Natalie Barletta – Special to the Southern News
When I was little, every Saturday my mother and I would go to Hollywood Video to rent a movie. When we weren’t able to go there, we would head to Tommy K’s and Blockbuster to get our Saturday night movie fix.
Now almost ten years later, none of those stores in my area exist. In the 80s-early 2000s, video rental places were everywhere. Now, in the 2010s, they are nowhere to be found. The question is, where are people getting their movies?
Well that can be answered easily. With the rise of sites like Netflix and Redbox, you pay a membership to get movies delivered to you straight to your front door. Some sites such as iTunes will let you be able to watch them instantly on your computer or smartphone. As you can imagine, it’s much more convenient than going to the video store. Plus, you don’t have to worry about the store not having your favorite movie. According to Ben Fitz at the LA times, US consumers would rent 37.7 million movies this year.
In the past ten years, it’s safe to say that everything has become digital. We can download our entire music library onto one little device. E-readers help us hold a bunch of books in one small device. We can even shop for odds and ends, and it will arrive at our front door within a few days or about a week. The same is happening to the way we’re watching our movies. Those video stores that were everywhere ten years ago are starting to become a thing of the past. We can thank the Digital Revolution for that.
As an avid technology user, I do think that being able to rent movies online is more convenient than going to the store. You can rent a movie right from your bed if you like. When you’re done with the movie, you don’t have to go to the store, you can just stick it right back into the mailbox. It’s easy and it’s simple. Also, I think that it’s a good idea because when you rent online, you never have to worry about the store running out of the movie that you want to rent. You’re always guaranteed it wherever you go. The price though is about the same, because movies cost three to five dollars online, and it’s around the same price at Blockbuster.
Although it’s easier, I don’t think that it’s better. I think that going to a movie rental place is an experience within itself. Call me old fashioned, but going to rent a movie is an experience in itself. Whenever you go into a movie rental place, you are greeted with the smell of buttery popcorn, and you can see boxes of Movie Theater sized candy everywhere. When you go, it’s like you are given the tools to create a movie theater experience at home. As we enter a society that’s more and more digital based, we begin to lose that experience. Instead we get video instantly onto our computers or iPhones.
As CD stores begin to vanish, I can expect that the same will go for Blockbuster. It won’t be long before they are considered to be a part of a dinosaur era. Digital movies have replaced going to the actual store, and it’s likely that they are here to stay.
