# Why did blockbuster video fail

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-blockbuster-video-fail/931051
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 21, 2021, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-blockbuster-video-fail/931051 "2021-01-21T03:23:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 68

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### Author: ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2021, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-blockbuster-video-fail/931051/68 "2021-03-04T01:48:17Z")

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> [@Martin\_Hyde](#):
>
> I frankly felt like the whole business model of movie rentals was getting harder and harder to justify from a really high level economic standpoint. I may be dating myself here, but for me the peak of video rental goes back to the 1980s, when a new release VHS copy of a movie would retail for $60-80. That isn’t a typo.

That’s a good point, in the 80s VHS tapes were priced to rent with tapes costing $80+ dollars which most people were unwilling to pay. Heck, we even have a [thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-vhs-tapes-of-movies-become-affordable-to-the-masses/659733) about it here! The first VHS movie I can remember being sold pretty hard directly to the public was Top Gun around 1987. The next movie I can remember is [Batman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFXNtYKbmr4) (YouTube) from 1989. The commercial I linked to doesn’t actually give a retail price but the narrator tells us it’s “specially priced.”

I suspect whatever agreement studios had regarding the pricing of new movies on VHS simply did not apply to DVDs. By the time DVDs were released, Hollywood was more than fine with releasing moves for the home market at reasonable prices.

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