This article [0] touches on it but it was unforgettable to wander around a NYC video rental store in the early 90s _with the whole neighborhood_.
[0] https://ilovetheupperwestside.com/be-kind-rewind-the-days-of...
'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
31–40 of 88 posts
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#32One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…
> No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "in-line" with today's environment. well, what was the movie?
It could have been Shazaam starring Sinbad as a genie who grants wishes to a couple of kids.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#33One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…
Even at the current stage I find it bad enough. Even famous series like Friends get edited and don't match what you remember. You are looking for this or that scene and get confused - maybe it was your imagination and it's never happened? So I keep the original copies for this precise reason. (And, to be honest, the vector space of possibly politically incorrect utterances seems to increase year by year, so this phenomenon is likely to increase, too.)
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do miss it a bit. Something about the scarcity made it more special. Also, the ceremony of going to the video store, browsing the shelves, and bringing it home. Same applies to music for me, but maybe even more so. I know I’m wearing rose-colored glasses in a lot of ways, but im okay with it.
Also when people had fewer shows they spent more time watching extras and since studios knew that they put effort into making them. Nowadays a lot of projects don't bother or do the bare minimum of grabbing two actors on a zoom call for a commentary track.
A lot of commentaries were crap but I really enjoyed some of them and, in a streaming world (whether subscription or a la carte), it really doesn't make sense to devote any resources at all to making them for the handful of people who buy DVDs or even own a DVD player.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#35One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…
Same problem with physical books disappearing.
History doesn't change if you read a book. If you read Wikipedia, who knows?
Not picking on Wikipedia, same could be with any online source.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "in-line" with today's environment. well, what was the movie?
It could have been Shazaam starring Sinbad as a genie who grants wishes to a couple of kids.
No, I think you’re thinking of Kazaam, the one where Sinbad was a genie
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#37I have fiber internet at my apartment with a mesh network, and I've found myself missing physical media a bit more lately. Inevitably at some point while watching any 4K media. The buffering will fail or speeds just simply drop? and I start getting visibly lower resolution, this really kills the immersion for me. Maybe I just don't have the right combination of devices, and/or I absolutely need a wired connection. Re…
Eh, storing and arranging physical media is a pain, as is dealing with scratches. I find it roughly equal as things go. The buffering thing genuinely confuses me. I get why it happens at a technical level, but the failure mode is odd. None of the content is live, just buffer the next 5 or 10 minutes to disk and have the player read from the disk buffer. That should never buffer unless the network is degraded for a lo…
Also, if it's a TV, they typically don't have disks, or at least not disks large enough, fast enough, and write wear tolerant enough, to cache data.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#38One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…
At the rate that Suno, Sora, etc are advancing, there won't even be a deliberate editorial act to report on. All streaming media content could pass through a newspeak software layer for JIT censorship that propagates the values of whoever owns the service.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#39I loved Scarecrow Video in Seattle when I was in the U district.
Some folks in here complaining about late fees but Scarecrow has them beat! Some media there you have to put a large deposit to rent - and it's got late fees too! Love that place.
Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming
#40Rental stores were great, except for the late fees. Many local rentals had good collections of older movies and TV series. They are simply non-existent in the streaming world.
That is actually one of the big surprises of digital media for me. How much is not available for paying customers.
Many things are available a la carte. But the all you can eat streaming services are not great if you're looking for something specific in general.