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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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 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

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

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