVD-by-mail service by mid-December, Englewood, Colorado-based Dish said today in a statement. Each Blockbuster store has eight to 10 employees, so the move is expected to cost about 2,800 jobs. Dish will keep the licensing rights to the Blockbuster brand and use it to sell other services.

“People were waiting for the death knell for that business for many years,” said Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities Inc. “With everything happening on the digital distribution side, it has been long overdue.”

Dish, which acquired the chain out of bankruptcy in April 2011, had already divested Blockbuster’s international assets, including operations in the U.K. and Scandinavia. The company has been gradually shutting down the 1,700 stores it acquired.

“This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment,” Dish Chief Executive Officer Joseph Clayton said in today’s statement. “We continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand, and we expect to leverage that brand as we continue to expand our digital offerings.”

Blockbuster was once so dominant in the home-video market that it was sued by independent video retailers, which claimed in 2001 that the company’s revenue-sharing agreements with movie studios hurt competition. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

Netflix Streaming

When the company was spun off by Viacom Inc. (VIAB) in 2004, it operated about 9,000 locations -- before streaming video services such as Netflix Inc. (NFLX) devastated the industry. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2010.

Dish took over Blockbuster the following year, aiming to use the stores to sell mobile devices that could stream Blockbuster movies. The plans broke down when U.S. regulators didn’t immediately approve a waiver allowing Dish to use its satellite spectrum for terrestrial data and voice transmission.

The Blockbuster brand will continue at Dish through the Blockbuster @Home and Blockbuster on Demand options, which stream movies and videos to televisions, computers and other devices, Dish said.

Dish shares were little changed today in New York, closing at $48.84. The stock has risen 34 percent this year.

While the demise of the Blockbuster chain is symbolic for the industry, it won’t have a big impact on Dish’s prospects, Harrigan said.

“It’s certainly an end-of-an-era type thing, but in terms of that affecting Dish’s stock, it doesn’t have any particular importance,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/blockbuster-video-rental-chain-will-shut-remaining-u-s-stores.html

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 11-07-2013, 07:16 PM:

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Maybe now studios won't be so afraid to release movies with an NC-17 rating.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-08-2013, 09:39 AM:

That article, like so many others, gives Netflix and other Internet-based movie streaming services all the credit for the rapid, downward trajectory of Blockbuster video stores and other traditional "brick and mortar" stores.

I guess these writers never heard of Redbox.

The rapid rise in popularity of Redbox in the late 2000's coincides directly with the downfall of many traditional video stores. Redbox DVD kiosks went from market testing at 140 McDonald's locations in 2004 to surpassing Blockbuster in number of locations by 2007. In Feb 2008 Redbox passed the 100 million rentals mark. It charted 1 billion rentals by Sept. 2010. In Feb. 2012 Redbox purchased Blockbuster's rival DVD Kiosk system (Blockbuster Express). That included over 10,000 kiosks & DVD inventory. Redbox pretty much has the entire movie/game disc kiosk market all to itself.

Out of disc based movie rentals, Redbox now controls more than 50% of the market. Last quarter customers rented more than 186 million movie discs from the company's 43,700 kiosks. Traditional video stores control less than 25% of the market. Redbox is even eroding the share of Netflix' disc by mail service.

The popularity of Internet streaming services is growing. But some of that popularity is stifled by widely variable quality and availability of broadband Internet service across the United States. Old fashioned dial-up style connections are pretty much dead and gone, but the "broadband" most Americans have can barely deliver an acceptable looking standard definition movie stream. Few Americans have Internet speeds that can stream HD content that is on par with the heavily compressed signals delivered by satellite providers. Very few Americans have fiber connections capable of delivering Blu-ray like bit rates in real time.

Another issue: broadband Internet service is a product geared for middle class and upper class customers. Redbox and its $1 rentals had wide appeal among low income customers. High gas prices also helped grow Redbox' popularity. The nearest Redbox kiosk was often much closer in driving distance than the traditional video store. Movie streaming is more popular among younger Americans while older Americans like the simplicity of inserting a movie disc and pressing the play button.

With all that being said, I think Redbox did a lot more to push Blockbuster into bankruptcy and its ultimate liquidation than Netflix and other Internet streaming services ever did.

A few movie studios figured out what Redbox was doing to the traditional video store business model and filed suit against the company in 2009. Those suits have largely been settled in the past couple years. Redbox was stuck with a 28 day window from the retail release of a movie disc before it can be offered for rent in Redbox kiosks. That window doesn't apply to all studio releases.

Redbox isn't sticking with the traditional disc based formula. They now have their own movie streaming service, Redbox Instant. I didn't know about this until I saw the app appear on my Playstation 3 with the latest PS3 software update.

quote: Jesse Skeen
Good riddance to bad rubbish! Maybe now studios won't be so afraid to release movies with an NC-17 rating.

They're still going to be scared to do so. Certain theater chains, such as Carmike, won't book any NC-17 rated movies. Some newspapers won't show ads for NC-17 rated movies, although the value of newspaper advertising for movies has greatly diminished in recent years.

I don't know if any of the various movie streaming service companies have any policies against offering NC-17 rated movies. Not that it should matter. Premium cable channels show content that drifts into NC-17 territory on a fairly regular basis. Hollywood movies are arguably pretty tame in comparison.

Posted by Jason McMillan (Member # 5542) on 11-08-2013, 10:48 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I don't know if any of the various movie streaming service companies have any policies against offering NC-17 rated movies.

If you watch "Inside Deep Throat" on Netflix, that will instantly answer that question for you (at least for Netflix). While the content is ... subjective ... seeing how the mafia controlled the screenings of that movie is kinda fascinating.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-08-2013, 11:54 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
the "broadband" most Americans have can barely deliver an acceptable looking standard definition movie stream. Few Americans have Internet speeds that can stream HD content that is on par with the heavily compressed signals delivered by satellite providers. Very few Americans have fiber connections capable of delivering Blu-ray like bit rates in real time.

We have regular ol' DSL at our house and I use Amazon Instant Video quite often to watch "HD" content. Do I know what the resolution or bitrate or any of that crap is? Nope, but it looks similar to a BluRay to me on our 50" TV.

I expect there are lots of people who don't even care if something's in HD or not. SD over streaming looks good enough for a lot of folks, especially if they don't have a particularly big TV.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-08-2013, 02:54 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
SD over streaming looks good enough for a lot of folks, especially if they don't have a particularly big TV.

Agreed completely, as mentioned in this thread. Over the last month or so I've seen probably half a dozen or so movies streamed from Netflix, all of them older titles (e.g. My Darling Clementine, The Kid Brother and Drive a Crooked Road), and on our average-sized flat screen TV they looked as subjectively good to me as I'd expect a reasonable bitrate DVD from a decent archival master to be.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-08-2013, 03:08 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
I expect there are lots of people who don't even care if something's in HD or not. SD over streaming looks good enough for a lot of folks, especially if they don't have a particularly big TV.

Inasmuch as they don't care if it is squeezed or stretched into the wrong aspect ratio, why would they care about resolution? Despite all of their bragging about DCI, Hollywood does not really give a crap how their product looks, as long as they get paid.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 11-10-2013, 01:53 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
That article, like so many others, gives Netflix and other Internet-based movie streaming services all the credit for the rapid, downward trajectory of Blockbuster video stores and other traditional "brick and mortar" stores.

Bobby, there were a number of factors that caused the long slow collapse of Blockbuster. At one time Blockbuster was sold for $8 billion dollars, they also had close to 9000 retail stores in North America.

The most significant factor of the eventual fall of Blockbuster was the change from rental revenue sharing to street date sell through for DVD. When they moved away from revenue sharing, they opened up the market to sell DVDs for cheap everywhere. At one time, Blockbuster had the opportunity to keep the deal with studios but declined to do the rental share with the studios. During this era Blockbuster accounted for 50% of the studios home video income.

What Netflix has done is impressive and they are becoming the dominant name in streaming along with iTunes etc. As for Redbox, they have a huge foot print and they do rent a lot of dvds, but long term they will not last as streaming will win out in the end.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-11-2013, 12:34 PM:

quote:
In respect for the passing of Blockbuster, don't send flowers. Tonight, just watch a movie of your 3rd or 4th choice.

-Ruth Buzzi, on Twitter

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-12-2013, 10:50 AM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Bobby, there were a number of factors that caused the long slow collapse of Blockbuster.

Yeah, but try telling that to any of the press people writing the stories about it. They're giving 100% of the credit to Netflix' movie streaming service when that is just not true. The press' collective memory of the movie rental business during the last decade is pretty crappy. The press loves to oversimplify anything to pump up drama and insult the intelligence of its readers.

Blockbuster made plenty of mistakes on its own. For example, here in Lawton Blockbuster just wasn't competitive. Their rental selection sucked compared to Hastings Music Books & Video. Hastings covered all the major studio releases and offered more independent and foreign movie content. Hastings rented non-porn NC-17 rated movies while Blockbuster didn't. Blockbuster's rental prices were typically the highest in town.

Redbox roared to prominence with $1 per day DVD rentals and Blockbuster did little if anything at all to respond. Hastings at least understood the situation and price matched Redbox along with being able to rent certain movies a month ahead of Redbox. My guess is Blockbuster's executives thought they could continue with business as usual on the strength of their brand name. They completely misunderstood the simple fact consumers couldn't give two shits about a store brand if the same product is being offered elsewhere at a much cheaper price. Redbox did that with rental discs. In more recent years movie streaming has eaten into the disc-based rental business.

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
The most significant factor of the eventual fall of Blockbuster was the change from rental revenue sharing to street date sell through for DVD.

The street date sell through concept actually started happening with VHS tapes before the DVD format was launched. I don't remember exactly when, but it was definitely the early to mid 1990s time frame. I have a feeling stores like Walmart twisted the arms of Hollywood studio executives to make that happen. Nevertheless, I don't think the change hurt Blockbuster very much at all. It certainly didn't put Blockbuster at competitive disadvantage with other brick and mortar video stores.

While movie buying/collecting is popular not nearly everyone is into it. For one, I think it's more of a guy thing and maybe even a slightly geeky, nerdy thing at that. There's no shortage of people out there who are perfectly happy to watch a movie once or maybe twice and then be done with it.

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
What Netflix has done is impressive and they are becoming the dominant name in streaming along with iTunes etc. As for Redbox, they have a huge foot print and they do rent a lot of dvds, but long term they will not last as streaming will win out in the end.

First, iTunes isn't dominant in movie streaming. They're way behind Netflix, Amazon and other services because of their closed system approach. Netflix and other rival services have their apps resident in game consoles, Blu-ray players, smart HDTV sets and various set top box devices. As for Redbox, they launched their own movie streaming service in partnership with Verizon. I have a Redbox app on my Playstation 3. I don't see iTunes there.

quote: Mike Blakesley
We have regular ol' DSL at our house and I use Amazon Instant Video quite often to watch "HD" content. Do I know what the resolution or bitrate or any of that crap is? Nope, but it looks similar to a BluRay to me on our 50" TV.

How many years have you been streaming movies, and doing so at that quality level?

I couldn't tolerate trying to stream video off the Internet several years ago when Redbox was really gaining steam. Streaming just didn't work anywhere near as well as it does today. I'm not the only one who had a big problem with it during that time either.

Streaming movies via the Internet works reasonably well for most people these days. I have AT&T Uverse Internet at my house and my girlfriend has a cable Internet connection. Streaming doesn't run perfectly on either ISP. We prefer to rent movies on Blu-ray disc. The video & audio quality is a lot better and there aren't any laggy download issues. I use my HD DVR to record/watch certain TV shows and other movies I didn't feel like renting. We'll resort to using HBO GO, Amazon Prime/Instant Video, Netflix or some other Internet source when there is no other alternative.

If it weren't for all the countless billions of dollars telcos are pouring into mobile phone networks most of us would probably much faster residential Internet connection speeds. Still, broadband connections of 3Mb/s and greater are a lot more common today than they were in the period when Redbox started installing its kiosks. In the middle of last decade Netflix was known far more for its disc by mail rental service rather than its online streaming service.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-12-2013, 02:51 PM:

As far as priced to own VHS, didn't that start with the release of Top Gun which had a Pepsi commercial on the tape? I was only 12-13 when that happened, but I seem to remember it was priced about $20.

The closing of the Blockbuster stores is moving forward much quicker than I would have guessed. The one in my town stopped rentals as of Friday November 8, and told all members they need to have everything returned by Saturday November 9. They are closed until Thursday 11/14 as they prepare to liquidate their inventory.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-12-2013, 03:18 PM:

I believe it was Crocodile Dundee that started the whole "price to own" VHS model. Either way it was definitely Paramount that made the change from $80/tape to $20/tape with that stunt...and it worked. People started buying the tapes rather than copying them. In the end it was a genius move.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-12-2013, 05:56 PM:

So... what is Blockbuster gonna do if you don't return a rental? I know they've sent collection agencies after people before when late fees went up over $10. But what can they do now?

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-12-2013, 08:11 PM:

Charge the hell out your credit card!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-13-2013, 12:01 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
How many years have you been streaming movies, and doing so at that quality level?

Probably about a year now. We had a 32" TV in the bedroom and just upgraded it to a 50" with wifi built in....up to now I was streaming through the wifi in the BluRay player. Both work well. We haven't watched a ton of movies (not enough time!) but I think it's only dropped the connection one time in the last year, as far as I remember. The only real pain is the wait for the "video loading" to happen -- it takes about 2 minutes on Amazon Instant Video. I've never watched a movie with any other service (yet).

The only other disadvantage to A.I.V. is, whenever I watch a movie it makes me think of some other movie I want to see... and THAT one is never in the Prime list, so it costs money to buy or rent. But so far I have resisted. [Big Grin]

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-13-2013, 01:10 AM:

For streaming content, I've found the Roku players tend to work better than the players built into TVs and BluRay players. The Roku boxes seem to connect faster, buffer quicker, and play quality content faster. I don't know how they compare to a PS3, but they are far better than the Wii.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-13-2013, 01:22 AM:

quote:
Charge the hell out your credit card!

What if I cancel it first?

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 11-13-2013, 06:54 AM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
As far as priced to own VHS, didn't that start with the release of Top Gun which had a Pepsi commercial on the tape? I was only 12-13 when that happened, but I seem to remember it was priced about $20.

There were always some titles that were priced to own, usually the title was a big hit at the box office. One of the earliest titles I purchased myself was the 1989 Batman, I bought it on VHS for about $17 and it included the Diet Coke commercial.

With the emergence of DVD, Blockbuster and other video, the cost of the DVD was no longer $80-$100. All titles of DVDs were sold everywhere.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-13-2013, 09:31 AM:

The trend for VHS tapes going from rental pricing to sell through pricing definitely finished before the late 1990s when DVD made its debut. The arrival of DVD didn't cause that shift to happen.

Laserdiscs, for the most part, were priced to buy, but not many video stores offered them for rent. That's one factor that kept LD stuck as a high end niche product. Mainstream consumers also didn't like movies broken up across two sides of a disc or spread across multiple discs. DVD initially arrived as a smaller replacement for laserdiscs. It overcame some of LD's limitations, like fitting a movie on just one side of a disc. It also took up a lot less space on a store shelf. That seemed to be enough improvement for DVD to become a mainstream movie rental format.

The general public adopted DVD at a relatively fast pace, a record breaking pace for an entertainment playback medium. If it wasn't for the crap foisted on the format by the backers of DiVX, as well as some technical limitations with the first couple generations of players, DVD would have gone mainstream a lot faster. VHS sales and rentals were still pretty strong until the middle of last decade when DVD was reaching its market saturation point. I think the DVR was the thing that really pushed VHS toward extinction.

quote: Mike Blakesley
The only other disadvantage to A.I.V. is, whenever I watch a movie it makes me think of some other movie I want to see... and THAT one is never in the Prime list, so it costs money to buy or rent. But so far I have resisted.

I have been annoyed by that with Amazon Prime as well. They have a decent number of free movies to watch (free if you have a $79 per year Prime membership), but too often movies that come to mind and become a topic of conversation turn out to cost $3 or $4 to rent. I rented Twilight Zone: The Movie off Amazon for some friends to watch because we were talking about scary airline movies. I wanted to watch the Korean action movie Oldboy since an American remake will soon be released. Hastings didn't have a copy of it on Blu-ray. Amazon had it for rent, but for $3.99.
[Frown]

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 11-13-2013, 09:54 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
The trend for VHS tapes going from rental pricing to sell through pricing definitely finished before the late 1990s when DVD made its debut. The arrival of DVD didn't cause that shift to happen.

Bobby, that is not what I remember, I used to work in the purchasing department for a major rental chain, it was DVD that ended the rental agreements with the studios which helped VHS go sell thru once DVD was available to all retailers on street date, this happened in and around 1997-1998 if my memory is correct. Blockbuster had the opportunity to keep the rental agreements but they declined and opted for sell through, at the time Blockbuster was almost 60% of the home video rental revenue for the studios.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-13-2013, 11:00 AM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Bobby, that is not what I remember, I used to work in the purchasing department for a major rental chain, it was DVD that ended the rental agreements with the studios which helped VHS go sell thru once DVD was available to all retailers on street date, this happened in and around 1997-1998 if my memory is correct.

I'm just going by what I saw on store shelves in the early to mid 1990s. Video stores were still paying more (or even a lot more) for rental VHS tapes than what consumers were having to pay for the same thing at retail stores.

I remember being surprised by the pricing of new release VHS tapes at stores like Walmart and Sam's Club during the early 1990s. I keenly remember the very high "rental" style pricing movies on VHS carried in the late 1980's. Paying $89 (in 1980's dollars) for a movie like Die Hard or Aliens on VHS tape was pretty damned ridiculous, but some consumers did it. A few years later new releases on VHS priced near or below $20 seemed like a huge bargain.

These days brick and mortar video stores may still be paying more per disc. Take those rental specific Blu-ray discs, which I hate for their lack of extras or in some cases basic things like chapter breaks. I'll bet the video stores are paying more for those bare bones discs than consumers are paying for the more feature-loaded retail discs.

Blockbuster, no doubt, had its own specific agreements made with movie studios since it was such a large, dominant video store chain. If they got a more generous deal from movie studios, as opposed to what smaller video store chains and independents were paying for VHS tapes, then it just makes Blockbuster seem even more stupid, greedy and short-sighted in how they priced their rentals and treated customers. Pride is one of those seven deadly sins.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-13-2013, 02:16 PM:

My understanding is that the deal with Blockbuster was that, rather than buying a large number of "new release" tapes at the $80+ "new release" price, they made deals with the film distributors to buy the physical tapes at or below the manufacturing cost price in exchange for giving the distributors a cut of the rental revenue. By contrast, other stores would have to buy the expensive tapes at full price, although they could then keep all of their rental revenue.

The point of this was, in theory, to ensure that their most popular product (new video releases) would always be available to their customers without having to make a huge investment in "new release" tapes that might or might not actually get rented. It also gave them a competitive advantage over the mom-and-pop video stores, since the small stores could not afford to maintain a huge inventory of "new releases" at full price. Because of this, customers who wanted to rent "new releases" (i.e. the majority of customers) would go to Blockbuster because there would be a good chance that the tapes that they wanted to rent would be available.

Obviously, this worked pretty well for BB for a while, and it allowed them to drive most of the smaller video stores out of business before sell-through pricing started to destroy the BB model.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 11-13-2013, 03:26 PM:

Yes Scott, this was exactly the case. I remember having the option to purchase the VHS "Priced to Rental" tapes, the bigger the order I put in the lower the cost. We would split the revenue from the rental with the studios. If we ordered a few titles, the cost would be sometimes over $100 for the rental. We were also not allowed to sell these tapes as previously viewed until months after the release date which was agreed upon by both parties. During the rental window, regular retailers were not offer "Priced to Rent" tapes and they received no discount if they wanted to sell the VHS tape at retail.

Once two or three months past, the priced dropped for regular retailers, this was all written in the contact. There were a lot of movies, Batman, Disney movies that did well, Jurassic Park etc that were street date VHS "Priced to own" this did not happen very often, maybe once a month. This was done strictly to movie VHS retail copies as the movie was a huge hit.

When DVD was released, it changed everything, Blockbuster was given the option to apply the VHS terms to DVD and they chose to decline.

What is interesting is that today, Redbox revenue shares with the studios, they receive DVD's for about $8 a piece.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-13-2013, 06:25 PM:

Scott, Rentrak actually pioneered that idea. They had a deal setup with the studios so if you signed up with them, you got the tapes for $7.99 instead of the typical $64.99 dealer price and then you gave them 50% of your rental revenue. They also set it up so once one video store signed up with them in a zip code (or it could've been so many miles away) that nobody else could sign up. Needless to say, whichever video store was smart enough to sign up first was the one that clobbered all of the others.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 11-13-2013, 07:43 PM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
As far as priced to own VHS, didn't that start with the release of Top Gun which had a Pepsi commercial on the tape? I was only 12-13 when that happened, but I seem to remember it was priced about $20

quote: Bobby Henderson
The trend for VHS tapes going from rental pricing to sell through pricing definitely finished before the late 1990s

I also recall TOP GUN being a new release priced at $19.95 with a Pepsi commercial at the start of the tape. I recall this being a pretty big deal -- the start of the shift away from "pricing for rental."

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-13-2013, 08:40 PM:

So, Mom and Pop could sign up for the same percentage deal? Interesting.

For those who understand the video side of this business (which I know very little about): how many times did the average tape get rented before it became damaged or the title became unpopular? Given that we know that stores were doing better paying 50% of the rental instead of $70 (-ish) for the tapes, we can conclude that the average new-release tape would rent for fewer than 35 times.

Most of the recent-ish VHS rental tapes that I remember watching in the '90s had commercials or, more commonly, previews (not usually full trailers...more like TV spots) for other movies on them at the beginning. Did the sell-through tapes have that, too?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-13-2013, 10:21 PM:

Scott, the tapes RARELY got damaged beyond playability. Sure sometimes several inches would get chewed by someone's VCR, but those several seconds would just play through with static lines in it. Nobody really seemed to care much.

The attraction to the Rentrak system was that the smart video store owner who signed up for it could say "Batman - guaranteed to be in stock or anything else in the store rents for free" on their sign. The reason was that they would get 200 copies of the thing and it always WAS there in stock. Sure the first couple of days they might give away a few dozen free rentals, but big deal. Once that sign went up, NOBODY went to the competitor's video stores because they only had maybe 3 copies and I do mean MAYBE.

Remember also on VHS tapes that were priced to sell, I think it was $1.99 per tape to get it on the Rentrak program. At that point each tape only had to rent twice for the video store to turn a profit. Hence ordering a couple HUNDRED of them was a no-brainer. They would pay for themselves before the weekend.

The thing I always really thought was strange was how Blockbuster apparently duplicated their own tapes. They didn't get them from the studios. I remember when Batman came out Macrovision copy protection was very much a big thing, and a big problem for some people's systems that couldn't handle it and would distort a legitimate playback of the tape. If the tape was rented/bought from BLOCKBUSTER there was no Macrovision on it! If the tape was rented/bought from anywhere else, it had Macrovision in full force. I've no idea how commonplace that was, but I am 100% positive that was the case with the first Batman movie on VHS.

Another weird/neat idea was the tape that could only be played so many times. It had a counter on it that was reset by rewinding the tape. When it hit its last play an internal magnet would swing into the path and erase the tape badly enough so that it wouldn't play anymore. The studios sent out screener copies on those tapes and they were usually set to play 2 times and the cases were sealed shut and also used a funky security screw. I've got some around here somewhere that I saved because they were so unusual.

Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 11-14-2013, 12:08 PM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
As far as priced to own VHS, didn't that start with the release of Top Gun which had a Pepsi commercial on the tape? I was only 12-13 when that happened, but I seem to remember it was priced about $20.

quote: Brad Miller
I believe it was Crocodile Dundee that started the whole "price to own" VHS model. Either way it was definitely Paramount that made the change from $80/tape to $20/tape with that stunt...and it worked. People started buying the tapes rather than copying them. In the end it was a genius move.

quote: Manny Knowles
I also recall TOP GUN being a new release priced at $19.95 with a Pepsi commercial at the start of the tape. I recall this being a pretty big deal -- the start of the shift away from "pricing for rental."

The first "sell through" VHS and Beta release is generally accepted to have been Paramount's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, released in autumn 1982 at the then unheard of price of $39.95.

I'm not sure which title was the first to have an SRP of under $20, but it definitely wasn't Crocodile Dundee or Top Gun, which were initially released at $29.95 and $26.95, respectively.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-14-2013, 01:26 PM:

In hindsight, Michael is right. $20 was the approximate store's price on CD and TG, not the street price.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-14-2013, 03:46 PM:

And by "street price" you mean MSRP. MSRP of Blu-rays are waaay up there, usually around $40 I think. Though I've never seen them sell for that much unless they come with absolutely useless trinkets and unshelvable boxes. That's right 'special editions', I'm looking at you and you can go straight to hell.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-14-2013, 09:22 PM:

You forgot about the stupid free coaster they send with each one of those bluray special editions. I forget what it's called. Oh yeah, they call it the "DVD".