re: Kids don't know the struggle, that was portable music before mp3 and streaming

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I never saw cable boxes for rent. But I do remember when Video stores first came out the first thing you'd do when you walked in the door was make sure they still had VCR's available for rent before you went and picked out your movies.

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My job in college...so say from 90-94 or so? Alfalfa Video in Lafayette. We still had video players for rent under the counter, but it was pretty rare that we had to rent any. We did spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince idiots not to leave the god damned tapes on their dashboards because THEY WOULD melt. And yeah...they would... And since this was before what they would call "sell though" meaning the studios were still overcharging for tapes so that people needed to rent videos or pay $75 each for them, when some asshat would melt their tape we'd end up charging them retail...and they'd lose their shite every time.

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I also remember they had a separate room marked "Adults Only" where they kept the X-Rated stuff.

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Oh...we had that section, but surprisingly...we had it right ion the middle of the store! Like...dead center. No curtain...nothing. They were all cable ready type tapes...no XXX stuff, like Cinemax type stuff, but how we never seemed to get outraged customers kind of amazes me. People would absolutely lose their minds today if that was the case...