Can’t you buy a subscription to a movie streaming service for less than the cost of two movies per week?
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You can still head on down to your local council library to have a lend of DVDs free of charge.
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Even this dinosaur hasn’t had a DVD player hooked up to the TV for over three years. I still have VHS tapes and DVDs stored in the house but I’ve embraced streaming and don’t know how I lived without it.
I used to spend hours in the video store looking through the titles in the 1980s and was still receiving a free rental text on my birthday until my local store closed a few years ago. I see new releases advertised on those DVD rental kiosks in shopping centres and go home and find them on a streaming service. Not even slightly interested in using them.
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Are iTunes rentals still popular? Or is that so 10 years ago?
I’d imagine Netflix and the like has had an impact on that, let alone illegal downloads and streaming / pirate copies.
But I’m old school, don’t have SVOD nor Foxtel. And I still enjoy TV shows and movies happily 
Still get DVDs, use free BVOD or iTunes rentals to get by, as well as still watching broadcast TV.
Yep, been doing it for years. But do all libraries offer this? Or are you just assuming?
All libraries I have been to rent DVDs. Theres also op shops that often have cheap DVD’s for sale for cheaper than what a rental would be.
Theres still the odd country town with independent video stores, Colac Video in Colac Vic even moved premises to the main street last year.
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I’d be surprised if any council libraries didn’t lend out CDs and DVDs.
We have 1 left in our town of about 35k. It’s a Movie HQ which I believe is a Civic Video-owned franchise brand.
In the late 90s we had 3 Blockbuster, 3 Civic Video, 1 Video Ezy and a couple of others I can’t quite remember. It’s crazy how fast the industry has died.
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With very limited television options, video shops in Regional WA must’ve done a pretty roaring trade back then?
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Yes, definitely a contributor!
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Our last remaining video store closed a couple of weeks ago. The owners said they got about 6 more years than they expected and they outlasted all the other stores including Video City which in the 90’s was big all around Tasmania. Took them a while to clear all the videos and DVD’s in the end. I went in there and it felt just like the 90’s still, the TV’s were the same as when they opened up in that location and everything faded.
Here in Tas it’s the State Government who run the libraries, do the other states have them run by the Councils?
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In NSW it’s the local councils who run the local libraries, in the ACT it’s the territory government. The State Library of NSW doesn’t lend out anything as far as I know, you have to view everything on site.
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Yeah councils in regional WA. I think Perth’s is State Govt.
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Interesting, you learn something new everyday!
I don’t use iTunes for it - but I do occasionally use Google Play Movies rentals - mostly when I’ve got a coupon or they are discounted.
I doubt they are ‘popular’ - but I find the selection of movies on Netflix to be poor, so it fills a gap.
I’m sure I’ve probably told this story on here before and forgotten about it - but the last time I went into a Blockbuster was after a new Guitar Hero game came out, and wanted to rent it to try the handful of songs I liked before deciding whether to buy it.
They practically treated me like a thief - wondering why I’d travelled so far away from my house to go there (it was a few suburbs over, but they’d closed the closer outlet years back) and were very cautious about letting me make an account with them. I think I ended up having to either give them a credit card to put a hold on, or pay some extra fee to get them to be okay with letting me have a new release rental…
So returned it the next day and never stepped foot inside a Blockbuster again.
It’s weird to think that less than 10 years earlier, the Blockbuster I went to previous to that one was the cause for a huge redevelopment of the shopping centre, to add enough space for it. That space is now a Dan Murphy’s - possibly indicating changing preferences over the years - Netflix and chilled beer I think they call it…
Just for my 2 cents…
Around my area in the mid-2000s, there were x2 Video Ezys and x1 Blockbuster.
One Video Ezy went late 2000s, Blockbuster went about 5 or 6 years ago and the other Video Ezy about 4 years ago.
Now there’s a few Hoyts kiosks around.
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We lost our Blockbusters in the early-to-mid 2000s I think. The lone Video Ezy store (formerly a 4U Movies rebranded as Mega Video) lasted until 2017.
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There’s a Network Video store still operating in Canberra.
Blockbuster has been gone for a while, Video Ezy and Civic Video closed a couple of years back. Video 2000 even longer ago, but that may have been a local brand.
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We still have a Video City in New Town (Tas) but it is now the last store remaining. My guess is newsagencies will be soon, who is seriously spending money in those?
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