Blockbuster files for bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

Blockbuster files for bankruptcy

reuters.com

81 pointscryptoz72 comments

Not to dance on someone's grave but to me this is fantastic news. When Blockbuster was the dominate player, they were quite the nasty bully. Ridiculously high late fees that were very hard to avoid. Half the time you'd return the DVD on time, but the employees wouldn't inventory it until it was too late and still hit you with a fee. A fee which they were extremely reluctant to remove. Their customer service was downright awful. Before Netflix came around I responded by stopping shopping at Blockbuster altogether and just started buying my own movies. Even at $20+ a pop, it was still more convenient and less stress filled than hoping Blockbuster would show you some mercy.

I'm very glad to see the market can respond and a new player can come in with a better business model and treat customers better, and win. It's reassuring.

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm glad that Netflix and RedBox have torn Blockbuster apart. I knew this day would happen, and I don't want to wish any employees any financial hardship, but the company itself deserves this.

I was insanely happy when all of the "Movie Gallerys" went out of business in my area. Fist pumping and the whole nine yards. Few businesses treat their customers as terribly as video rental stores. Multiple times, I had to physically lead their employees to the video I had returned, weeks earlier, to prove that the $89 (or whatever ridiculously high) late fee was bull$#!*. Dying in a fire is too good for these stores because then then could collect the insurance. :)

video stores suck, but to say few stores treat their customers as terribly is to not be giving as much credit to gym memberships as they are owed.

I don't think video stores deserve to die because of their treatment of customers (though I'm too young to have had much experience renting from a brick&mortar store). I think they deserve to die because they refused to innovate as competitors built the infrastructure to overtake them. They scoffed as Netflix and Redbox built brands that would come to dominate the industry, yet their too-little-too-late offerings were not competitive with the newcomers despite having considerably more resources at one point.

I never understood the concept of buying movies. How many times can you watch the same damn thing?

There are a lot of movies that are rent only or even watch it only if I see it on TV. But good movies (for some definition of good) are worth multiple viewings.

I don't know. Sometimes I just like to turn on my favorite movies as background noise. Maybe I'm just weird though.

That's like asking how many times you can read the same damn book.

I don't get it when people find it weird that I will reread some books multiple times. I've read some books once every year or so and even my wife thinks I'm weird. She's a serial book reader (150 books as of now for the year, almost one a day) and will sell them as soon as she reads them, I don't work that way even after she tries to push me into selling some books I just can't.

It's interesting sometimes, how the book seems to change after another reading. But it's probably you that's changed.

Partly, sure. Also, knowing what happens makes it a different experience. No sense of wonder or mystery, more focus on the prose, storytelling ability, etc.

What kind of books does she read, that she can read 150 in a 9 months And when does she read these books? Good Lord! Unless she reads like Kim Peak... a page in like 2 seconds, then I suppose 150 books is well within reason.

She had the summer off before starting a master(in library science no less ;p). She also participated in a few 24 hour reading marathons. She has a blog about stuff she reads: http://talesandtreats.blogspot.com/

Impressive list, definitely. Sounds like you have yourself an interesting lady!

No it's not. Even for fiction, the plot depth of the books I've read multiple times is incomparable to the plot depth of the movies on the all time best selling DVD lists. That is, unless you think that Avatar and Twilight had really deep plots.

After working for hours on end it's nice to unwind by reading a little before going to sleep. If I re-read a book it guarantees that I won't get sucked in wondering what will happen next. Fewer side effects than Ambien anyway.

You can resell them online easily.

I am starting to learn, with our 2 and a half year old daughter, that you can watch the same damn thing many, many times.

Beyond that, I completely agree with you though.

I had to endure The Sound Of Music at least 20 times with my 3-year old son. Now that he is a little older he has moved on to more entertaining fare such as Cars and Shrek. I am dreading the transition to Transformers however.

My older son had a Lion King addiction, so I know what you mean. I was thinking in terms of movies for grown-ups, though.

My older boy was the same way. I still have that freaking movie memorized (and it is one of my least favorite Disney movies).

I am surprised, though, by how many times my older kids and my wife can still re-watch the same thing. I think it is comfort with the known; I am much more of a risk taker than they are.

Buying a DVD (especially used) is barely more expensive than renting, and there are all kinds of benefits to owning it, including the ability to watch it over a long period of time, lending it to friends, watching a really good movie multiple times or a second time with friends, etc. Plus you can buy any movie; you're not limited to the crappy mainstream selection of the video store/kiosk. Plus they have value (some of my films are worth more than when I purchased them) so that has to be factored in as well.

Note: I live in an area which doesn't have Netflix, so I'm comparing to renting from a store/kiosk.

If it has any real depth, you'll see things the second time that you didn't see the first. If it's actually good, the same will hold true over and over. There are folks out there who watch "The Usual Suspects" in groups, regularly, picking up on details they'd missed the first fifteen times. I could watch "Ergo Proxy", "Eerie Indiana", TV-form of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", "Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex", "The Usual Suspects" or "Cypher" a dozen more times, and be suprised each time by picking up on new pieces of detail or references.

I have an extremely small movie collection, having been a Netflix subscriber for years, but I collect movies that I would want to share with other people.

I barely ever watch a movie twice, but I can watch it an indefinite number of times as long as there's at least one person in the group who hasn't seen it.

Don't underestimate the ability to put a physical object on a shelf, so as to broadcast your identity: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/08/08/the_book_stalke...

So many times! With really great movies, they get better every time I watch them. It's A Wonderful Life, The Third Man, Casablanca, and The Godfather, to name a few. Of course I want to see them again. They may not change, but I see new things and understand them more completely every time I watch them. Like all great art, good movies deserve multiple viewings. I love rereading good books for the same reason. I can't imagine only looking at a statue like the Laocoön just once, why would I feel different about a film?

Same thing, but buying books.

A movie is not worth watching if it is not worth watching many times.

EDIT: If you think about Shakespeare's tragedies, they are being played by different acting companies for centuries.

I agree but the creditors are the ones getting screwed now because of the way Blockbuster ran its business.

I found that thanks to Blockbuster's late fees (I was habitually unable to return movies on time) I would spend at least $25 a month, and in exchange I usually was able to watch two movies.

Sometimes I'd rent a movie and never even have time to watch it. I'd end up bringing it back a week later, unwatched, and have to pay another ten bucks in late fees on it because I sat on it too long.

I switched to Netflix 7 years ago and never looked back. I still have DVDs sitting around that I haven't watched yet, in spite of them having been mailed to me 2 weeks ago. I do watch a streaming title two or three nights a week. For all that I pay way less than I ever did to Blockbuster.

Netflix is probably making tons of money off me since I am so slow to mail back movies, and yet I'm totally happy with the service I'm getting and feel it's worth the price I pay.

For a little perspective: Blockbuster's biggest competitor in the western US, Hollywood Video, had much worse late fees. They wanted to charge my mom something like $100 for a video she kept a few days over. (It's been more than a decade since then, so I don't remember the precise details, but I do remember it was several times the purchase price of the movie.)

It's of note that Hollywood Video was bought by Movie Gallery, and Movie Gallery went out of business earlier this year.

I'm very glad to see the market can respond and a new player can come in

I would suggest it is not quite "the market". It would have been the market had a competitor arrived before the technological advancement of the internet. As that was not the case, it is rather, or it should rather be a praise to the advancement of technology, and quite a condemning example of "the market".

Redbox would have killed them if Netflix hadn't. There are always at least a couple of people in line at the tiny Redbox kiosk in my local grocery store. At some point it occurred to me that that little kiosk was bringing in pretty much the same gross revenue as a 10,000-square-foot retail store, and that's when it really sunk in that video rental stores were history.

Classic exchange re late fees

http://www.27bslash6.com/blockbuster.html

And some background on the one big mistake that hastened their death by years:

http://www.slate.com/id/2133995/

From the article you posted:

"Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere $50 million, instead entering a disastrous home-delivery deal with Enron."

Wow...

I'm so glad they didn't sell to blockbuster! I wish more companies would stick with it and not sell to their competitors so early on.

This is a financial event, not an operational one. The debt holders will now own the company and operations will continue on whatever trend is set. There is no new technology trend in this story.

The businesses lesson is that Blockbuster was once an extremely hot startup, then it became a big company able to issue large amounts of debt at favorable rates. And now this.

Innovation destroys some businesses as it creates others. It can take a while though.

Having worked at Netflix for 2 years (a fantastic performance driven culture - at least 2 years back), I can say I am happy for them! Netflix vs BB is one of the more fantastic David Vs Goliath stories of recent times!:)

I wouldn't go long on Barnes & Noble or Borders either.

Well, Borders in the UK went bankrupt a year ago, but I don't think bookshops are going to go away any time soon.

When I buy a book, either I want a specific book (in which case Amazon is the most convenient way of getting it) or I want a book on a particular subject, but I don't know which book I want. In a book store, I can easily and conveniently browse several books, and decide which I like the best -- this is harder online.

i kinda feel the opposite way, in the bookstore you base everything on the cover/thumbing through it...with Amazon you can actually read customer reviews and see if the book is worth it.

I really think Amazon is going to rule them all. I recently received a Barnes & Noble gift card and it wasn't until I tried to use it online that I realized how reliant I had become on Amazon simply having everything . B&N has a more limited selection, more stuff is "ships in 2 weeks" as opposed to Amazon's "ships in 24 hours" and their recommendations are useless.

As a brick&mortar store, I love B&N even though the closest one is half hour away (and do I ever miss browsing the 17th st one in NYC after work!!), but I'm never going to buy online from them again.

It would be a sad day if you couldn't go to a local bookstore and randomly browse/ buy books. Not that I'm against ebooks or online purchasing of physical books as well as bookshops.

I'm really going to miss them. My closest Borders has looked like it's either about to remodel or close since January, with big empty spaces of damaged carpet.

I wish someone would start a chain of places to just sit and work. Sure, stick in a small selection of books, gadgets, and I guess some light food and drinks if you need to, but make the place primarily about comfortable tables and chairs plus wifi and I'd gladly pay for it.

Definitely agreed. I think physical books are a losing proposition for a variety of reasons, but for me, there's nowhere better than a good bookstore -- be it a large chain or a knowledgeably-staffed local -- to unwind for an hour or three. I'll be sad to see them go.

On the bright side, being the believer in markets that I am, I'm reasonably confident that something else will pop up to occupy that niche. I have no idea what it could be, but people rarely do.

Barnes & Noble and Borders aren't "local" bookstores. They already put most of the local bookstores out of business. Now it's their turn to get run out of business. Right now I can't imagine someone running Amazon out of business, but I'm sure the day will come.

I guess it's possible once those stores are run out of business and smaller operators can fill the need again for a niche space.

My favorite thing to do when visiting the US is to get lost in Borders and BN stores for hours.

Not a fan of blockbuster been using Netflix for a long time (I did jump ship to blockbusters online service temporarily when it first came out - the incentives were too good).

To get nostalgic for a second, I will miss the experience of visiting the movie rental stores. The excitement was palpable as a kid - walking the rows, looking at all the movie covers, hoping that Dad would let me rent a game, etc.

The social experience of walking around with other strangers, looking for the entertainment of the evening...there was something fun and special about it that Netflix will never capture.

...the convenience of netflix trumps that though ;-)

Does anyone else find it interesting that they plan to restructure with the intention of keeping ~3000 brick & mortar stores? Then they will try to re-enter the ring and compete with the same digital, by-mail, on-demand, and kiosk players that squeezed them out in the first place.

I feel like they would need to do an impressive reinvention of space use or turn their real estate inventory into a revenue stream instead of the bloated cost that is ends up being.

In 1998 they tried to charge me for a late fee which I thought was not correct. So, in a long line on Friday night at Blockbuster, I asked the employee for the scissors where I promptly cut the card up and left it for them on the counter. I never went back and was happier shopping elsewhere. Then Netflix came around and I've been loyal to them ever since.

Losing customers by overcharging doesn't make for a good long-term strategy.

I'm really really going to take that dusty old Blockbuster card out of my wallet one of these days....

You don't need it, even if you do ever go back to a Blockbuster. You can just show them your ID.

I just got an email from NCR telling me not to worry about Blockbuster Express, that it is wholly owned by NCR, and will continue serving videos for a while. So if NCR owned the express kiosks, wtf did blockbuster own that was still valuable?

Blockbuster is sort of like 7-11. IIRC, most of the stores are franchisees. NCR was probably just using Blockbuster's name and bargaining position with the studios on the price of movies.

I used to call them "Ballbuster" due to their late fee policy. They were worse than taking out a loan from the the mafia, and eventually I started to avoid them in favor of Netflix where I could return the DVD when it was convient for me.

Congratulations, Netflix!

Netflix is one of my favorite things in the world. I've been using it since I was something like 11 years old.

I've still never had to purchase a cable subscription.

Blockbuster Canada is unaffected by the U.S. bankruptcy and is still financially stable

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100923/bankruptcy-protect...

I wonder how the US and Canada businesses diverged, maybe less competition in Canada.

There's no Hulu in Canada. Until this week (or was it last week?) there was no Netflix either. Now that we have netflix, I doubt Blockbuster Canada has long to live.

You might not believe it, but Canada is way behind the USA when it comes to the Internet, media, movies, mobile communication, and all of that. As we slowly catch up, traditional stores like Blockbuster will fail.

But is not Canada who is behind. Media producers are way behind the Internet in general.

It's definitely Canada that's behind.

Sure, the media producers are behind but so is everything else. It's recently been decided by the CRTC a few months ago that Bell will be allowed to apply metered billing for their wholesale resellers. Those were the last companies that would offer unlimited internet packages. Once this finally gets applied there will be no way, anywhere in Canada, to get a consumer-level Internet connection that does not have a bandwidth cap. Insane.

And there are other examples too. Why do all American internet stores need to create a whole separate store (amazon.ca, newegg.ca) before they sell to Canada? Because of Canadian laws and regulations. There's a LOT of reform needed in the Canadian technological sector if we're ever going to catch up to the rest of the world. Right now we're behind and only getting further.

Netflix arrived in Canada yesterday - but their selection is terrible.

The most entertaining thing about them is their suggestions:

Type in say "Sherlock Holmes" and it says - we don't have that but you might like "Miss Marple investigates", then underneath it says we don't have "Shrek" but you might like "cats and dogs - the rip off TV series".

So it somehow matches Sherlock with Shrek - then it actually suggests movies they don't stock - the whole thing is like the monty python (which they don't stock) cheese shop sketch

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

A blockbuster employee once stole some dvds I returned, and destroyed my credit.

To this news, I sing, "We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn!".

What's funny is that they just recently entered into a partnership agreement with NCR to buy up DVDplay and replaced all the newer, more compact, and better designed DVDplay boxes with crappier, buggier, and bulkier Blockbuster boxes.

So their copycat of Redbox sucked. Their copycat of GameStop in-store video game sections sucked. Their copycat of Netflix sucked. It's like watching a kid trying too hard to become an adult. We're post-Sharper Image now, B&Ms: do something meaningful.

What's wrong with their copycat of Netflix? I was a subscriber for the past few years until recently, and never had a problem. It was actually cheaper than Netflix for me, blu-rays were included for free, and I got 5 in-store trades a month for spur-of-the-moment selections. Perhaps their collection is a bit smaller, but it's definitely big enough for most people. It rarely disappointed me, and I have film friends recommending esoteric movies for me.

Outside of the fact that Blockbuster was often not a very nice company: did it really have to turn out this way? I think it didn't have to end in bankruptcy. Someone will eventually write a whole screed about missed opportunities (e.g. expanding beyond movies, early strong internet presence) and the reasons BB management missed them (stuck in the '80s?). But I'm sure a smarter team would have capitalized on the future instead of ignoring it.

Well it hasn't ended, they can still come out of this but they will never be the pre-Netflix BB.

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