> > Heh. One thing I hate about Blockbuster (and yes, I rent from BBV)
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> Will somebody tell me why Blockbuster stays in business? There's a Blockbuster in our area, and it costs something like $3.50 to rent even a non-new release. I've made an intense study of all the video stores in our area, and there are a total of eight or so in our town and the ones around it. Every last one of them is cheaper than Blockbuster; two are as or more extensive; one other carries widescreen movies regularly and two others carry them incidentally; Blockbuster is one of only two or three that refuses to carry anything higher than an R-rated movie, and THE only one that carries quietly censored versions of "hard R" rated movies. In short, I can't think of one single darned advantage to renting from Blockbuster.

First things first: as far as I can tell, BBVs are franchised. I believe this because there are 3 (yes, three) Blockbusters in my city (oh, wait, there's three that I go to... there's actually at least four) and all of them seem to charge slightly different prices. The non-new releases vary from between $1-$2 for five days. And most of the non-new releases if you don't like they will give you another one for free. I like that. I tend to see what I want to in the theater and don't rent a lot of new stuff. BBV has a very wide selection of older titles, which is nice. And the fact that there are three of them (actually four) close to me means that if one of them doesn't have something, another probably will.

Another cool thing about BBV is that when there is a new release I want to see, they've got like ten billion copies of it. And yeah, they overcharge for new movies ($3-3.50 seems to be the norm). But they also tend to have two categories of new releases: the two day and the five day rentals. The cool thing about the five day rentals is that during the week (not Friday or Saturday) they give you a two-for one of the five days. The five day ones are generally movies that have been out for a while. To me that's a good trade: if I want to see something as soon as its released, they'll probably have it in stock. If I want to wait a while, I can pick up another recent movie for the same price.

Another side note: BB has a great selection of video games. They cost $5 but they also stock twenty copies of the new titles. And I do rent video games a lot.

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> The place I usually go to -- Video Update -- has as extensive a library as Blockbuster, carries the occasional widescreen movie, charges all of 49.5 cents per video (2 for 0.99, and on Tuesdays that even includes new releases!), and you get to keep them just as long. I did go to the local Blockbuster a couple times, but only to pick up obscure movies I had searched for at all the other local places and couldn't find. Now that I've done that, I'll probably never go back.

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> I'm generally not a big "anti-big chain" person, but doing a point-by-point comparison between Blockbuster and just about any other video store in a thirty mile radius, it ranks at the bottom every time. So I don't understand why so many people go there. Is it different in your area, Stephen? Do they just not HAVE anything else out there in California?

We used to have independent stores. But BBV and Hollywood Video basically took over (as I said previously, we've got at least four BBV's in town and probably three Hollywood Video's -- and this is only within my city). Used to rent from places other than Blockbuster but most of the good ones are gone and there are none that I know of as close as BBV is. We still do have some indies of course, but I think most of them survive mainly by renting out porn. Of course I don't agree with BBV's policies on stuff like not renting NC-17 videos, but most of my local theaters don't show the movies either. Blame the MPAA and all the people that get all upset when movies come out that they don't like. BBV is just another typical corporation that really doesn't care about movies as much as they do their shareholders...

Ste "Aside from all our video stores, there are at least ten movie theaters within twenty minutes of my house" phen