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Blockbuster Video VHS insert template
- wirthjason 2y agoThis is a great addition next to my race car VHS rewinder.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rivetsec 2y agoThat's right. One could erase all kinds of video tapes by running a simple magnetic degausser over them. If one were so inclined.
- genghisjahn 2y agoI feel like we aren’t supposed to talk about that. Like it’s a rule.
- blorenz 2y agoThis is beautiful. What warm memories this evokes. Now I can adjust the dimensions and make some dust covers for my books in the Blockbuster video style!
- donw 2y agoRenting a movie with Mom and Dad was a special kind of excitement as a kid. Walking around the store, looking at all the covers to try and figure out what we were going to watch. Usually, you had seen a preview for any given movie, or had at least heard about it, but there was still a lot of "rolling the dice", especially if the actor was famous: I saw Battlefield Earth because the cover looked cool and I liked space sci-fi, but the movie itself made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt was, I wonder if such physical experiences will come back in the future.
- donw 2y agoDepends. In my culture, there's a strong push against being constantly online. Phones must be kept in a backpack or otherwise stowed during social occasions, unless absolutely necessary. Ideally, you turn them off, stuff them in a Faraday bag, and leave them in your car. Or just leave the phone at home. Correlated to this is a focus on rebuilding some atrophied skills: getting around without Google Maps, being alone without needing the constant distraction of Youtube, etc. The idea is that humans are not meant to live a life constantly mediated by an electronic nanny, and that you also need to maintain the skills to get along without one. Related to this is a preference for physical media, or at least digital media over which you can exercise some control.
- ikurei 2y agoOut of curiosity, what culture are you referring to? I've known a few individuals trying to do such changes, but no wider culture.
- batch12 2y agoWhy are they turning the phones off then placing them in a Faraday bag? I've only heard this before when someone is trying to subvert surveillance.
- donw 2y agoThere is no way to turn a phone truly "off", but you can isolate it from both listening in on conversations -- which modern phones do regardless of how they are configured -- and preventing it from connecting to a network. You're never going to escape government surveillance, but you can take steps to prevent advertisers from hoovering up every last bit of personal data that they can.
- code_duck 2y agoBlockbuster does still exist and the trademarks are owned by Dish Network. The sole remaining franchisee is in Bend, Oregon.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI think that I saw a news story, that it was closed, now. Doesn't mean the trademarks aren't valid, though. Here, there be [legal] dragonnes...
- al_borland 2y agoLooks like it's still open, at least based on Google Maps. https://maps.app.goo.gl/cE9MCA7TZAdwYSkB6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/cE9MCA7TZAdwYSkB6
- jakderrida 2y agohttps://t.ly/Sk3MB https://t.ly/Sk3MB Appears the "OPEN" light was on in July of 2021 from street view.
- dangrossman 2y agoThe most recent review on Google, which includes interior photos of the open store, is just 4 days old.
- davidw 2y agoYeah I live a few blocks from it and it's still open.
- jerrysievert 2y agothey seem to still be getting in new releases, at least as of the end of July: https://bendblockbuster.com/new-releases/ https://bendblockbuster.com/new-releases/ the Alaska blockbuster did close though.
- vharuck 2y agoI appreciate the effort put into breaking down the barcode's information.
- tisdadd 2y agoI remember when that location closed, as I went to college nearby. Fun that you did the championships there. Also, really nice work.
- geraldalewis 2y agoI give this project five bags of popcorn and a little commemorative octocat keychain.
- gedy 2y agoThis would make a fun Jellyfin theme, ha
- olegious 2y agolol this brings back memories. Spent 5 years working in BBV in high school and college, my first day on the job was when they installed dvd shelves in the middle of the store, was there when we removed all VHS, was there when Netflix streaming began and when we launched our own streaming service. Good times.
- guidedlight 2y agoThese look very similar to the ones used in New Zealand. I wonder what the regional differences are, particularly the barcode.
- rhplus 2y agoIf memory serves me correctly, the main difference is that the reels on the tapes rotated anti-clockwise in the Southern hemisphere due to the Coriolis effect.
- joering2 2y agoAs funny as it seems, I am glad nobody thought about it as a true way to prevent cross-zoning like with ridiculous unhelpful initial DVD discs/players Zoning where you could only change your zone 5 times which btw wish someone sue player makers for that. Its just a matter of reversing the tape content, but I could imagine zoning south versus north hemi, so Australia VHS would not work in Europe :) I mean it would work but you would watch in reverse :)
- h_tbob 2y ago[flagged]
- anothername12 2y agoMan I miss walking into a BBV and there was this dude at the counter who was absolute expert in horror movies… got me started in Dario Argento, French extreme… Can’t get that out of “max”/Netflix/prime etc
- whatrocks 2y agoThe memories! I once wrote a short story once about the “other” last Blockbuster - a place where your VHS videos might just let you truly relive your past, at some great cost, of course. Anyway, I love when weird stuff like this comes to dwell on GitHub. Here’s the story https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/the-other-last-blockbuster/ https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/the-other-last-blo...
- jw_cook 2y agoThat was a fun read. Thanks for sharing!
- JeremyMorgan 2y agoThis brings back some nostalgia for sure! I was a BB customer and worked for Hollywood Video for quite a while, just as Netflix started taking over. It was sad. There's a lot to be said about the "old school" way of movie rentals. Looking back and seeing Netflix and the other streaming options sprouting up, and the "cut the cord" movement.. it was neat. Until you look at where we are now. We're now paying and exponential amount of money for the same level of entertainment. We all got swindled, and it's too late to do anything about it now.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoThe only thing we can do, as consumers, is stop paying for streaming, pay/rent physical media, and if we truly “need” on-demand streaming then piracy is always a moral option to abusive multi-billion dollar businesses. A $5/mo VPN is far more value than you can get out of streaming, especially if you invest the saved money into a Jellyfin server.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ikurei 2y ago> There's a lot to be said about the "old school" way of movie rentals. Please do say it! I'm old enough to remember VHS and video clubs, but may be not old enough to have a lot of nostalgia about it. I can't think of what was better then. Sometimes you'd get a kind and knowledgeable video club owner who'd made fantastic recommendations, but more often than not it was an underpayed kid who just wanted to go home. May be people used to take watching a move more seriously, and therefore enjoy it more, when the process was more involved and you didn't have millions of movies and shows a few clicks away, but does that count as an advantage? > We're now paying and exponential amount of money for the same level of entertainment. This was certainly not true where I lived. The ammount of movies and shows that get watched in an average household these days would bankrupt the family in the 90s.
- BrenBarn 2y agoWhat I found better about it was the algorithm-free browsing experience. You would just look at the shelves and decide what to watch. The movies were broken down into basic genres, and sometimes there would be "staff picks" or something, but beyond that it was just you and the movies. This meant sometimes you watched really bad stuff, or good stuff, or stuff you wouldn't normally watch, or whatever. No doubt there's a certain amount of nostalgia baked into these impressions. But definitely the thing I remember most fondly about that era was how decisions about things (movies, music, cereals, blenders, etc.) were made by looking at what was available and (maybe) doing a bit of research with external sources (like a "movie guide" book or whatever), rather than constantly wading through a morass of "recommendations", fake reviews, broken search functionality, and so on.
- renegade-otter 2y agoSince this is a YC site, "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... We SHOULD have been streaming on Blockbuster and not Netflix today, but history is just a chain of blunders stitched together.
- immibis 2y agoFrom a Blockbuster shareholder perspective, that would be good. From a user perspective, streaming is nothing like video rental and I don't see why we should expect them to be the same company. Why should a rental company that pivots to streaming be better for overall society than a native streaming company (which Netflix isn't, I note).
- _heimdall 2y agoNetflix started out as a DVD rental service. The model was slightly different with a subscription that allowed you to have a certain number of DVDs at once, but it was still renting discs. If they could pivot from rentals to streaming, why couldn't Blockbuster have done it?
- repeekad 2y agoBut Netflix mailed DVDs, blockbuster had ubiquitous storefronts of family owned franchises they’d be cannibalizing, I think they were pretty different
- hluska 2y agoThis is all spitballing of course, but depending on when they released their streaming service, Blockbuster may not have had to close all their storefronts. Staffing would have changed and the business itself would have changed. But at the time, there was an opportunity for a trusted brand to help ease people into streaming. I purchased VHS tapes, DVDs and subscribed to streaming services within about a decade of each other. That was a big transition for me and I’m technical. With the right kind of revenue sharing, DVD only rentals and cross promotions between streaming and in person rentals/events, they could have had something really interesting. I’m old enough to have rented VHS tapes so this may be a function of my age more than actual opportunity, but I know several people who even now would be far more tempted to subscribe to a streaming service if they could do it in a store. Again, this is all theoretical, but Blockbuster had a lot of advantages back in the day. It wouldn’t be what it was, but the opportunities are fun to think through.
- coding-saints 2y agoMy parents owned a mom/pop video store during my childhood. It's still crazy to look back at how in-demand VHS tapes were. We lived in a super small town so there was zero competition. Cable was not common in every home yet. "Be kind, rewind" cost a buck if forgotten. Rewinding to the beginning of VHS tapes was honestly so long that nobody really forgot. The store was eventually acquired by some regional chain, and almost like magic the future started taking its form. So cool to see this.
- NotCamelCase 2y agoSo, you needed to rewind the tape to the beginning if you wanted to return it after having partially watched it i.e. at 40%? Now I wonder, did the store owners check each tape on return for this? I hope it was a quick process.. > Rewinding to the beginning of VHS tapes was honestly so long that nobody really forgot. Hmm, if it took so long, wouldn't it have caused the reverse effect? That people would ignore it out of laziness? Maybe I'm too spoiled! :D
- _m_p 2y agoInterestingly, in the very first iteration of home video cassette rentals, the tapes could not be rewound at home: > These rental cassettes were red, approximately 7 inches (180 mm) high by 6.5 inches (170 mm) wide by 1.5 inches (38 mm) deep (however used the same videotape used today) and could not be rewound by a home Cartrivision recorder. Rather, they were rewound by a special machine upon their return to the retailer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision
- 8organicbits 2y agoI recall them having a transparent window so you could see where the tape was. I think the process would have been: slide the VHS out of the sleeve and glance at where the tape was positioned. Should take just a second.
- LocalH 2y agoI mean, you could look at most VHS tapes and tell if they're rewound or not. Don't even need to insert them into a VCR.
- itomato 2y agoThe logical thing now is to take in a list of UPCs and Geolocation data to generate labels for an entire VHS collection.
- samstave 2y agoFYI, and interesting thing one can do with this, is load it up as a template in BarTender, by Seagull Scientific, and have a table of all your video collection, and it can autogenterate all the barcodes you'd want - additionally - one can put a QRcode barcode on it pointing to the IMDB rating for it. Or a QR code going to a google sheet library of all your videos... so if you wanted a way to automate print barcodes for a bunch of custom labels, Bartender is the best. I was making employee badges and someone said they were a "Card Carrying Conspiracy Theorist" so I was making ID badges, and though "huh - what would a "Conspiracy Theorist Badge" look like so while I was learning Bartender I made these. https://imgur.com/a/badge-iterations-mwyjf9x https://imgur.com/a/badge-iterations-mwyjf9x Where all the elements are driven by a table (you can connect them to xls, csv, sheets, any DB etc.. You can do barcodes in any format. (point being you can load in the design elements of this inkscape - and make your own custom sleeves for your library super easy and have the barcodes generate correctly.) https://www.seagullscientific.com/software/ https://www.seagullscientific.com/software/
- whartung 2y agoOutside of going to the movies, Blockbuster was pretty much my sole source of video. I had a TV, but no cable and poor reception (I remember watching snowy news broadcasts of the LA riots). I honestly did be not miss it. This was pre-internet, so most of my consumption was through books. The interesting thing was when BB would get the latest box set of the X-files. Pretty much the closest you could get to binging at the time. 4-5 tapes, 2 episodes per (it was never the entire season). Watch a tape per week. Always excited when the new set arrived.
- repeekad 2y agoit’s crazy to think VHS and DVD came and went in only a few decades I remember when Netflix started separating the DVD service from streaming and thinking they were absolutely crazy, because no one would ever want to watch movies from their computer, movies go in that box under the TV…
- Scoundreller 2y agoThey launched their streaming service in 2007. I think I first connected a laptop with a tv-out to a TV in like 2003. Wasn’t hard to find a desktop video card with video out. But the people doing that probably weren’t the first to sign up for a pay streaming service. The Boxee came out in 2010. Like an early android box for your TV and supported Netflix, but could also stream from a network drive. I remember paying ~CAD$200 (or CAD$250?) for one and got a $25 best buy gift card. ~3 years later I sold the boxee for $100 and bought a Chromecast with that gift card and another few bucks.
- pests 2y agoI had the first device that Netflix supported, a Roku. Strange it's a household name now but back then it was completely unheard of. You couldn't browse the catalog on the device. You had to open the website on a computer and add anything you wanted to watch to your queue. The Roku would only let you select items from that list. The same queue that was used for the DVD mailings.
- jayemar 2y agoThat profile image is top notch
- mrmaloke 2y agoAgreed. His hacking day of the week is definitely Wednesday
- DonHopkins 2y agoNow do Dr. Bronner's soap labels! ;)