“Subscription fatigue,” frustration with streaming content changes, and a desire to collect rare finds are all boosting old-school physical media.
Transcript:
This story originally aired on “Marketplace” on February 17th, 2026.
The trio of 20-somethings who were happily sifting through DVD titles along the crowded shelves of Los Angeles’ popular video rental store Vidiots were quick to point out that videotapes and DVDs are not just relics from the childhoods of older generations.
“We grew up watching DVDs. I think it was still definitely within our generation,” said Fay Vavra, who was perusing the anime aisle with Isabelle Torres and Danielle Rathbun.
The trio reminisced about watching Disney films on VHS and visiting Hollywood Video, the now-defunct competitor to Blockbuster.
They say Vidiots allows them to reduce their streaming subscriptions, while still having access to lots of content. The video store charges $3 for a five-day rental.
A survey from Consumer Reports found that nearly half of us are still watching DVDs and Blu-rays, while 15% of those surveyed are still playing and rewinding VHS tapes.
Physical video is having its vinyl moment. (LPs, by the way, now outsell CDs.)
“It's probably really a mix of emotional, practical, and cultural reasons that we're seeing this sort of renewed fondness for older technologies,” said James Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports, who conceived of the survey.
Among the practical reasons is the reality that sometimes even content people purchase on a streaming service can disappear. In fact, Amazon was sued over that practice last year, and California passed a law trying to address the problem.
“Sometimes they don't renew the licenses for content,” Willcox explained. “With physical media, you own that, and so you know it's always going to be there. And I think that there's an uncertainty with streaming as to whether or not you're going to have access to that stuff.”
To be sure, the big money is not in physical media. The streaming business totals about $50 billion in annual revenues, compared to about $1 billion for newly-released physical media.
But the trendline, which can be measured for new releases at least, shows that physical media is getting more attention. Sales are increasing for high-definition Blu-ray Discs.
“The streaming services have kind of pushed their customers away,” says Vidiots’ video store director Robbie McCluskey.
“People have become disillusioned that if you want to watch like a handful of movies, you have to have subscriptions to like 12 different places.”
The physical stores hope to become an increasingly popular antidote to digital overload.
Vidiots’ trajectory traces physical video’s demise and resurgence.
It originally opened in 1985 as a for-profit video store — the same year that Blockbuster debuted. Vidiots closed a few years after Blockbuster went bankrupt, only to reopen in a cheaper location in 2023 as a popularity among Hollywood celebrities, hipsters, and everyday viewers alike.
“My first day: I got a phone call from Christian Bale. He was doing research on playing Moses for Ridley Scott. So he was like, ‘Give me everything that has Moses in it,’” McCluskey recounted. “And then later that day, Keanu Reeves was driving his motorcycle, stopped in to grab a couple movies. So, it was a really fun place to work.”
By the time Vidiots closed, McCluskey said it was renting at most a few hundred DVDs and Blu-rays a week. But since it reopened, its popularity has surged. It now rents more than 1,000 items a week, he said.
“It’s been two and a half years now, every month we have more rentals than the month before,” he said. “The desire for physical media has really brought people back in a big way.”
Across town, the for-profit Cinefile Video — strategically located next to an independent movie theater — is also experiencing more business.
“What we've seen is folks with a lot of fatigue with the streaming services, either with price increases or, you know, things going in and out of rights,” said Cinefile owner Sebastian Mathews, who also used to own a vinyl record shop.
Collectors make up a growing portion of Mathews’ customer base. They are purchasing — not just renting — rare or obscure titles that cannot be found on streaming or that might be on a streaming service temporarily, then disappear.
North Carolina-based Lunchmeat VHS, meanwhile, specializes mostly in B-movies that will never appear on a streaming service. These are movies that were originally shot on videotape — a subgenre that owner Josh Schafer said should continue to be enjoyed in its original format.
Schafer, who also publishes an occasional magazine of the same, buys the rights to these otherwise forgotten films, such as 1984’s “Splatter University,” and produces reprints that he sells on his e-commerce website.
“This is stuff that's not on disc officially anywhere … stuff that was shot on videotape, beta, VHS, quarter-inch [tape],” he said. “It was a huge part of our society.”
The trio of 20-somethings who were happily sifting through DVD titles along the crowded shelves of Los Angeles’ popular video rental store Vidiots were quick to point out that videotapes and DVDs are not just relics from the childhoods of older generations.
“We grew up watching DVDs. I think it was still definitely within our generation,” said Fay Vavra, who was perusing the anime aisle with Isabelle Torres and Danielle Rathbun.
The trio reminisced about watching Disney films on VHS and visiting Hollywood Video, the now-defunct competitor to Blockbuster.
They say Vidiots allows them to reduce their streaming subscriptions, while still having access to lots of content. The video store charges $3 for a five-day rental.
A survey from Consumer Reports found that nearly half of us are still watching DVDs and Blu-rays, while 15% of those surveyed are still playing and rewinding VHS tapes.
Physical video is having its vinyl moment. (LPs, by the way, now outsell CDs.)
“It's probably really a mix of emotional, practical, and cultural reasons that we're seeing this sort of renewed fondness for older technologies,” said James Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports, who conceived of the survey.
Among the practical reasons is the reality that sometimes even content people purchase on a streaming service can disappear. In fact, Amazon was sued over that practice last year, and California passed a law trying to address the problem.
“Sometimes they don't renew the licenses for content,” Willcox explained. “With physical media, you own that, and so you know it's always going to be there. And I think that there's an uncertainty with streaming as to whether or not you're going to have access to that stuff.”
To be sure, the big money is not in physical media. The streaming business totals about $50 billion in annual revenues, compared to about $1 billion for newly-released physical media.
But the trendline, which can be measured for new releases at least, shows that physical media is getting more attention. Sales are increasing for high-definition Blu-ray Discs.
“The streaming services have kind of pushed their customers away,” says Vidiots’ video store director Robbie McCluskey.
“People have become disillusioned that if you want to watch like a handful of movies, you have to have subscriptions to like 12 different places.”
The physical stores hope to become an increasingly popular antidote to digital overload.
Vidiots’ trajectory traces physical video’s demise and resurgence.
It originally opened in 1985 as a for-profit video store — the same year that Blockbuster debuted. Vidiots closed a few years after Blockbuster went bankrupt, only to reopen in a cheaper location in 2023 as a popularity among Hollywood celebrities, hipsters, and everyday viewers alike.
“My first day: I got a phone call from Christian Bale. He was doing research on playing Moses for Ridley Scott. So he was like, ‘Give me everything that has Moses in it,’” McCluskey recounted. “And then later that day, Keanu Reeves was driving his motorcycle, stopped in to grab a couple movies. So, it was a really fun place to work.”
By the time Vidiots closed, McCluskey said it was renting at most a few hundred DVDs and Blu-rays a week. But since it reopened, its popularity has surged. It now rents more than 1,000 items a week, he said.
“It’s been two and a half years now, every month we have more rentals than the month before,” he said. “The desire for physical media has really brought people back in a big way.”
Across town, the for-profit Cinefile Video — strategically located next to an independent movie theater — is also experiencing more business.
“What we've seen is folks with a lot of fatigue with the streaming services, either with price increases or, you know, things going in and out of rights,” said Cinefile owner Sebastian Mathews, who also used to own a vinyl record shop.
Collectors make up a growing portion of Mathews’ customer base. They are purchasing — not just renting — rare or obscure titles that cannot be found on streaming or that might be on a streaming service temporarily, then disappear.
North Carolina-based Lunchmeat VHS, meanwhile, specializes mostly in B-movies that will never appear on a streaming service. These are movies that were originally shot on videotape — a subgenre that owner Josh Schafer said should continue to be enjoyed in its original format.
Schafer, who also publishes an occasional magazine of the same, buys the rights to these otherwise forgotten films, such as 1984’s “Splatter University,” and produces reprints that he sells on his e-commerce website.
“This is stuff that's not on disc officially anywhere … stuff that was shot on videotape, beta, VHS, quarter-inch [tape],” he said. “It was a huge part of our society.”
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