By: Eli Suchowacky, Sean McEachran, Adam Halter
You may have heard that Blockbuster, a giant in the movie rental industry since its beginnings in the 1980s, recently decided to shut down its remaining retail stores and its DVD-by-mail enterprise. The Huffington Post published this article, which explained in further detail the reasons behind this announcement on November 6 from DISH Network, which has owned Blockbuster since 2011. The company decided that digital distribution of videos, most famously practiced by Netflix, is the way of the future in terms of home video viewing. As such, they are not closing operations on their on-demand video streaming service “Blockbuster @Home”. Ironically, Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix in the year 2000 for only $50 million (a small price given their net worth at their peak in the early 2000s was about $5 billion), but declined.
And so, what was once a major competitor in the monopolistic competitive market of movie rentals has been reduced to almost nothing. New technology has rendered its once lucrative service obsolete, and the consumers in its industry have decided that other forms of watching home videos are a better value and more convenient.
A Blockbuster Video store; don’t tell me you don’t remember walking into one of these as a child.
Do you think the physical movie rental industry has become obsolete? If so, what benefits do consumers see in on-demand movie rentals as compared to renting a physical copy?
Strachan, Maxwell. "Blockbuster Closing All Of Its Remaining Retail Stores." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 06 Nov. 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
2 comments:
I do think that the physical movie rental will become obsolete in the near future. The benefits of on-demand movies is that you don't have to leave to get a movie to then bring it back; you can just stay on your couch and press play.
I believe that it is all but obsolete. I do occasionally rent from Redbox, but I'm more likely to rent movies On Demand (through my cable provider) or use Netflix. Like Karly, I dislike returning movies.
Post a Comment