Im honestly AMAZED that these big retail Video Chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood video have not filed for chapter 11 yet!!

Seriously, who is dumb enough to go spend 4 dollars on A new Release DVD at Hollywwod video, when you can get the exact same DVD at Redbox for one dollar??? Not only Redbox but Net Flix is extremely poopular and so is On Demand. I just dont see the Video Chains being around much longer.

Some things I have noticed about Red Box

_They are popping up quicker than pimples on a teenage guys face. These Red Boxes are EVERYWHERE, Not only at Mcdonalds, but they are also at Safeway stores.

Another thing I've noticed about Redbox is that not only do they have the brand new releases, but they are now starting to add old titles. Im pretty sure I saw "The Karate Kid" on dispay at the Redbox by my house.

How are video chain stores going to stay competitive now that they have a ton of stiff competition from Red Box, Net Flix ect.
They sure havent been doing much to save themselves.
Everytime I drive by a Redbox they are always packed! Im always waiting in line to get my dvd. PLUS with the economy in the shitter and people losing their jobs left and right, who is gonna pay 4 dollars for a DVDF when you can get it at Redbox for a dollar????

RedBox and Netflix is what the future holds, not Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.

Plus Im curious, does anybody still go to a blockbuster to Rent Dvd's??? How do you get your Dvd's when you want to see one?

Thoughts?

The last time I rented at a Hollywood Video (about two years ago), they told me the last DVD I'd rented had been returned ten days late, even though I absolutely returned it on time. So there was a nice late charge on my account. The kid at the counter acted like he was doing me a favor and waived the charge "this time." Bullshit! That was the last time I ever rented a DVD there.

I can't believe video stores have survived THIS long. In five years, 99% of them will be completely gone. I'm already seeing them close left and right. One of those Red Boxes can replace an entire video store...except the Red Box is much more convenient and the customer service is better.

The thing about RedBox is the limited selection -- "popular" movies only, including $200 million crap. No independently made $2 million and often FANTASTIC films for us at RedBox.

Indie filmmakers are getting shafted. The rich (major studios) keep getting richer regardless of the quality of their contents.


Anyone see top ten of 2008 movie Man On A Wire in RedBox? NOPE! Crap from Will Ferrel? Yup! -- plenty.

I've never had a video store account anywhere, and as I type this the clock is ticking on my 20s.

Not that I really like that many movies anyway, but I've all but quit playing video games as well. Not that the graphics on pdxradio are better, but a heck of a lot more interactive.

Anyhow, the couple of family members I have that do occasionally watch movies stopped renting at Blockbuster a little over a year ago, in favor of the selection at the local branches of the Multnomah County Public Library. They also recently started going to Movie Madness, which they decided they like a lot better anyway.

I use netflix. Two dvds at a time for about 15 a month.

Ill never set foot inside a rental store again.

I'm so clueless on movie rental places that I have never heard of Redbox.

Like Newflyer we've never had any account at movie rental stores. We've been using the library for older movies mostly to introduce our kids to the classics.

My tax dollars are the real source of my library account.

I have a friend who uses Netflix and he really seems to like it.

I am getting ready to biuld a dedicated PC to hook up to my TV so that I can Hulu and begin using netflix on demand.

If you have never Hulu'd you really need to check it out, especially you Chris, tons of classics on there and it's completely free.

www.hulu.com

Oh, and JT, The Karate Kid is free on Hulu. So are parts II and III.
http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=karate+kid

Yeah Video stores are limited, in 10 years they will be HISTORY!!! Red Box and Netflix is the future of movies, not movie stores. Now Skep does bring up an interesting point. What about the independent low budget movies? When all the video stores close up, where will we find them?

Does netFlix have a good selection of Independant movie titles?? I don't think On Demand does.

Movie Madness can't be beat! If they don't have it, chances are it was never released on home video.

Chris, a Red Box (if you haven't gathered this yet) is a vending machine for DVDs. It's not much bigger than a soda machine. You insert a credit card, pick a movie, it is dispensed, and you pay $1/day for it, assuming you bring it back to the machine the next day by 9PM. Red boxes are in grocery stores and places like McDonalds.

I have seen a few art house/independent films in a Red Box - not many, but I have seen them. In any event, there's no reason at all you can't have an "Indie Red Box" in neighborhoods where people would rent those movies. If it turns out not to be economically viable to rent those movies in a Red Box, then you won't see one - but I'd say the same about Hollywood Video or Blockbuster: they don't rent those movies out unless people rent them, either.

I do think specialty places like Movie Madness and Trilogy in Portland will survive longer anyway. But a Hollywood Video that has 99% mainstream movies isn't any better than a Red Box in my view. In any event, the gaps for independent/art house movie rental can easily be filled by Netflix, pay-per-view, the internet, and the local library.

Our family rarely sits down to watch a movie these days. Mainly we're watching our high school daughter develop her own film/photography career.

We're just not a movie watching family so no matter the deal I doubt we'll get into any of these. But thanks for the info.

FYI-The most TV I watch is when I'm at 24 Hour Fitness while running on the treadmill for 20 minutes.

The Blockbuster and HOllywood video store by my house have both closed down. The Hollywood video is turning into a Panda Express. Speaking of booming buisnesses, those Panda Express are opening up everywhere.

The convergence of the internet and television was predicted long ago. The brains at MIT wrote in their bi-monthly journal Technology Review about 7 or 8 years ago that when bandwidth of 4Mbs was available at the desktop, convergence would begin. I remember that soon thereafter they revised that to 5Mbs. Keep in mind that broadband had a small penetration at the time, mostly DSL at 1.5Mbs and very little cable modem presence. As broadband flourished, compression gimmicks emerged and movie owners (i.e. studios and film giants and a few large firms focused on buying up rights to old movies) kept pursuing some way to convince consumers that waiting four hours to download a 110 minute movie was "cutting edge." There was a lot of posturing and positioning to be in the right place at the right time when broadband technology would make these large downloads more transparent to an end user. Clearly, we all remember how painful long downloads were on dial-up, often taking 3 or 4 sessions to get all the pieces for some critical upgrade to your OS or specific application. My point here is that as technology evolves, certain approaches to the distribution of entertainment go through changes that are hard to evaluate if you only look at a snapshot in time.

Fast forward to the present, and it becomes quite clear that in the case of movie access/rental, there is currently a raging battle for the consumer dollar. Set aside the public library as a source of media because although it has the best price (essentially free if you don't count your time to retrieve/return) it is lacking in immediacy. Waiting lists can be long for new or popular titles. The real competition is between downloading and physical rental via postal means. These two have almost knocked the conventional movie store out of the box. Sure, if you're lucky enough to have Movie Madness or an equivalent in your city, you can generally get anything you want immediately. This option will continue to thrive, but the larger majority of access will eventually swing to downloading. Just like music is doing. Physical media is slowly fading. Look at the products from Kodak and Polaroid that have been discontinued. Hollywood is transitioning to solid state recording. Red cameras and hard drives. Soon, satellite delivery to your local 8 plex will be standard. If you don't care about a huge screen and 30" woofers, you will download first run movies after the grace period so the theaters can make a buck for a few weeks. Consumers won't have a physical media choice because no one will make the discs. I don't know nor really have an opinion on any of this, but if you look at any of the delivery systems discussed, it only makes sense that paying rent for a store front (or a warehouse), buying thousands of titles for the shelves, and then trying to compete with downloads as broadband service becomes cheaper and ubiquitous, is not a winning bet.

Justin_timberfake: The Blockbuster and HOllywood video store by my house have both closed down. The Hollywood video is turning into a Panda Express. Speaking of booming buisnesses, those Panda Express are opening up everywhere.

Yep - Peterkort Square. I work out at the Bally's there 2X a week.

The orange chicken is deadly, yet so yummy.

"Seriously, who is dumb enough to go spend 4 dollars on A new Release DVD at Hollywood video, when you can get the exact same DVD at Redbox for one dollar???"

Because Justin, it's way cheaper (and more fun) to rent a copy of a new-release film on DVD Video for $4 at Blockbuster, pop it into the computer, extract and decrypt it in DVD Shrink, then record it on DVD+R(DL) for 99 cents more than it is to just buy it at Suncoast for $20 or more!

Besides, this serves as a rather decent fuck-you to big media (MPA*, RIA*, studios, record labels etc.) whose suits and talking heads would rather we didn't engage in such "revolutionary activities" like this. It helps keep Amerika free. A little anarchy never hurt anyone, you know........ ;o)


Of course, the "way cheaper" argument could be had about any of the "rainbow boxes" as well, but by their very nature they lack the "human" aspect of a video store. Being the luddite that I tend to be from time to time, the video store is what I was raised with. It's what I am used to. You take away the social aspect of it (dealing with real human beings) and replace it with machines, the whole thing will be dehumanised and destroyed.

Given my experiences dealing with human beings in video stores, I'd much rather deal with machines.

Using DVD Shrink (or DVD Fab) is not sticking your finger in the eye of big media. Rather it's a gesture of good will toward the video rental store, by making their legal archival backup copy without charge, and storing it off site without charge! ;)

Doing box sets is the ultimate good will gesture.

I also forgot to mention that I can stream alot of movies from netflis for free on my computer as well as my xbox 360.

Thats something the video store dont allow.

Using DVD Shrink

When you steal, you're also pooping on the indie filmmaker. So, thanks for the poop guys.

Those that can't create, steal.

It's infringement, BTW.

And, using it to make archives, trans-coded copies for use on your iPod, computer, loaners (No way am I losing masters) and kid copies is just fine!

Frankly, I prefer to just ignore most big media these days. If they are going to make ownership and enjoyment of their productions that damn onerous, I can very easily find other things to do!

Best way to support the indie filmmaker is to buy the film directly from those who offer it direct to the public. That diminishes the labels, gives the buyer a warm fuzzy about actually supporting the art, and the film maker can then leverage the purchase info to do value adds.

Buying ANYTHING from a large corporate label isn't doing anything significant for any artist.

--->And I do buy direct when I can. Pay full price too. It's easy to just ignore the rest of it, or borrow 'n watch, rinse, repeat!

First rental stores then movie theaters!

Nope Movie theaters are going NOWHERE TRIXTER!

Infact the Oregonian just had an article about movie theaters and how ticket sales are actually up.

People are trying to escape for a few hours, get their mind off the shitty economy.

Movie theaters already saw their big collapse with the advent of television in the 1950s. Many of the beautiful old movie palaces in America are gone. I have a friend who is a theater manager now who has worked in Portland since the early 1960s, and he remembers where they all were.

But people still need an escape, the "movie experience." No matter how large your new Plasma TV is, it's still not a movie theater, a night out away from home, etc. Think about kids: they don't want to stay at home and watch a movie - they want to go out with their friends.

Do these redbox vending machines rent BluRay discs yet?

I doubt the Redbox machines and their competitors (I think there is at least one other company with the same concept) are dishing out BluRay discs yet. I'm sure they have to go with where the established customer base is, to maximize the utilization of that machine that can hold only so many discs at one time. They don't want the thing half full of unrented disks. And I'm sure BluRay isn't there yet. Will be someday, though, of course.

Okay, ignorance again. I have no idea what BluRay is? Another media format for movies?

I must be going into the wrong stores these days.

BluRay is the next generation of DVD that uses a shorter wavelength laser so it can put 5-6X the information on the same sized disk. Used for Hi Def movies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray

Thanks Jr. Always something to learn.

It's upward compatible.

Ah there's my problem. I'm in a downward non-compatible state.

Actually, Blu-ray only puts 3x the amount of data on a standard size optical disc if you consider the last stage of DVD development is DVD-18 with 17GB on a double sided four layer disc. Blu-ray will probably develop the same way.

Although the Blu-ray Disc specification has been finalized, engineers continue working to advance the technology. Quad-layer (100 GB) discs have been demonstrated on a drive with modified optics (TDK version) and standard unaltered optics ("Hitachi used a standard drive.").[84][85] Hitachi stated that such a disc could be used to store 7 hours of 32 Mbit/s video (HDTV) or 3.5 hours of 64 Mbit/s video (Cinema 4K). In August 2006, TDK announced that they have created a working experimental Blu-ray Disc capable of holding 200 GB of data on a single side, using six 33 GB data layers.[86]
Also behind closed doors at CES 2007, Ritek revealed that they had successfully developed a High Definition optical disc process that extends the disc capacity to 10 layers. That increases the capacity of the discs to 250 GB. However, they noted that the major obstacle is that current reader and writer technology does not support the additional layers.[87]
JVC has developed a three-layer technology that allows putting both standard-definition DVD data and HD data on a BD/DVD combo. If successfully commercialized, this would enable the consumer to purchase a disc which could be played on current DVD players, and reveal its HD version when played on a new BD player.[88] The first 'hybrid' Blu-Ray/DVD combo is announced to be released February 18. The Japanese optical disc manufacturer Infinity has announced this. 'Code Blue' will feature four hybrid discs, which feature a single Blu-ray layer (25GB) and two DVD layers (9 GB) on the same side of the disc. [89]
In January 2007, Hitachi showcased a 100 GB Blu-ray Disc, which consists of four layers containing 25 GB each.[90] Unlike TDK and Panasonic's 100 GB discs, they claim this disc is readable on standard Blu-ray Disc drives that are currently in circulation, and it is believed that a firmware update is the only requirement to make it readable to current players and drives.[91]
In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray disc, which contains 16 data layers, 25 GB each, and will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. A planned launch is in the 2009-2010 time frame for ROM and 2010-2013 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray disc as soon as 2013.[92].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Movie theaters are going NOWHERE TRIXTER!

Okay...

Well Justin, I haven't seen any Moyer Cinemas or Luxury Theatres still operating around here in a *really* long time.......