re: Would you say the video rental business had about a 25 yr run?

I remember we had a mom n' pop video rental store before Blockbuster cornered the market. On the right side of the store were Betamax rentals and on the left side were VHS. There was an ongoing debate as to which format would succeed. My friends had Betamax but we had VHS and we argued over which was better. Then one day we went to the store and the right side was being dismantled and replaced with VHS. Ha, ha, ha...victory was mine.

We had a place called Movie World in Crowley that did $1 new releases every Wednesday. This was in 2004 ish and just learned how to copy and burn DVDs. I would go first thing every Wednesday morning, rent 15 movies, head to work, go home and copy and burn all 15 and bring them back the next day. I did this every week. Didn't matter what movie they had. I rented them all.

The manager started getting suspicious so they ended up putting some metallic bar in the circle to prevent copywrighting but I found ways to bypass that and still rented 15 per week. They ended up putting a 5 movie limit per person after that

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I always wanted to know this. How much did video stores pay for each movie? I know it cost under $5 to rent one. So I guess after.. maybe 5 rentals on a movie its all profit after that?

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Not an easy answer. Back in the 90s with VHS there were really two tiers of pricing. Some titles were priced for mass market sale (think Disney animated or blockbuster hits that lots of people would want to have for their home library) and our cost on those would be $14-17 a tape. These were the ones you would see for sale in Walmart and the like at the same time they were first released to the rental market.

Many others would be “priced for rental” where our cost would be $60-70 a tape with a suggested retail of ~$100. As a video store you would live and die by new release availability so you had to pay that price even though you pretty much knew the title would be released for mass market sale in 3-4 months for about $20.

Some shops used Rentrak instead of outright buying their tapes. Rentrak was a revenue sharing model where you paid a certain amount for each tape and then had to split the rental revenue with Rentrak. This required the shop to have a POS system that Rentrak could connect directly to so many mom and pops never had access to this option, and those that did had agreements much less favorable than those negotiated by Blockbuster.

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ETA: isn’t there still that one Blockbuster Video going in like Oregon or whatever

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I thought there was another one hanging on in Alaska, also?

This is Videodrome in the Virginia Highland neighborhood of Atlanta.

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I think it’s in Alaska. Niche market due to lack of good internet for streaming

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It's in Bend, Oregon, and it makes the vast majority of its revenue on merchandise.

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Some shops used Rentrak instead of outright buying their tapes. Rentrak was a revenue sharing model where you paid a certain amount for each tape and then had to split the rental revenue with Rentrak. This required the shop to have a POS system that Rentrak could connect directly to so many mom and pops never had access to this option, and those that did had agreements much less favorable than those negotiated by Blockbuster.

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That's interest.

Where I lived, smaller town.. There were 3 or 4 different mom and pop movie rental places and they all were open for years until Blockbuster bought out one of them. Once blockbuster took over, the other places shut down within 2 years. I am guess Blockbuster used Rentrak or something similar? They had more copies of popular movies & video games so obviously they grew their customer base really quick.

What about adult movies.. Porn. I remember the mom and pop places all had a section with adult movies, I remember one having its own room with them, but then when blockbuster took over they either didn't have them or if they did it wasn't many. Did the adult films operate the same?

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I can remember renting video game systems. It was this big ol briefcase and everything was stamped and labeled. And then god forbid if you forgot to return at game or couldn't find it.

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Fun little fact on video game rentals…

When video game rentals started there was no reverse compensation model for the video game manufacturers. Without this some video game manufacturers like Nintendo did not want video games to be rented and wanted to sue to stop it. So they did. So as the case progresses in discovery, Nintendo found the loop hole to exploit. Rental stores were making Xerox copies of the game rule or guide books. Armed with this, it was easy to setup reverse compensation deals so they got a piece of the pie otherwise the rental stores could be sued for copyright infringement on those copies of the rule books.

Was it over when it changed from vhs to DVD and DVD to blu-ray? No.

Its still not over. The delivery method has just changed. Between Amazon prime, Netflix, hulu etc, one can basically watch any movie ever made without leaving the house.

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I am guess Blockbuster used Rentrak or something similar? They had more copies of popular movies & video games so obviously they grew their customer base really quick.

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Yes, Blockbuster used this type of arrangement. The differentiator was their upfront cost per tape was about half of what a mom and pop could get through Rentrak and a quarter of what the mom and pop would pay to buy the tape outright. That is how Blockbuster could put so many copies of new releases on the shelf which drove traffic and ultimately killed the smaller operators.

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What about adult movies.. Porn. I remember the mom and pop places all had a section with adult movies, I remember one having its own room with them, but then when blockbuster took over they either didn't have them or if they did it wasn't many. Did the adult films operate the same?

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We didn’t have hardcore porn in our shop but we did have softcore. With either the business was not driven by new releases; it was more about shelf appeal of the box art. These we would buy outright with softcore being about $20 a tape. Hardcore tapes could be had for even less. The great thing with these is that these would continue to rent regularly for years and the customer renting these would usually not leave empty handed unlike the new releases driven customer that would go elsewhere if the title they wanted was not in stock.

Correct that Blockbuster didn’t do porn. No hardcore or softcore (Playboy, etc.). The closest they would do was erotic thrillers but they would only do the R-rated versions vs. the unrated versions that showed more skin that most of the mom and pops would do.