By Chris Scott Barr
I remember a time long ago when I used to visit these very strange stores. I guess you would call them stores, but they were really more of a rental shop. Anyway, you would walk in and find the walls lined with movies that you could take home for a few days in exchange for several dollars. Of course if you didn’t bring them back by the designated time, you would be charged a fee. I hated those fees. Eventually technology advanced and no one needed to visit these stores anymore. You could either watch what I wanted by streaming it online, or with a few clicks have the movies sent to you via snail mail. Those companies that didn’t evolve to embrace the new technologies eventually died out, leaving only empty buildings in their wake.
It’s stories like that which I’m going to be able to tell my kids not long from now. Blockbuster, the largest movie rental store looks like it will be closing up in short order. They really don’t have much to offer the tech-savvy customers anymore, and rely on those that either haven’t hopped on the streaming bandwagon or are too impatient to wait a few days for their movie to arrive. Even if Blockbuster manages to find some more funding, I don’t suspect that they (or other movie rental shops) will survive more than a few years.
[ AP ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]
