# First Video Rentals
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 27, 2003, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078 "2003-09-27T00:19:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ricksummon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricksummon)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/1 "2003-09-27T00:19:56Z")
When did the concept of video rentals first come into being, and what was the first video rental store called?
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/2 "2003-09-27T00:26:45Z")
From [this page](http://www.ce.org/publications/books_references/digital_america/history/vcr.asp):
[quote]
In December 1977, a Los Angeles entrepreneur named George Atkinson opened the first video rental store, The Video Station. A year later, the store was so popular that Atkinson began to sell franchises.
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/3 "2003-09-27T00:32:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The first company to sell pre-recorded videos was Andre Blay’s Video Club of America. He acquired fifty titles from Twentieth Century Fox studios that had all been previously sold to network TV. At the time of his first ad (in an October 1977 issue of TV Guide), there were fewer than 200,000 VCR owners, but more than 9,000 of them joined Blay’s video club.
> …
> While Blay explored the video sale market, the first individual to see the possibilities for a video rental market was George Atkinson who ran a “Mickey Mouse little business” in Los Angeles called Home Theater Systems. Atkinson rented Super Eight film projectors, screens and old movies for $25 a night. He bought one Beta and one VHS copy of each of the fifty Fox titles sold by Blay. In order to raise capital quickly he charged fifty dollars for an annual membership and one hundred dollars for a “life membership.” Members could rent videos for $10 a day (Lardner, 1987; pp. 176-7).
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/4 "2003-09-27T00:34:26Z")
my bad
[http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6\_5/roehl/](http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_5/roehl/)
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/5 "2003-09-27T06:54:00Z")
Y’all are five years too late. The first home videocassette player was the [AVCO Cartrivision](http://www.cedmagic.com/history/cartrivision.html) system, introduced in June 1972, three years before Betamax and four years before VHS.
The Cartrivision VCR cost $700 ($3,000 in today’s dollars!), and was available from Sears, Macy’s, Montgomery Ward, and other department stores. A blank one-hour tape cost $24 ($102 today). Rentals of Hollywood movies on videocassette, from your Cartrivision retailer via Cartrivision’s [Cartridge Rental Network](http://www.angelfire.com/alt/cartrivision/software_hardware.html), cost $3-$7 ($13-$30), and they could only be watched once per rental, since the consumer was not able to rewind the cartridges.
Cartrivision VCRs went off the market only thirteen months later in July 1973.
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2003, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-video-rentals/204078/6 "2003-09-27T07:07:55Z")
Some of the features that were available for rent from Cartrivision in 1972-73: _Exodus_, _Casablanca_, _It Happened One Night_, _Red River_, _I Am Curious (Yellow)_, and _Dr. Strangelove_.