videotape rental stores

[micky]

There were store video rental stores until last year, at least 5 in Indiana:

One of the Region's last remaining video stores has vanished from the landscape.

Oasis Video in Crown Point closed after 30 years.

Video stores have been fading for years as streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Disney+, ESPN+, Apple TV+, YouTube TV, Crunchyroll and Crackle have emerged to compete with them.

Though their decline was ultimately as inevitable as that of physical media, it was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that also killed the last remaining national video store chain, Family Video, which recently closed its last few area locations in Dyer, Highland, Griffith, Valparaiso and LaPorte. Video stores had early access to recent Hollywood blockbusters, but when Hollywood stopped releasing movies in theaters and started to distribute them directly to streaming services, video stores lost the last remaining competitive advantage they had. Joseph S. Pete

[gfretwell]

I am not sure the last time I rented a movie but it was at least 20 years ago, maybe more like 25. I was an early adopter tho. I was a member of a video club in the 70s, renting Beta cassettes before VHS was a thing. They used to charge you $150 a year or so just to be able to rent a movie. That was how they raised the capital to get the movies in the first place. Blockbuster was revolutionary because they didn't make you pay to join to go there but their movies cost more per rental. I imagine if you watched a lot of movies it might have been more expensive.

[angelica...]

Ah, Indiana. Partying like it's 1999.

Cindy Hamilton

[hubops]

• 1 ... but hey ! - scratchy fragile dust-popping vinyl records are making a comeback - .... maybe there's hope for my Edison cylinders yet ? John T.

[John T. Stinkey]

AT$T Slowverse was never fast enough to stream HD but Xfinity gigabit cable killed our video stores off.

[micky]

Didn't I read that movies on vinyl platters have better color?

[invalid unparseable]

We are also seeing the demise of movie theaters.

[gfretwell]

There is still a pretty good sized stack of VHS tapes in my daughter's room, movies she liked and an old tape machine but I doubt it has been turned on in 20 years. I imagine the belts have turned to dust.

[hubops]

A couple years ago, I found a Denon stereo component cassette player at a thrift store < ~ $ 15. ish > because my grandson suddenly took an interest in our old cassette tapes - and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked just fine ! .. just made a bit of a clunk when starting/stopping fast speed -

- I suspect maybe a little rubber noise-damping pad went awol. John T.

[Roger Blake]

I've been buying quite a bit of new vinyl and the quality is quite good, not scratchy at all. Of course keeping them that way is the challenge.

[Roger Blake]

I haven't found that to be the case, maybe a little better than VHS if the disc and stylus are in good shape. They tend to skip a lot though. (You did realize when you wrote that there was such a system sold, right? I still have it.)