3 ms·

Aw, dude! I'm assuming you're a little younger sorry if I'm off the mark, video stores had a culture all their own that is just gone now, never to return, and i

by stryk 9y ago

Aw, dude! I'm assuming you're a little younger sorry if I'm off the mark, video stores had a culture all their own that is just gone now, never to return, and it's a shame. There was a certain magic about them that is just lost with time now. They were everywhere - franchise chain stores (Blockbuster, Family Video, Hollywood Video, etc.), as well as neighborhood mom & pop shops [these could be hit or miss, but when you found a good one you were virtually a lifetime customer]. Hell, you used to be able to rent tapes at the grocery store! Even more important than that, they were a cultural and societal staple. Everyone went to the video store; you met up with friends there (some even had arcades in them!), you ran into people you hadn't seen in a while there [this was before cell phones, so that mattered a lot], you looked forward to going there on friday/saturday afternoon to rent a tape to watch that night. It was a great way to discover new movies you hadn't heard of before or obscure titles that didn't have budgets for TV or cinema ads -- this is why box art was important and distributors fought over retail/rental shelf space. A lot of this stuff is all but irrelevant these days. You have to keep in mind this was before everything went digital/streaming. 800x600 desktop resolution on your PC was considered higher end, so your typical video file was something like 480x320 or less and the quality was crap (think MPEG-1, old school QuickTime, and gasp RealVideo). It didn't matter much for movies anyway, there wasn't bandwidth or storage space like we have now. I still remember the first time I saw a movie on DVD it was an honest Holy Shit! moment. Sorta-high bitrate MPEG-2 with a good 5.1 surround sound audio track on disc in your home was nothing short of revolutionary.

k__ 9y ago
Oh I'm not that young, haha. I had these stores in my childhood, till I was 16 or something. My mother even worked in one when I was smaller. They had billiard tables, snacks and stuff there. I always rented games for PSX back then, because one would cost 30-40€ and I was a poor child, hehe. Well, the stores were kinda like you said when I was in my teens, but it seemed to me that not so many people were renting anymore. And yes they had the expensive games, which was good for poor children, but the movies weren't 100€ a VHS for long time anymore, so most people probably simply bought them.
- stryk 9y ago
  Same here, I was a NES then Sega Genesis (I think it was called the Master System in your neck of the woods) kid and rented games all the time because my parents didn't have money laying around to just buy every game I wanted -- in the US new games back then were still $60, which years ago was a lot of money, and still is (imho). Some were even more than that -- I distinctly remember saving up allowances and lawn-mowing money for months to buy the Star Wars NES game from Sears, which costed $80. And it ended up being terrible. You live & learn :) My renting habits continued on through the Sega CD, PSX, and Sega Dreamcast (what a great system this was, mainly because CD burners were becoming cheap and you didn't need a hardware modification of your console to play burned games -- yes, I pirated the hell out of them [hello #kalisto and #echelon from EFnet] and this probably led to the console dying out long before it should have but I was a kid below the legal working age I couldn't buy them even though I wanted to.

by stryk 9y ago

k__ 9y ago

Oh I'm not that young, haha. I had these stores in my childhood, till I was 16 or something. My mother even worked in one when I was smaller. They had billiard tables, snacks and stuff there. I always rented games for PSX back then, because one would cost 30-40€ and I was a poor child, hehe. Well, the stores were kinda like you said when I was in my teens, but it seemed to me that not so many people were renting anymore. And yes they had the expensive games, which was good for poor children, but the movies weren't 100€ a VHS for long time anymore, so most people probably simply bought them.

stryk 9y ago
Same here, I was a NES then Sega Genesis (I think it was called the Master System in your neck of the woods) kid and rented games all the time because my parents didn't have money laying around to just buy every game I wanted -- in the US new games back then were still $60, which years ago was a lot of money, and still is (imho). Some were even more than that -- I distinctly remember saving up allowances and lawn-mowing money for months to buy the Star Wars NES game from Sears, which costed $80. And it ended up being terrible. You live & learn :) My renting habits continued on through the Sega CD, PSX, and Sega Dreamcast (what a great system this was, mainly because CD burners were becoming cheap and you didn't need a hardware modification of your console to play burned games -- yes, I pirated the hell out of them [hello #kalisto and #echelon from EFnet] and this probably led to the console dying out long before it should have but I was a kid below the legal working age I couldn't buy them even though I wanted to.