That still doesn’t address the issue, unless Netflix can get a movie to my house in half an hour.
Wife and I will go into the video store on Friday night after going out to eat to pick something out together. It might be something we’ve seen that we just want to watch right then that I never would have queued (what am I gonna do, keep “Before Sunset” around for 6 months until I feel like watching it).
Sometimes, I’ll go in on a Wednesday and want something moronic.
Rainy saturday? Good time to catch up on some British “The Office”.
It’s not uncommon for me to walk into the video store at 9:00 at night, and look around for half and hour until I see a title and go, “that’s exactly what I want to watch right now.”
I’ll also go weeks without renting a thing.
But, don’t read that as me trashing Netflix. It seems like a great solution for a lot of people. It’s just doesn’t make sense to this person.
I also worry about what it might do to my much-loved local place.
It’s not random, they send you movies from the top of your list no matter how long or short it is. The only things I’ve ever had to wait a long time for are expensive items that they don’t overbuy (like the Criterion Grey Gardens, which took 4 months). If you live close enough to one of their shipping centers, you can return your weekend’s movies on a Monday, tweak your queue, and know what 2 or 3 DVDs you will get by Friday. If you need to be entirely spontaneous, you’ll probably find it frustrating. Of course, sometimes they don’t show up because of mail problems, and that’s also frustrating – and, apparently, if you turn around movies very quickly, they will deliberately slow down the returns on you, which is a pretty crappy business model, although understandable. However, it was an unbelievable godsend when I lived in the sticks and it was a half-hour drive to the nearest crappy video store (which was, at the time, a Blockbuster in the process of emptying its shelves of everything interesting).
I generally find it hard to work up outrage over Blockbuster Video (keeping a local video store in the black isn’t easy under any circumstances, and it’s not like BV is forcing anyone to completely abandon the independents), but I find their overall business plan…mystifying.
Expand all over the place. Then, after wiping out the competition, close stores (I’ve seen two BVs go under in a span of two years) and cut down others. Spring ridiculous late fees if the return is literally even a minute late (they just recently fixed that). Build an immense library of movies, videos, and games…then hire employees who don’t know jack about any of it. Oh, and why not give a job to any rude cretin who shows up, none of whom are going to last two weeks. DVD or game returned to the wrong location? Leave it to the sub-sub-manager or whoever, who’ll get around to returning it to the right place, oh, in about a year or two. And while we’re at it, why not make membership cards completely useless since everyone has to show ID (I lost my card at least four years ago and haven’t had any trouble renting anything). Don’t get me started on prices changing seemingly by the month.
While I find some of Wal-Mart’s policies despicable, and least I have some idea what they’re doing. Blockbuser Video seems hellbent on eating its own lunch in every conceivable manner.
Try Video Library. I haven’t time at the moment to see if they charge a monthly fee, but they definitely have thousands of titles, including hard-to-find films. I was able to find a British mini-series from the 1970s (The Duchess of Duke Street), obscure Shakespeare films starring Ian McKellan and Judi Densch (Macbeth), and early Marcel Pagnol films (Marius, The Baker’s Wife). A lot of them are on VHS, however.
I LOVE our local store. Its cheaper and they have a much better selection, blah blah.
The best part is that, if you go in there and cut up your Blockbuster/Hollywood Video card in front of them, you get a free rental.
There are streamers of decapitated BB cards all over the ceiling of the store.
