Do You Miss The Rental Store Experience?

There's a Family Video in my area. It's like Blockbuster, but actually better. You can rent movies, buy movies, rent video games, buy video games, and you can order pizza through a window into the neighboring building. It's a cool place.

yep, it's time that you might discover the hidden gems and chance to explore the unexpected. And, many times, fooled by the cover Chat with the staff about latest hits, sometimes got really good recommendations (sometimes got really weird one). Yeah, that's some experience I missed.

Not really, i hardly every used them when they were around anyway.

Nah. Now I can sit on my couch for an hour scrolling on a tablet while deciding what to watch instead of walking the same 10 aisles for an equal amount of time.

I miss it. Hollywood video was preferable to Blockbuster Video (at least in my neighborhood). The staff was mostly well versed in film and made mostly good recommendations. I also miss browsing the older films and picking up something that I missed or didn't know anything about. Usually I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes not. It was a good experience though. I find that Netflix doesn't offer too many older films. Amazon Prime has a large selection but it's tough paying a membership fee AND paying $3.99 for a film (more or less). The free films are sometimes good, but again, the selection isn't all that great.

I do remember one of the Hollywood Video guys recommending "The Wackness" saying it was one of the funniest films he'd ever seen. We rented it on his recommendation and thought it was a very sad film. Not sure why he thought it was so funny. That was one of the few times the recommendations were way off.

I don't exactly miss it, but I'm nostalgic for it, if that makes sense.


I loved occasionally finding an old forgotten title that wasn't available to buy new anymore.

I use to miss it but not anymore. It's just so much easier the new way and you have access to tens of thousands of movies.

Sometimes I do. I grew up in a very rural area, and my local Blockbuster was pretty much my only connection to the entire world of pop culture. Well that and the local library. Every Friday or Saturday I'd go to Blockbuster and get a movie, or 3-5 movies if it was a special occasion.

I miss the time spent choosing, I would literally take 45 minutes-1 hour choosing 1 movie. It was an important choice. The guy who usually had the Fri/Sat shift was pretty cool, he gave me some good recommendations. As I grew up, some of my friends from school got jobs there, and after closing time on Friday they'd let me join them to watch the latest movies in the backroom. Blockbuster is part of an entire experience that I miss, the Friday routine after a week of school: Getting lots of junk food, getting a movie, then getting home and gorging on fatty food whilst enjoying a movie. Thank god I only did that once a week.

On the other hand, their prices were ridiculous, even at the time, but they had a complete monopoly in my area, so there was no real choice for movie/video game fans. I actually do much the same thing on Netflix now, I spend a long time deciding on what to watch, but I did prefer touching the tapes/DVD's and looking at the boxes. I actually feel really bad for the guy who owned my local store, he'd been in charge for over 20 years by the time it closed.