>>220939372
it's like you know, whatever

>>220939372
Just like watching them on netflix but you had to drive to the store in between.

>>220939372
Was she high?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpTTrP-srRM

>>220939372
Like going to the library but louder

>>220939372
It was an actual event. Friday nights were spent at a movie rental place and picking out 2-3 movies you were gonna watch with the family or friends over the weekend. Very comfy.

>>220939372
I was going to post a long explanation, but I have to go return some video tapes.

Fun every weekend, but you had to go your local mom and pop joint for pure joy.
Fuck Blockbuster.

>>220939413
high on life
RIP

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>>220939372
https://youtu.be/3ASEnaDI7ys

>>220939422
it was fucking comfy. they had games too. we'd always get a Playstation game also

>>220939438
Better rewind those

Crazy how she was considered "sickly" skinny yet she just looks like a normal hot girl

>>220939372
she was not attractive in Clueless
Hot everywhere else but that one movie had her looking mid

>>220939372
I can tell you what fucking high school girls that work at blockbuster is like

Butterscotch yo

>>220939372
>Go in
>Everything you want is out
>Nothing is where it should be
>Smells like ass

>>220939372
>dad takes you to the store
>lets you peak behind the curtain at THOSE movies
>lets you rent horror / action
>if you've kept your grades up an n64 game
>buys you a candy

>mom takes you to movie place
>laughs at you when you try and sneak a peak behind the curtain
>rents two different Jackie Chan movies
>lets you rent an N64 game
>buys a candy for herself and two for her special boy

>go home and make homemade pizza with a Bobili crust

It was a good time. I always got raisinettes.

I used to unscrew the cases and switch reels on video tapes before returning them. It's pretty easy to do.

>>220939413
Brittany-chan, my chair is rattling on its own!

>>220939372
Y’know how nowadays you might have to look thru a few different streaming apps to find the movie you want to watch? And if they’re not available there breaking down and renting it on Amazon or Apple? Imagine if instead of just pressing buttons on your couch you had to drive to different stores. And imagine when you’re breaking down and renting it on Amazon or Apple you’re not actually renting the movie you want to watch you’re just picking something so all the trips weren’t a waste.

>>220939372
She would let me rub her ass while she recommended movies to me. Sadly, I had to move out of state for work and never saw her again.

>>220939464
I remember renting a Playstation 1 and Resident Evil 2 and Destruction Derby 2. What a weekend that was. Legendary.

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>>220939372
>walk beneath fluorescent lights
>friday evening humming with traffic and a distant transformer
>rows of plastic cases stretching beyond memory
>no algorithm knows what's on the shelf
>she drifts ahead of me, fingers grazing movie spines
>pauses at a dumb comedy neither of us have seen
>says "this one looks fun" and that is enough
>cashier stamps a date already fading into history
>leave carrying a plastic case like a sacred relic
>outside in the parking lot the sky glows orange
>summer air smells faintly of asphalt/rain
>world feels impossibly large and timeless
>return to a house that no longer exists
>order cheap food using a phone book from a place that shut down decades ago
>watch a movie that I now don't remember at all but remember they day I rented it

Fuck you jews

>>220939514
When I got a PS2, I bought a hard drive and loaded it into the bay in the back, got HD Loader and the Blockbuster gamepass and basically just got free games for a few years.

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>>220939372
in the 80s, when you weren't allowed to do anything fun because all the adults were Christians and against anything new, going to the horror section as a child and looking at the boxes was the greatest act of rebellion you could think of. You'd stay up in bed that night crying about the things you saw, but it made you happy to know there was a bigger world out there where there were cool things, if you could just make it to adulthood

>>220939413
so fucking glad I don't have to watch this kind of dogshit show anymore. Zoomers will never understand the suffering of only having a few dozen tv channels.

>>220939372
It was a lot of fun, especially when you had a fren or 2 over. We'd rent a movie and a vidya, get a pizza, and play the game all night and the next day.

It was a more magical time but we also can't go back. Streaming operates in this weird inbetween zone where things are cheaper but not really not always. I don't even think the selection is really all that different compared to streaming for 99% of streaming users, even though technically what is available for streaming is so much wider than what was at a video store. Even if the infrastructure was still around with physical media loaning, I'm sure it would get minmaxxed and enshitified like everything else nowadays.

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>>220939538

>>220939372
i rented way more games than movies, which is something i actually do miss because nothing really replaced it. you’re just expected to get shit on sale now

>>220939655
>Get stuck at home because sick
>Parents don't have cable
>Literally nothing fucking on during the day to watch on tv that's good

Ended up just watching the news and it was inevitably some random sandshit war happening

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>>220939452
Remember the saloon doors that were in front of the porn corner? I miss those.

>>220939696
Games now are so short that renting them would be basically buying and returning them.

>>220939372
Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOmgVgrQi_0

>>220939696
it really sucks because come late 6th/7th gen some places let you rent GOTY edition discs and those would have DLC on them so you could essentially "buy" DLC for a bunch of games for like $5 and just install the game you already own a day one copy of and get all the DLC

Did that for Borderlands, Skyrim and Fallout 3 was great

>>220939422
We rented them at the grocery store so there was very little ceremony.

>>220939606
This. Satanic panic was the gayest fucking thing to live through. You can still see aftershocks of it happening even today but at least now they say it on social media where you can openly call them retards instead of it being on national TV with impunity.

>>220939738
>it REALLY sucks because I can't steal anymore!
spiritually black

>>220939372
You'd grab the new movie pretty quick, and then spend the rest of your time looking through everything else before frantically picking something last second whenever everyone else was ready to go.

>>220939766
God I miss those little grocery store bodegas. They only had like 3 copies of anything and the attendant was “just make sure to bring it back next week hun”

>>220939413
what the fuck is so fucking funny?

>>220939372
Before you could instantly stream every tv and movie show ever made in the comfort of your own bedroom, you appreciated the entertainment value of movies greater. You vibed with them more.

But late fees and rewinding were annoying.

>>220939372
It was the best day.

>>220939372
Nowhere near as great as people try to convince themselves it was.

>>220939372
I miss it so much bros. Better selection than streaming, easier to find everything in one place, did not rotate what was available as much as streaming does, encouraged hanging out and spending time with others, etc. It was just fucking better and I don't care what anyone says.

>>220939538
This guy gets it.

>>220939372
It was a fucking chore, I didn't liked it that much compared to current streaming.
Yeah, it was nice to go and read the synopsis but to be honest I was a pleb that only got the mainstream shit, very rarely I ever got a weird one.

Sorry, you're overdue by 3 days sir. That'll be $64 and we've put a restriction on your account.

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>>220940016

it was a lot like scrolling through endless titles on any streaming service. all you have to go buy is the artwork to make your decision

haven't come here for a while, why is every second post formatted like this is reddit now? Did you retarded newfaggots stop policing the boards? No wonder this site is practically dead.

>>220939958
This would be true with porn video rental store we went to in college. That place sucked. The regular ones we went to as kids, those were kino. Great memories

>>220939970
>Better selection than streaming,

This is such a weird thing to larp about.

>>220939372
I remember being in Blockbuster and there was this crazy guy mumbling to himself going up and down the aisle, and as I was looking at a movie to rent, he starts shouting "ONE DAY THESE WILL ALL BE GONE, MOVIES WILL FLY THROUGH THE AIR, THIS PLACE, ALL THESE PLACE, ALL OF THEM GONE. THE WORLD WILL BE CYBERBITES, MOVIES, MONEY, DREAMS, PEOPLE, ALL OF IT, ITS ALL COMING" and he ran down the aisle sticking his arms out so that the movies would all fall on the floor and people were screaming and he ran outside.

I keep thinking about that guy.....was he a time traveller?

>>220939970
>encouraged hanging out and spending time with others
I think that's the element that's missing with modern streaming. Streaming is anti-social by nature. You don't leave your house for it, there's no event viewing, etc. You have to go out of your way to make it not just pure consumption.

>>220939372
The place we usually rented movies from was a mom and pop operation that was pretty comfy. It was a little cramped with tight aisles, but they had pretty good selection and I didn't have any trouble finding stuff. One time we wanted to rent Wizards, and the guy who owned the store warned my dad about how it basically had cartoon nudity but my dad didn't care. I think it was a good guy move by the store owner, although he was probably more thinking about covering his ass and not getting an angry phone call than anything else.

Sadly they had to close down because of a couple different factors. A shelter for drug addicts opened up like a block away, and then we got a Blockbuster and competition was already tough, so they ended up closing. It's too bad because they were the place I liked renting from most out of all the places we had in town - I forget the name of it but we had a much, much bigger video rental place but even though they had more floorspace and it seemed like more selection, the stuff they had seemed mostly old and lame.

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>>220940053
>all you have to go buy is the artwork to make your decision
I'm guessing you were too young to read because reading the info on the back was a huge part of picking out a movie

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>Being a kid and walking through the horror movie section and freaking yourself out by looking at the covers

>>220939372
>drop off the movie, with four hours to spare
>get fucking charged extra
>"oh sorry it must have been in the bin for a while"
>15 fucking minutes, waiting to get the bullshit charges removed, EVERY TIME.
Netflix was literally started by a guy who got sick of dealing with this shit.

>be me 13, go to movie store every friday
>clerk is stoned drop out loser who doesn't pay attention
>rent R rated erotic thrillers and jerk off to prime Denise Richard tits
zoomers will never understand

>>220940099
No larp. There actually was a better selection and if there was anything special you wanted or think they needed, they'd order it for you. You didn't have to go to 15 video stores to find a specific movie usually. Even if you did go to another one, it wasn't far from the other video store. Hell, my small town had three different video rental places.

>>220940210
Netflix did the same thing but you were reliant on the post office not fucking up.

>>220940116
The social aspect was the best part. Movie, takeout from some local place, staying up late to watch all of them, etc. Kids these days don't understand.

>>220939655
>>220939708
KEK @ poorfags. You retarded cunts didn't have Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network? You didn't have a VHS player? You didn't have a PS2 or Gamecube? Really? If I was home from school and nothing good was on Nick or CN (I remember that bullshit Baby Looney Tunes show was on a lot in the mornings), I would usually just flip it to the Gamecube and play some Smash Bros or Metroid Prime or Star Wars Bounty Hunter or whatever else. Lmaoing at your poor lives.

>>220939422
>>220939388
>>220939372

Man this was not my experience. It was always

>take 3 friends to Blockbuster
>everyone arguing about what movie is best/actor is coolest
>couldnt search the internet on flip phone
>drive back with one movie that was a conpromise
>friends yell at me for not having a microwace in 2001
>movie is meh

>>220940210
I miss mail in Netflix. The selection was so much better. How things have fallen from being the place I rented the Dekalog to the slop bucket streaming service

>>220939372
milky coins of sand

>>220940236
Why is there so much open floor? Where the fuck is everything?

>>220940210
Yeah man, I don't really miss it.

Then one time, now as an adult I rented Batman Arkham, the game, and this fucking idiot mongoloid clerk spoiled the fucking ending for me as I was leaving, he said something like "oh that venom joker is super tough uh, watch out"
Fuck that guy, I laughed when blockbuster closed a few months later.

>>220940287
Netflix used to be absolutely amazing. But it was never going to last. All the other companies were always going to leech all its lifeblood at some point. Making original series was the only thing they could do. Too bad they made it the sloppiest kikeshit slopaganda you could possibly imagine.

>>220940301
They bring out the ballpit after lunch.

>>220939372
it sucked. all the good shit was always rented out.

Go to the mom & pop store owned by "that guy" who doesnt ask for ID if you look like you have started shaving so you can rent anything you want from the back room

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>>220939538
What magic could you create in your own life today?

>>220940203
For me it was the American Werewolf in London. Not the cover with the two dudes on it, but the spine with the fucked up Werewolf face mid transformation

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>>220940203
ayyyy

>>220939372
>>220939413
She played a jew in a holocaust film.

>>220940352
Dagon is clearly available. >>220940203

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Living in a time before torrents was a horrible dark age. I would never ever go back. Nostalgiafags are retards and should kill themselves. There are unironically people, probably in this very thread, who long for the days of cable tv, where 1/3 of the runtime was god damned tampon commercials. Literal fucking goycattle.

>>220939372
>>220939413
And fucked a black dude in 8 Mile.

>>220939372
Browsing the aisles was the fun part. Popular movies were usually taken.
Rewinding was not a problem but remembering to return it to the store was.

>>220940203
When I was a kid, these absolutely terrified me, but after 20 years of 4chan and liveleak, it just seems silly.

>>220940445
If you wanted more obscure or older stuff you had to track down those novelty video stores. Blockbuster's range outside of new releases was fairly limited.

You had to pick films based on the cover and reading the back, no checking imdb or rotten tomatoes or posting here for recs. Word of mouth was king.

>>220940445
this but unironically

>>220939655
You could've done anything else. I would have gone outside or read a book instead of watching 99% of what was on tv. Even as a kid I knew it was goyslop except for a few shows. I liked nature docs on animal planet.

>>220939372
Very shameful for porn. Thank god for internet porn.

>>220939832
I must have had a particularly bad one at the grocery store I always went to. All I remember is never finding anything decent and it having a standee thing of Carrot Top from Chairman of the Board forever

>>220939372
People were a lot less selective about what they'd watch. You'd visit with no real movie in mind, browse around, and if nothing particularly good has come out you'd pick up some generic straight to video or horror slop to watch with the family on a Friday night.

>>220940535
I watched so many shitty movies because the cover looked cool.

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>>220939372
>Hastings movie store closing
>rent 50+ dvd’s and PlayStation games for pennies
>never returned them, still have them, nothing happened
Technically I guess I’m still renting them 11 years later.

>>220940644
>People were a lot less selective about what they'd watch.
We were the complete opposite. Very selective then, not so much now

>You'd visit with no real movie in mind, browse around, and
This sounds right but we went to a good store so we always got we always got something good. We were in there a while, we weren't one of those people who hates shopping

>if nothing particularly good has come out you'd pick up some generic straight to video or horror slop to watch with the family on a Friday night.
Oh God what a nightmare. I haven't prayed in a while but you just motivated me to pray for you in pity

>>220939372
It was great because you took a chance on things.
You went into the store, looked at the covers, read the back of the box, and just rented shit and gave it a go.
You ended up watching a lot of crap but you also ended up finding a lot of obscure hidden classics too.
It was great.

Nobody does this anymore.
Everyone reads reviews first, or looks at ratings and decides based on what other people think.
Nobody takes a punt and just tries shit out.
Everyone watches the same shit.

I've taken to watching movies on weekends but choosing them randomly to try and re-create the effect of renting.
I've been doing it for a year or 2 now and i've come across heaps of really cool shit that i would NEVER have found if i was just doing what i used to do (looking at reviews/ratings).
I do it with video games as well.

Anybody that uses the term VHS likely never watched one.

>>220939452
Amen. Blockbuster was fucking rubbish.

>>220940644
So the netflix experience

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>>220940688
Lots of shitty B movies that you’d watch censored at 3:00AM on USA or the Syfy channel.

>>220939372
It was really frightening. Big Steven, at my local Video Ezy would judge both your viewing and snack choices. God forbid you got something he deemed as “too mainstream.” He would get really angry! One day I was walking out with Amelie and raspberry liquorice twists and a berry lime flavoured mineral water, when I really wanted Troy, a blue raspberry slushie and some Doritos, and I just snapped. I didn’t want any of this shit, and he’d still given me lip. Said
“Oh yeah, I remember when this film was fresh on the scene…three and a half years ago. You’d better watch it with subtitles to get all the nuance.”

I decided I was never going back. I saw him again about three years ago, when I was renewing my driver’s license. I didn’t think I’d be scared of him anymore, because I’m 6’2 now, but he still towered over me. He pushed me up against a brick wall and said I was “a coward for giving up on my quest to experience the classic before I died.”

Then he asked if I had ever got into literature. I said sure, I’ve been reading some books. He asked me what I thought of House of Leaves. I had to admit I never heard of it. He just shook his head and said “figures”, then he walked out. A few minutes later the lady behind one of the counters called his name, but he was already gone. I think he was there for me. I think it was a test, and I failed it. I’ve read House of Leaves since, and I have a lot to say about it. But unfortunately Big Steven was already a missing persons case before my copy arrived from Amazon it turns out.

I fucking hated Video Ezy, and Blockbuster was pretty much the same too.

>>220939372
First you gotta talk your parents into driving you. Best to do it while coming home from somewhere, like the local swimming hole or getting food at the hot dog stand that's only open in the summer. You're not getting a rental on a school night and during the school year all your shows are on anyway so you mostly rent in summer when there's nothing on.
Then they drive you over, and you get to look through the boxes. They were all empty of course, so nobody steals them. There's only the one VHS at home so you need to agree as a family what you're getting. If you're getting two tapes then you can disagree, but you do need to work out who watches theirs first.
The guy at the counter takes the box and then goes and gets the actual tape out of the back, then has to enter in your home address into the DOS computer at 10 characters per minute, and make sure you don't have any outstanding tapes that are past due. Eventually you get rung up with the two tapes, the guy sticks them into the box. You hold it in the car, reading the blurb on it and chat away with your family about it all the way home.
A couple days later you bring it back to the shop. The guy takes the tape out of the box and puts it into the rewind machine he has behind the counter, to make sure that you rewound. If you didn't, you're getting charged an extra fee. He clears your rental from the computer and you go home. You don't rent a new one while you're there. You got other stuff going on in your life.
When the little shop we used to go to went out of business, we only went to Blockbuster once or twice after that, then stopped renting tapes altogether. That was the end of my childhood really, when DVDs started to be a thing.

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>>220939372
Pretty cool, I'd discover all types of movies since I'd just walk along the rows and pick a movie based on the cover. Usually the horror section since they always had the most interesting covers, while stuff like comedy or action usually just had the lead actors on the front.

>>220940644
This was one of the best aspects of renting,
Going in and seeing shit on the shelves you didn't know existed, and just renting it and giving it a go.

>>220940837
It was really the only time I ever discovered movies without knowing a single thing about them. I never looked them up before I got there or knew what I wanted to see, I just picked a genre and picked a cool cover. Hit and miss experience obviously but it was always fun.

>>220940848
Not sure how it was for everyone but we'd refer to the player as the VCR and then typically just called the VHS tapes just "tapes" since everyone knew what you meant. Sometimes you'd say VHS too but it was really interchangeable with just saying "tape."

>>220939726
Hell yeah I do!

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>>220940827
I was more into renting N64 games, which was kek-worthy because the cartridges had save files on them, unlike the Playstation which had memory cards. So you would start up the game and there would be 2-3 save files, one would say "PLEASE DON'T DELETE" but you'd have to delete it because there were no open files. Sucks to suck, faggot.

Anyway, I remember renting Ocarina of Time a couple times, and once there was a fully completed save file on there. Felt like such a badass playing that.

>>220940921
I was around for the 90s and "tapes" being name for VHS, as by then most people were using CDs a lot more than cassette (or at least that was the case where I was).

>>220940931
Based. I remember getting pissed off when I'd rent an N64 game and it turned out you needed that expansion pack to play that certain game (it was only Zelda, Donkey Kong 64 and Perfect Dark as I recall).

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>>220940688
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVR0GZWFqA&ra=m
>Neon Maniacs
One of the greatest brain dead 80’s monster movies. Almost better than Killer Clowns From Outer Space.

>>220940976
>Based. I remember getting pissed off when I'd rent an N64 game and it turned out you needed that expansion pack to play that certain game (it was only Zelda, Donkey Kong 64 and Perfect Dark as I recall).
I would've literally chimped out if I sat down to play some vidyakino after soccer practice and that happened to me.

>>220939413
she seemed liked so much fun, rip

>>220940287
I fucking loved mail Netflix. I watched so many old TV shows going through box sets three discs at a time. Ripped them all of course with Handbrake and mailed them back out the next day, then watched at my leisure, which was pretty much one disc per night on average. But that was the original binge experience for me. 4 episodes a night, every night, of so many shows.
Getting movies was cool too but it wasn't as good a value. There was summer I went very deep in certain directors and stuff, or certain genres. The recommendations were actually good then.
>>220940445
We didn't sit there and watch ads, we went to the bathroom, or chatted with our families, or went and made popcorn. It was a social experience. I wasn't even in the room most of the time, just somebody was there watching to call us back when it was time for the show to resume.
>>220940526
It was fun running into your friends from school there during the summers. You'd catch up a bit, maybe end up going home with their family and watching a movie with them instead, or vice versa.

>>220941025
I kind of did once, my mom ended up driving us back to the store to get one of the expansion cards since they did rent them out but didn't know what games needed them. I didn't even know about them until we complained about the issue.

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>>220940766
Found your pic

>>220941098
I missed all that then, the movie rental era for me was '92 all the way until we bought a DVD player. It was so new and interesting that they had one in a glass case near the front of the store to show what the future of movies looked like kek. It was all expensive as shit too as we only actually owned 3 DVDs when DVD players first came out and rented the rest.

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>>220939372
People paid money to own nothing, and they were happy about it. So happy in fact that they are now nostalgic over it.

>>220939372
>The coroner's verdict stated that the cause of death was pneumonia, exacerbated by anemia and addiction to several prescription medications. Five months after her death, her husband, Simon Monjack, died of the same causes.
wt actual eff

>>220941159
I would argue that back then, unless it was a box set of a show you loved or you’d seen it in the cinema already, renting a cheap Tuesday movie was a cheap trial period before buying the dvd.

>>220939483
9/11 truly ruined everything

>>220939483
Peak comfy. Sometimes we'd stop to buy pizza or KFC or something on the way home if it was a brand new movie we'd been waiting for. It makes me sad that I won't get to have adventures like that with my kids.

>>220941159
And nothing's changed in the streaming era

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>>220941159
lmao every single person back then had the dual setup and recorded 2 or 3 movies at a time to SLP tape. it was better than retail

>>220940182
well sure you could do that too and a modern streaming service will offer a trailer or scene. i stand by my statement

>>220940756
>Very selective then
A lot of people were because you were stuck with whatever you rented and were pretty much committed to watching whatever you picked
>>220939452
Some of them had some obscure b-movies. Stuff that's out of print now and aren't on streaming too. There were several and they would directly rent me anything when I was a kid.
>anons would rent Jackie Chan movies to watch this their family
I rented horror, exploitation, cult classics and titty movies and watched them alone

>>220939372
Lexi Belle was her pornalike.

>>220939372
It was better this way. Covers had to draw your eye, the back had to convince you to watch it without giving too much away, choice screen shots of the movie. You had TVs playing trailers for new releases and because you went out of your way to go there you ended up grabbing at least something. Sometimes it was a stinker, but mostly enjoying what you grabbed. Family or friends would each pic something to watch and it was fun to see what others picked. I remember searching for The Thing and it came on a double feature as the second movie, I had little interest in seeing the first movie and fast forward through it, then I saw a giant worm burst out of the ground and eat someone. Rewound that shit and ended up watching and loving Tremors.

>>220941327
I will never forget learning that I could play DVDs on my PlayStation 2 and riding my bike to the local porn store and giving a random creep $50 to buy me a $25 porn DVD and he asked me what I wanted and I said “lots of blowjobs and maybe oil and anal” and he bought me gay porn and laughed as he handed it to me in a black bag and there was nothing I could do about it. That guy was a legend.

>>220940766
My dad had a fuckton of them and just called anything that played tapes a tape player

>>220941453
Playing DVDs was a major selling point for the PS2 when it came out and helped it win the generation

>>220941490
This. The same thing happened with the PS3, it was the cheapest way to get a blu-ray player for the time.

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>>220939413
>superstar
I remember renting that when I was in the military. I watched 15 minutes of it before I turned it off and took it back. Lame tryhard shit.

>>220941490
I got it just to play GTA3 and for a year I didn’t know I could play DVDs on it. I pretty much lost my virginity to the PS2 watching porn movies. Back then it was still dial up internet and you’d have to wait 20 minutes to load a 30 second video.

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>>220939372
I worked at a video store in the 80s and used to hide the new releases under the counter for my friends. It was fun watching boomers seethe when they couldn’t get what they wanted, or catching your teachers trying to rent porn.

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>>220941601
>I don't even know what that is lol. The movie discs were called DVDs?
Bro don't be retarded, DVDs are still sold in stores to this very day and brand new movies still come out on them. You literally cannot miss them.

>>220940445
If it weren't for tcm I wouldn't be on /tv/.

>>220941601
You forgot Beta cassettes, LaserDisc, and Divx. There was a lot of competition with media types during the 80s and 90s.

>>220939766
i re-rented surf ninjas so many times my parents just bought it

>>220939372
it was like this and like that and like this and uh

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>>220941888
Blu-Ray also competed against HD-DVD, that thing was a complete failure. It was even worse since the Xbox 360 still only used DVD and you needed to buy an external player to watch HD-DVD.

>>220940236
>>220940343
thats some creepy backrooms vibes

>>220939805
>instead of it being on national TV
our government is run by the Satanic Panic type of people
>or at least the type who took advantage of it

>>220939372
It was kino as fuck. No niggers to flash mob the place and no faggot Tik Tokers doing retarded NPC dances in public. It was amazing.

>>220941601
Digital Video Disc

>>220939372
I was born in 1990 so I only have faint childhood memories of it before I went full pirate in the mid 2000s, I remember going to Blockbuster with my mom, dad, sister and aunt and just walking aimlessly borednout of my mind while they picked their fucking movies, I wasn't into movies myself, I jist wanted to get back home to play more vidya.

>>220939655
>Zoomers will never understand the suffering of only having a few dozen tv channels.
Yeah, things are so much better now that we have 250 channels, and there isn't a single fucking thing worth watching on any of them.

>>220939655
Less channels was a good thing though, networks had to actually compete and put stuff on TV that was actually worth watching.

>>220941601
>00s music streaming
That didn't really take off until the 2010s, it was a total niche in the 2000s (Spotify itself not even going active until around 2008 or 2009). People still bought music online during the 2000s.

>popular movie is all checked out
>ask guy at register to check return bin
>”you’re in luck anon. Someone must’ve just returned this copy”
Hell yeah

>>220942069
ask your ai friendbot. it will tell you that yes you can do all 3 with the right model

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>>220940445
>live in the 90s/early 2000s
>there's only like 20 TV stations, most of the airtime is garbage filled with infomercials, daytime talk shows and soap operas
>the only shows worth watching are on two days per week from 6pm to 9pm, if you miss them you're fucked. everything else is reruns you've seen before.
>you only know what's going to be airing if you read a literal booklet that gives 1 sentence episode descriptions
>if you live before DVDs you can't even rent/buy physical media TV series to rewatch because a single VHS can only have like 2 episodes of a serial show on it. if you miss the first airing of a show there's no guarantee you'll be able to catch up
>the only music you can listen to is top 100s hits on the radio, your local music store has a bigger selection but if you're into any kind of alternative music they might just have 5-10 CDs in that whole genre
>if you're a normalfag you probably only go to the cinema once or twice a month, if you decide to rent old/recent movies Blockbuster will rape you with late fees. Even your neighbourhood movie rental joint will jew you on rental fees

>>220940236
The world in which I grew up no longer exists.

>>220939422
This. It was a genuine social experience. And you had no idea how good the movies were going to be even if you saw a trailer. Life was so much funner before the internet.

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>>220942185
>>if you live before DVDs you can't even rent/buy physical media TV series to rewatch because a single VHS can only have like 2 episodes of a serial show on it. if you miss the first airing of a show there's no guarantee you'll be able to catch up
The VCRs in the late 90s had the ability to record television at specific times. The only problem is you had to leave your tv on if you had to leave the house. That's how I watched season one of Stargate SG-1. But then again, maybe that was just me because the TV I had in my room at the time was old as fuck.

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>>220940238
Netflix did not have late fees
Their business model was they'd mail you a movie, and would not mail you another movie until you mailed that one back
It worked in their favor if you held onto the movie too long, it saved them on postage

The real niggery thing they did was, if someone was rapidly mailing movies back, they'd throttle you. Suddenly the last movie you mailed back would get caught in "processing" for four days before they sent you the next one.

>look it up
>the final Netflix DVD mailers were sent on September 29th, 2023

>>220939372
shit. half the time the film you wanted plus all copies were out so you had them call you once it was back in.

>>220941925
shut up

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>>220942284
also how's this for Aerier Fruito nostalgia

>>220940663
>>220940333
Netflix streaming in its early days did seem to have literally everything, like every random normalfag Hollywood movie you could think of
They got removed and shunted off to Disney+/Paramount/Hulu/Prime/Vubi/Toodo/Youreethra

Off the top of my head, I look right now
>is Pulp Fiction on Netflix?
>nope, it got removed and is now on Paramount+

>is Star Wars on Netflix?
>of course it isn't nigga that's a Disney+ special now

>is Predator on Netflix?
>nah that got sent to Disney+ too

Huh, how about...
>is Silence of the Lambs on Netflix?
>no, it got removed and sent to MGM+

>>220941327
>lmao every single person back then had the dual setup and recorded 2 or 3 movies at a time to SLP tape.
only the autists of their day were doing this, if you thought 1980s or even late 90s normies knew how to do this you're more socially retarded than the average 4chud, the retail VHS business would have gone under

>>220939462
Todd Barry is not funny to me, nor does he have a huge cult following so why is he lauded as a comics comic? Him and Richard Lewis confused me as to how they had careers.

this video makes me feel so bad that someone didn't save her from her retarded boyfriend, he was such a lameass schlub proves literally majority of 4chan anons had a shot at gettng her

>>220942185
>>220942261
SLP recording could you to 6 hours per tape, at reduced quality. You didnt have to leave the TV on for timer recording, just the VCR. Towards the end of the VCR time, the better models could automatically turn on at the correct time. Though a lot of people still had older VCRs since they were made in a time where shit didnt break all the time and just kept working.

>>220942364
>>220940333
>>220940663
I asked Skynet what got removed from Netflix in the year 2025
It answered

>the Fast and the Furious movies, the Austin Powers movies, the Godzilla movies, the Spider-Man movies, the Back to the Future movies, the Mad Max movies, The Goonies, Schindler's List, the Ocean's Eleven movies and ET

>>220942372
>if you though 1980s or eneven late 90s normies knew how to do this
All it took was two VCRs and some scotch tape. It wasn't difficult or hidden autist knowledge, most people just didnt bother.

>>220941985
>only have faint memories
weird I was born in 96 and I have a huge catalog of memories of going to both Blockbuster and Hollywood Video (this one moreso), I'd either drive to BB and browse their limited section with my parents and stand in that long line or go to HV where we browsed for longer and usually walked across town to get there (just us kids) before getting a horror movie or me also looking at game crazy next door where I rented a lot of great PS2 games and browsed the game magazines, fuck I'm lucky I got to have a pre internet childhood (small towns were behind in history)

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>>220942372
>>220942391
>>220941327
>>220942419
There was a good stretch in the '00s when I'd get movies on Netflix, hook my DVD player to my VCR and copy them onto blank tapes. I'm sure they looked like shit but it was neat building a library for under $1/movie.

I'll never forget that Snakes on a Plane (2006) must have had some kind of fancy special copy protection against that specific ghetto-ass habit. It'd play fine but the VCR just could not record it.

I don't even care about shit enough to steal it anymore.

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>>220940343
>>220940236
wow, so much space, the local one i went to was this small corner store with a popcorn machine blasting the popcorn song seemingly forever on loop
couldn't have been more than 700sq ft

>>220939958
either soulless, sad family, or genuinely you had no friends. The experience of going to the video stores to browse and choose before hauling home to watch it was a way better experience than just watching a movie alone and I have some of the fondest life memories because of it

>>220941453
Hahahahahah you got absolutely rekt. It’s exactly what you asked for too.

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I figure it's not just nostalgia. We're grieving for the Third Place, even the most corporatized and greedy form of it. The little inconvenient rituals mattered even if they put you in tangible reach of shit you'd never buy and people you disliked.

The world is streamlining toward everyone never leaving their house again. That might be living the dream on 4chan but the entire human race can't live like that.

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>>220939372
>>220939398
>>220939422
>>220939452
>>220939483
The problem is that there's been a huge loss of "communal spaces" for the local community to interact in recent years. Rental stores were one such place. I remember as a kid visiting and I would sometimes run into other kids from my class. We would laugh and joke around looking at VHS tapes for an hour before our parents would drag us home. But not before buying us candy and letting us rent one tape! Those were the days.

I remember when you could go to your local 7 Eleven or corner store and there would be arcade cabinets with a group of kids all playing. Sometimes random adults would join the fun. Some of these corner stores even had a small VHS section to rent tapes too.

Arcades are mostly gone. Rental stores are gone. Malls are dying.

I have no idea what kids have these days that compare. I know it sounds like I'm an old guy laughing about the good old days. But I'm genuinely worried about the next generation. They won't experience the joy of these places and the culture behind it.

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>>220942518
You look like me samefagging because I rattled off the same shit 64 seconds before you lol

>>220939372
the best part of video rentals was going to get the newest movie, all the copies being rented, then being forced to find a different random movie and accidentally stumbling across an absolute gem that you never would have normally checked out.

blockbuster videos were actually just a big front for homosexual meet up zones where fags would do gay shit to guys they just met. that's why there's so much gayposting when it's about muh nostalgia and where did all the "communal spaces" go

>>220942584
>must-have
No one? Pirate all your shit

I found Netflix mailing you DVDs superior. I only cared about rental places for the video games.

>>220942637
that must be a west coast thing....

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>>220942518
I miss when arcade games were legitimately years more advanced than consoles, you either had to go outside and pay a quarter to play a game "for real" or make your parents chip in 60 bucks to keep a much shittier version at home

It must have harmed arcades when they couldn't mog like that anymore. Just for laughs, here's the 1989 arcade and NES versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Holy fuck the arcade one does not look like it's from 1989.

>>220942741
>tfw played shitty ports of console games on a gameboy

>>220942741
The main reason arcades died was because Arcade companies allowed their games to be put home consoles. These arcade companies genuinely thought kids would buy the 60 dollar home version AND go to the arcade. These Ar ade companies thought they would make "double the profit". And what happened? The exact opposite. Kids just stayed home and played their consoles. Arcades died out. Why go play Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat at the arcade when you could just play it at home.

It might amuse you to know that most modern arcade companies have a strict ban on putting arcade games on consoles. For example, It's why Dance Dance Revolution has had a single home console release in around 20 years. Arcade companies realized that selling multiple $25,000 DDR machines to an arcade is much more profitable than selling $60 dollar home console games. This has allowed some arcade companies to make a comeback.

What really killed arcades and rental places and every other community hangout was an influx of browns from low-trust societies, raping and stabbing everything in sight.
Homogeneous Asian countries still have these things. Maybe not VHS rentals, but everything else.

>>220942860
>Homogeneous Asian countries still have these things. Maybe not VHS rentals, but everything else.
Yeah.... except in Asian countries theres a monopoly so they can keep prices artificially high You want to buy a Blu-ray? Better pay $200 dollars. Believe me. I've gone shopping in Japan. I know. There's a huge grey market where they import cheaper movies on disc from Western countries into Japan.

>>220942831
>just play it at home
Not to mention the huge amount of lost sales due to kids trading games too.

>>220939372
getting creeped out by the characters and faces staring at you in the horror aisle

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>>220942741
The NES wasn't even that bad. You can see they scaled down the sprites and colors, but it's still fundamentally the same game.
Pac-Man 2600 was a humiliation ritual.

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>>220942952
>the rape snowman whose face changes as you walk past

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>>220942985
lol

>>220939372
>went to the local gas station kiosk
>choose from their limited selection
>had to ride down there on my bike the day after to hand it in
it was strictly worse than now where you can watch whatever you want whenever you want online

>>220940766
you watched a tape or videotape on a VCR, VHS was just the format

>>220939372
>Go on Friday
>All of the newest movies are all checked out
>End up renting a movie that you had already watched
>Ask to rent a game but parents say no

>>220942518
>>The problem is that there's been a huge loss of "communal spaces" for the local community to interact in recent years.
What community lmfao when everyone's black or muslim now.

>>220942860
ive lived on east and west coasts and both of them still have arcades

>>220943066
>>220943220
This thread made me forget what 4chan was like for a minute, that it's actually unusual that we go 200 posts, about literally anything, before someone starts loudly shitting himself and trying to derail things as if he's genuinely furious that people are using a website to talk to each other

Goodnight everybody

>>220943245
Fuck off

>>220939372
>What was renting movies like?
A pain in the ass if your video store took ages to get there.

Could you guys take out DVD's from the library where you're from?

>>220940116
Its not just streaming; video games, social media, shopping, politics, practically every aspect of western life has become more isolated and atomised over the last decade or two
It might seem silly, perhaps even hypocritical for someone like me to be complaining about this but the negative social and political impacts of this change are real and serious, especially for the normies

>>220943325
By the time I was a kid in the 90s the library was already just the place where homeless people hung out

>>220939478
Homo

>>220939528
>the movies you rent at the store were somehow cheaper than the digital renting these days
Jej

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>>220940766
>Anybody that uses the term VHS likely never watched one

Dafuq ya talkin about. That term was used just as frequently as video tape, because you know, cassette tapes were also a thing meaning it saved confusion when talking to someone.

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>>220943329
>It might seem silly, perhaps even hypocritical for someone like me to be complaining
No, I get it. It's actually worrisome to find that future generations are, on average, as much of an autistic shut-in retard as I am. It's not a trail I wanted to blaze.
On the rare occasions I chose to go outside, I liked that an outside existed waiting for me. Apparently I was taking that for granted and it's gone now.

>>220943325
Yes. But selection was super limited when it started. Not really worth even trying unless you wanted really recent mainstream crap.

>>220939372
the smell of the store
the soft plastic clunk noise of the vcr container
the relaxed vibe of a friday night. pizza hut and a movie. nobody was in a rush and you weren't bombarded by demoralization or people trying to make money from you

>>220943385
>you weren't bombarded by demoralization or people trying to make money from you
I mean you were, but there was less of it

>>220942947
The situation has reversed now. Consoles are super expensive luxury electronics now. I'm not paying $1000 for a PS5 or Switch 2. Sony and Nintendo must be crazy.

$1000 dollars could easily be a two or three dozen visits to a local arcade. Even more if your local arcade is free play and only charges a flat fee .

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You know what was a huge fucking scam?
As late as the 1990s, it could cost you up to a dollar a minute to call somebody in another state on the phone
Think about what ruthless, naked greed that must have been
>please understand, it costs us billions of dollars a year to operate the copper wire our company laid between Ohio and Pennsylvania a century ago
And that shit evaporated the second cell phones were invented

Imagine how many people literally rushed through conversations with beloved family members

>>220943368
>Image
That's an incorrect understanding of the word. Schizo just means 'to split', a splitting of the mind.

>>220943460
same with the EU, calling someone outside the country used to cost more but now it's free of charge with majority of cellphone plans

>>220943460
What I definitely don't miss about TV are all the 60's/70's boring shows repeated ad nauseam.

>>220943436
Don't forget that kids just play Fortnite and Subway Surfers on their iPhones now
This isn't just a yelling at clouds thing, I distinctly remember that my childhood NES was definitely the first and at the time only object in the house that had a CPU in it, and I gotta assume that was the case for tens of millions of people; everyone who wasn't rich or dorky enough to have already set up a Commodore 64 or something.

>>220943492
They're kinda forced to when unlimited data across the world is so widely available.

>>220943505
Yeah but it makes it blatant that in the '90s their business model there was specifically just "fuck you, pay me"
Like there wasn't a profit and expense ratio to justify the costs, they were just blatantly soaking consumers

>>220939481
>I can tell you what fucking high school girls that work at blockbuster is like
>Butterscotch yo
All tight no diseases no loose goose just pure pleasure.

Telly knew this.

>>220943436
>meeting alysa liu phenotype at your local arcade
>priceless

>>220943520
How'd he get aids then?

>>220943460
>That shit evaporated the second cell phones were invented
Guess you dont know how expensive cell phones used to be. You cell plan might give you 60 or 120 minutes, after that charged per minute, then charged even more for roaming...keep in mind roaming might be anywhere outside your town. Later on things started to ease up with free nights and weekends, and free calling between people at the same cell company etc. Talk about ruthless naked greed, they used to charge for individual text messages.

>>220943561
No, I'm gonna take your word for it
I didn't own a cell phone until the flip era and by then there were already fairly generous "1,000 minutes/texts + unlimited nights and weekends" plans
But I guess the brick era was also wallet rape

>>220943585
Yea the brick era was rough. A lot of it was driven by a lack of competition. There weren't nation wide networks yet. There might only be a single provider in a whole state, or sometimes multiple states.

>>220939372
It was expensive and often the movie you wanted was out of copies, especially if it was a new release.

>>220939372
The search felt both more and less meaningful. They wouldn't often HAVE the movie you wanted, so you had to have alternatives in mind, and especially if you wanted niche shit, you could be fucked for awhile, but there was ritual in having to go to a place in your car to pick 2-3 movies.

Actors and celebrities mattered a lot more because there wasn't any kind of pre-rolls or trailer features. They might have trailers going on a TV somewhere in the store, but they were hanging from the ceiling and it was kind of uncomfortable to actually watch them and you have shit to do and can't watch the little trailer TV that long without looking like a weirdo, so ultimately you'd just pick some actor you knew and say
>eh, hope it's good enough

Staff were kinda flunkies, but they were movie and pot flunkies, rather than normal retail "loser" flunkies, which livened up the place. They often had a little pride that they watched a lot of movies, but their taste was dogshit or mostly dogshit because back then curation was much worse than today, so it was pretty much
>they watched all the popular shit and maybe some less popular stuff

They sold candy by the door in movie boxes, but the price was always kinda a scam, even compared to movie theaters at the time, so it was mostly decorative. They kinda had a smell, somewhere between mildew-y fountain and carpet soap with a kinda "fuzzy" drier lint thing going on.

They also rented games, and you'd pick up like 2 of both movies and games if you really wanted to have a weekend in. Renting games was often actually cooler, because it was a really positive model, you could try out a bunch of weird shit and you feel a lot less bad about it because it was like 3-8 bucks or whatever. Today even for shit indie stuff where it's 10 bucks or whatever, that's still a hard committal 10, it was pretty nice to play a game for a weekend or two before you'd buy for cheap.

>>220943557
One of those butterscotches was actually caramel. Lying bitch told Telly she was a virgin so that he'd fuck her. Every girl in NYC wanted a taste of the Virgin Surgeon.

Did anyone's parents also copy the movies they rented?

>>220942584
I only use streaming services when friends and family have shared login info with me, and even then, only sparingly. The only one I would consider paying for myself would be Disney+ for my kids, because it's got all the classic Disney and Star Wars films and cartoons. I wouldn't pay for any of the rest.