BlockBuster could have survived NetFlix and GameFly because it was still instantly available to you. Then NetFlix started streaming which hurt, and RedBox killed them with their new movies available for $1 in places you frequently visited, and best of all its available 24/7. As RedBox has expanded the number of kiosks it has become easier and easier to find your movie availble at a location near you, and you can order it online and go pick it up. Nobody seems to use the Blockbuster kiosks I see. They tend to be in horrible locations. They also charge a premium DVD rental price. When I rented Avatar from BB's kiosk it was $1, but when I returned it and was looking at other rentals available they had raised the price to $2/night as a premium DVD rental.
Blockbuster was too greedy. Redbox and netflix is the sword that slayed the beast, but blockbuster was its own demise. When your business model composes of herding you through a maze of candy shelves, ya got problems.
Redbox need to rent each DVD at least 10-15 times (depending on how long customers keep it) in order to turn a profit. And by then the disc is all scratched up. I still don't understand how they do it. Which Showtime Video did you rent from?
if not more i remember Top Gun was unique...it was $20...but Pepsi had paid an assload of money to have an advertisement on at the beginning of the tape. but yeah...movies were for renting only, early on. ridiculously priced, otherwise.
Yeah, their service is competitive now, but I still harbor a lot of animosity from their business practices in the 1990s. They had monopoly-like power in the market at one time, and they took full advantage.
True. I worked at a video store, and people never understood this: the price the video store pays to obtain a copy of the movie to rent is NOT the same at the price a retail customer pays for the same videotape. I remember when Batman came out, and it was ridiculously cheap to buy ($10 or so), but cost over $100 per copy to video rental outlets. Because the rental outlet is paying a licensing fee to redistribute that video (remember that FBI warning at the beginning?). When we had customers that lost or damaged copies of the video, they were furious when we told them how much it would cost to replace.
