Blockbuster To Close Remaining US Locations 419
UnknowingFool writes "Blockbuster announced that it will close its remaining 300 U.S. locations by January and discontinue the DVD by mail service. Before being bought out by Dish, the chain was slowly closing locations. Dish's CEO said, 'This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.' From an all-time high of 9,000 locations in 2004, the chain has fallen on hard times and had emerged from bankruptcy in 2011."
Re:Ding dong the witch is dead! (Score:4, Informative)
nonsense, they were success in early 80s. that business model was what every VHS shop had, except BlockBuster's rates were lower, they had more of the popular movies and the fine was nominal.
Re:does everyone REALLY have IP-connected TV? (Score:4, Informative)
IP is not the reason why BB died.
Netflix was hammering it from above with a deeper catalog and a reasonable price structure. Redbox was hammering it from below offering cheaper rentals on the new releases. That gave BB a very thin environment to live in.
Re:Driving just for video seems unusual (Score:4, Informative)
We'll still drive to get videos from time to time. Of course, when we do this, we're headed to our local library where we rent them for free. (Technically not free since we're paying taxes to support the library, but we'd pay those taxes anyway so it's effectively free.) Our library has a surprisingly good selection and if they don't have what you're looking for, you can request it form another branch.
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
The analog perfection that is VHS. Obviously.
Seriously though, most DVDs and BluRays are absolute shitty encodes. Combine that with low-end equipment and you have overall poor quality with very visible artifacts like the infamous waterfall effect. I almost have a seizure watching Voyager on Netflix. That damn background in the medical bay is a wonderful example of such limitations.
That's what you get with modern digital video formats. It allows for poorer performance and artifacts with lossy compression and non-perfect display software that has no problems fucking a frame or too or going half ass on the decode. Well mastered DVD/BluRay on appropriate equipment does not have this problem though. Unfortunately for most you are not going to find that at Walmart.
So when you compare a DVD version against a VHS it's easy to see the lack of digital artifacts as an "improvement". Fuck. Compare it to LaserDisc? No competition at all. LaserDisc is still unreal compared to DVD. It took BluRay on high end equipment to finally beat LaserDisc. Stats may say otherwise, but real world performance is the best metric.
Tl;DR : Not all DVD/BluRay masters are the same and the low end makes VHS look good by comparison.