When I was growing up, I remember walking to the local video store with a few dollars, and after looking around a bit, I walked out with 3 to 4 video tapes. 10+ years later, and things certainly have changed.

 

 

When I came back to my hometown, I was bored and decided I'd go to the video store and rent a couple DVDs; much to my surprise, when I arrived, there was just a shell of a video store. I went all around town to all the different video store locations, and sure enough there was nary a video store that was open anymore, with the only exception being a Blockbuster Video. I had worked there when I was 17, I knew what their policies were, and I aptly decided against renting there. After searching offline and online, I finally found a video store in the next town over that was still open, and decided to head out there. I went into the video store, and couldn't believe how little they had in stock. I talked to one of the managers of the video store, and found out they had closed all their other locations. I asked if they knew what happened with the other video stores, and found out every place was closed due to the same reason. I asked what happened, what caused the death of video rentals, and was told there was one thing that's been killing their business. It turns out that online video rentals from places like NetFlix were taking over and were eliminating a lot of the business of the physical video stores.

 

 

Personally, I liked going into the local video store and picking out what I want and walking out with it right then and there. Although online video rental businesses are convenient and, depending on how much you rent, may be a better deal, they still can't replace the physical video rental store experience. I hope I don't see a complete death of video rental stores, as that is an experience I personally prefer to have; then again, a lot of people were upset when Beta tapes were phased out, so it may just be something to deal with and move on.

 

 

This rant written by Joe Rosendorf Jr.  This is merely an opinion based on personal experiences, and is intended to inform based on those experiences.