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Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
- metadat 4y agoUn-paywalled: https://archive.ph/jotV3 https://archive.ph/jotV3
- roywashere 4y agoThanks. Not only is the original link paywalled it is also not accessible from EU because GDPR and they think it is easier to block us than to not have so much third party cookies or such :sad:
- dj_mc_merlin 4y agoWeird, from EU also, not paywalled nor geofenced for me.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoThe geofence code only kicked in when I was about halfway through the article. Seems buggy as fuck.
- scarface_74 4y agoBlame your government. The only thing that the 99 section/11 chapter GDPR accomplished was to make the web worse with shitty Cookie notices.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoGDPR has proven incredibly useful to me and others in imposing cost on organisations and businesses that want to fuck about with our data. Someone's acting the maggot? No matter where they are, they get a subject access request. Followed by a request to correct or delete data. The ability to legally force companies to correct inaccurate data is incredibly useful.
- scarface_74 4y agoFacebook and Google didn't announce any harm from the GDPR. There are many companies that announce lower earning expectations from a simple 5 line App Store change by Apple and a one time popup asking you whether you want to be tracked.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoFAANG aren't who I am thinking of here - much worse are the background check and risk reporting companies such as WorldCheck that maintain dossiers on you that can often be not much more than speculative fanfiction, which banks use to assess risk.
- Dylan16807 4y agoWebsites don't need notices if they're not doing anything shady or unnecessary tracking, and just about every cookie notices I see is going against either the wording or the intent of the law. If they want to be annoying on purpose, we should blame them, not the GDPR.
- scarface_74 4y agoSo it's an effective law just not effectively enforced. Isn't that a distinction without a difference?
- Dylan16807 4y agoI'm not saying it's effective (yet), but if companies respond to a law by doing something very obnoxious and not at all required by the law, I point my blame at the companies.
- scarface_74 4y agoOr you can just click on "Reader View" from Safari....
- tingletech 4y ago"Reader View" from Safari only shows the first paragraph of this story for me
- kerblang 4y agoIt's sort of bizarre that an entrenched, widely despised corporate behemoth thoroughly deserving its own demise has turned into an anachronistic mom-and-pop shop that just gets by. But isn't this the worst of both worlds? It's dystopian nostalgia. Maybe I just have too much of a grudge against the 1980's...
- karaterobot 4y agoYeah, ironic because Blockbuster is what killed off the mom and pop stores it now stands in for in our collective memory of the 90s. I actually liked our local Blockbuster, and have fond memories of it, but only because it was run by the same employees from the independent video store it drove out of business. I liked that one even better.
- artificial 4y agoThis reminds me of smaller bookstores prior to the era of Borders and Barnes and Noble dominance. pours one out
- legitster 4y agoSmaller bookstores are actually doing pretty okay these days: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/02/18/indie-bookstores-comeback https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/02/18/indie-bookstores-com... Mostly because Amazon decimated corporate chains, which freed up more market for independent stores.
- ghaff 4y agoThough independents are still a pretty niche business. Around where I am there are certainly far fewer of them than there were before the big chains became dominant.
- legitster 4y agoI don't know. I'm in a pretty redneck county and even here there are dozen independent bookstores. Most of them are tied to a coffeeshop though. But if you check your local map you might be surprised.
- tremarley 4y agoStan Marsh
- rascul 4y agoIn 2007 I was in the US Army, deployed to the Middle East. (My memory is a bit hazy, it could have been my 2009 deployment instead.) Netflix was shipping DVD's to rent but they wouldn't ship to my APO AE address. I discovered that Blockbuster had a similar program, and they would ship to my APO AE address. So for six months or so, I was renting movies from Blockbuster on the other side of the world.
- ezekg 4y agoI miss Blockbuster. We had a small haven here called Family Video, but they unfortunately closed down due to the COVID lockdowns/lack of foot traffic. It was my family's spot to grab a Friday night movie and snacks, even through the pandemic. We were super bummed to see it go. Streaming just doesn't match the experience of browsing movies IRL. We'd usually leave with a few movies to watch that week, including a kids movie for the kids. We typically give up on endlessly browsing Netflix/etc. for something interesting and fall back to our "usual." Boring. Hoping similar stores make a resurgence someday.
- bombcar 4y agoOur rental store closed before Covid (the owner basically got tired of it and retired, it wasn't a big money-maker, so nobody took over). Our theater died just after Covid. I wonder if you could combine them into some kind of "movie mishmash" where you could see new movies in the theater, rent older classics, or even buy new releases. Being able to stop in, grab a movie and hot popcorn, and drive home seems it could be a winner.
- noduerme 4y agoI run IT for a franchise chain. All requests to me are supposed to come through corporate, but franchisees and sometimes managers and even front desk employees try to do end-runs and get directly to me with software issues, local networking issues, etc. I want to stress how difficult this would be for one person to manage, and how much work for little pay it probably was if it was based on service contracts with individual stores. At least, when there were 30 independent Blockbusters left. Now it's probably pretty chill.
- ck2 4y agoHave you ever seen the post with the person that accidentally stumbled into a film set with an old Blockbuster "revived", heh https://imgur.com/gallery/n1l3O58 https://imgur.com/gallery/n1l3O58
- awacs 4y agoGrowing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a "USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an impossibility", makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about the first iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it actually was compared to modern versions. I started converting / collecting most of my movie collection onto a localized server years ago, and glad I did. Though I rarely watch all my old movies (a growing list of about 1000 including most of my favorite TV shows), the end game I think we all know is everything streamed, with no actual ownership of content. It's not a terrible notion, but the problem I think we've all seen is it's now turned into a corporate ownership game, and you never know where the content you're interested in watching is. One day Star Trek is on Netflix, the next Paramount, etc. The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes, even though I'm a firm believer in unless you're watching on something well over 100" a nice high-quality 1080P file looks just great on a large 85" tv (which I currently have).
- rconti 4y agoI ripped my entire DVD collection 15 years ago, and I just never watch any of it. If I want to watch one of the movies I just pay the $4 to 'rent' a 4k stream instead of suffering with DVD quality.
- Forgeties79 4y agoIt’s so funny reading this. I was remarking the other day to a friend how well I think DVD’s hold up. Nothing to write home about, but definitely a solid level above “tolerable” to me.
- PenguinCoder 4y agoMan I am the exact opposite. If I have had it on DVD, I've ripped it and I'd rather watch that, rather then pay $4 to rent any other stream of a product I already have.
- 4y ago
- sevenf0ur 4y agoDo you think he had to recreate blockbuster's central servers from scratch or did he get the blessing to maintain the old software?
- bombcar 4y agoBlockbuster is old enough that they probably didn't have "central servers" as such, more like a local area terminal network that you'd manually update with CSV files when needed.
- papito 4y agoIf you want your mind blown - "Who really killed Blockbuster Video?" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-really-killed-blockbuster-video/id1465767420?i=1000480312942 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-really-killed-bloc... It's amazing that Blockbuster had Netflix on the ropes, until one notorious activist investor showed up and basically gave Netflix the win. One man is responsible for creating a completely different timeline when it comes to video streaming. Very similar to how we would be living in a different reality if GM's ahead-of-its-time EV1 was not mysteriously disappeared in the 90s.
- actionfromafar 4y agoOr if BBC would have gone ahead with video-on-demand from an array of LaserDisc players distributing to optical (analogue!) fiber in London. In the 80s.
- shyn3 4y agoFunny someone is doing the same with Radioshack and Crypto [0]. [0] https://www.radioshack.org/ https://www.radioshack.org/
- crisopolis 4y agoNo, RadioShack brand is just being used for a trend. Not even related to keeping their technology or stores open/alive in 2022. RIP RadioShack
- pcthrowaway 4y agoNot only that, the person behind defiling the brand is none other than Tai Lopez (the "here in my garage ... KNOWLEDGE!" guy)
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoBrand necrophilia.
- bni 4y agoExcellent name for it
- pmarreck 4y agoAs a Gen X'er, this is completely gross
- antonymy 4y agoIt's like the business version of the Byzantine Empire.
- ranieuwe 4y agoWelp at least he doesn’t have any scaling issues. Scaled down to the minimal set.
- atlgator 4y agoI worked at a corporate Blockbuster for just over a year during high school. I made $7.15/hr and I commuted using my bicycle. Best job I ever had.
- cmckn 4y agoI was in Bend a few months ago and swung by the last Blockbuster. I rented a movie (and bought a t-shirt), and had to sign up for an account. I received a laminated paper Blockbuster card with an account number scrawled in Sharpie on the back. I wouldn't have guessed that the store was still calling out to these old servers; that's pretty cool. The movie cost 99 cents to rent, which I thought was surprisingly cheap. The clerks were talking about how people come in to take pictures (no surprise there) and were usually inconsiderate about including the clerks in photos. It smelled exactly the same in there. It was neat.
- dannyisaphantom 4y agoThat's so cool and sounds like an awesome experience. I keep my Mom's original Blockbuster laminated card in the back of my iPhone case :) Just checked the print date and its from 9/24/04. Great piece of nostalgia.
- tomjakubowski 4y agoSmall world: 9/24/04 was the date on my first driver's license
- tantalor 4y ago> inconsiderate about including the clerks As in, rudely excluded the clerks, or rudely included? Either way makes sense me to me.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y agoI would presume rudely including - I can imagine that those clerks have to deal with touristy photos on a daily basis and everyone wants to have the employee captured in their "Blockbuster experience" photo.
- davidw 4y agoI live a few blocks from that place. It's kind of weird all the attention it gets.
- 4y ago
- zw123456 4y agoI am old enough to remember when the wife would call me at work on a Friday and say hey, stop by the video store and get a movie for tonight and I'll stop and get wine and take out. What was special was the "Dave" at the video rental place (it wasn't blockbuster but whatever). I don't recall the guy's name, but he always remembered me and what we liked and had great suggestions and sometimes if you said, nah but how about something completely different, he would always find us something great. Or usually (one time he recommended Eraser head, we still laugh about that one, so even though it was a dud, great memory). I get it, today's AI is pretty good, meh, not really, but it would be hard to beat my old "Dave". Maybe someday.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 4y agotoday's AI is pretty good It's pretty good at suggesting exactly the same type of movies you've watched before, but not so good at those "but how about something completely different, but something that I'll still like" suggestions, that's where a real human movie buff can help.
- usrn 4y agoI haven't thought about it but most of the movies I've really enjoyed were recommended to me by my dad, girlfriend, or my brother in law. I can't think of anything I really enjoyed from a recommendation algorithm. The last movie I tried I certainly didn't enjoy.
- jvalencia 4y agoThe reality is likely that the algorithms are trying to increase viewership, not quality of views. So they are likely to feed you things that get you to watch another thing, rather than things that are worth watching, leave you satisfied, and off doing something else.
- actusual 4y ago
- s1mon 4y agoI read this title as "Piano man..." several times until my brain finally parsed it correctly. It made for very curious thoughts on an alternate future involving Billy Joel.
- 2143 4y agoI thought I was the only one.
- jefurii 4y agoI wish they had included pictures of his hardware.
- bloomingeek 4y agoDon't know if it's been mentioned or not, but what killed the video store for me was the late fees. Hollywood Video had a parking lot drop box that was good up until midnight. I worked the overnight shift so I would drop the seen vids at 9:15pm and then drive off to work. Almost every time they would charge me a late fee! When I would call them on the fee, they always dropped it, making me wonder about the other people who wouldn't protest. Also, many times I witnessed exasperated parents and grandparents paying a huge late fee because their kids forgot to drop them off.
- getSood666 4y ago
- zmix 4y ago> “It’s the thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night: ‘Oh my gosh, what happens if we run out of computers?’” he said. “Well, it is what it is. It’s just going to run until it doesn’t run anymore.” Couldn't he just virtualize? There is USB-Floppy devices, these days, to get even the last bit of compatibility right.
- ilaksh 4y agoI wonder how many conversations there were in the 80s or 90s about how video on demand would never become mainstream because of the bandwidth requirements. I think that physically going to _any_ special destination such as for tourism may be on a steep decline in the next few decades. VR glasses and goggles will be coming out that are very lightweight, comfortable, and convincing. We will also have eye tracking and eye contact in VR. There will be more advanced, faster more realistic 3d scanning of locations. There will also be the ability to "live scan", transmit and faithfully reproduce people moving around in an area. This will take advantage of advancements in graphics and AI. Haptic glove technology will improve. The conversation will be something like "remember when you had to actually _travel_ 5000 miles to see the Sistine Chapel or the last Blockbuster?"
- brundolf 4y agoMy fondest Blockbuster memories were around video games. The very best weekends were when my mom would take us there on Friday after school and let us each pick out a game. My sister and I would fight for turns with the TV all weekend. Just getting to explore a new game for a little bit and then try something else next time was so much fun; you never knew what you were gonna get, just going off the box art. Even better was during the cartridge years, when you'd take a game home and it might already have a few different saves on it from other people, and you'd get to visit their characters and worlds, jump in at different points in the game, and try to imagine how it all fit together. There was a gap of many years between Netflix killing Blockbuster, and game subscriptions becoming a thing where you could try them out casually again. Though of course even then, all the same physical nostalgia is missed; browsing the aisles, scrutinizing the boxes to try and figure out what it'll be like when you take it home, etc.
- downrightmike 4y agoOr getting hooked on a game and hoping that you get there quick enough to check it out so that no one else played or erased your save.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]