'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it.<p>In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn&#x27;t find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more &quot;in-line&quot; with today&#x27;s environment.<p>While its not bad in this instance, its just a comedian trying to protect their image. The possibilities in the future are not fun.

As physical media has been replaced with digital I&#x27;ve come to miss those walls filled with books, videos, and records. Stores (and homes) seem much more sanitised without them. You could tell a lot about a person from a glance at the various media items displayed in their home. Given there are a lot of people who buy vinyl records that don&#x27;t own a record player, it seems this feeling is common.

I have fiber internet at my apartment with a mesh network, and I&#x27;ve found myself missing physical media a bit more lately. Inevitably at some point while watching any 4K media. The buffering will fail or speeds just simply drop? and I start getting visibly lower resolution, this really kills the immersion for me.<p>Maybe I just don&#x27;t have the right combination of devices, and&#x2F;or I absolutely need a wired connection. Regardless, I could not stop thinking how having physical media would avoid these drops.

I don&#x27;t miss physical media. Streaming works fine from a technical perspective. What I DO miss is the huge supply of films from all eras, forgotten gems, B-movies, etc.<p>In my part of the world we had Lovefilm where I got rentals delivered by post. I guess this was the same kind of service Netflix had in the US. The number of titles were just incredible. The number of films I can access today is just a tiny fraction of that. That really is a shame.

I enjoy physical media but not the finding space for it part. Somehow stuff accumulates over time and if you&#x27;ve got 100 DVDs it is a lot of space that you may not actively be using. That being said, I don&#x27;t have a huge living space so that would contribute.

I borrow DVDs from the library. Great selection.

DVDs are great. The only downside is the obnoxious trailers and loading screens they make you sit through. Often I can start playing a movie on Netflix faster than when I possess a physical copy of that media. Which is crazy when you think about it.

This article [0] touches on it but it was unforgettable to wander around a NYC video rental store in the early 90s _with the whole neighborhood_.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ilovetheupperwestside.com&#x2F;be-kind-rewind-the-days-of-video-rental-shops-on-the-uws&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ilovetheupperwestside.com&#x2F;be-kind-rewind-the-days-of...</a>

I loved my video store, $1 for a day. Not a binge watcher, so this was good enough for me.

I live in Bristol, so I&#x27;m not far from 20th Century Flicks (featured in the article).<p>They have some things I&#x27;d like to rent (and that are hard to find elsewhere), but ultimately I&#x27;m still put off by the prospect of having to pay late fees!

Rental stores were great, except for the late fees. Many local rentals had good collections of older movies and TV series. They are simply non-existent in the streaming world.

I loved Scarecrow Video in Seattle when I was in the U district.

Long live <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moviemadness.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moviemadness.org&#x2F;</a><p>All of the movies, none of the bullshit of streaming. I watch about two to three movies a week, that’s all my TV time. Two weekend trips a month to MM takes care of all my video needs. I guess I’m missing out on streaming specific content, but I don’t care.