What was it like to return Video Tapes on time?

What was it like to return Video Tapes on time?

felt like the right thing to do because if i didnt mom would make me pay the late fee's

Painful, supplicant, inconvenient.

I worked for a video store, one of my jobs was to make phonecalls to collect overdue DVD's and Blu Rays. Holy fuck were people polite about it. I wouldn't be.

>2 day rental due back in 3 days
>5 day rental due back in 6 days
>7 day rental due back in 9 days

no wonder rental places failed

Everything about video rental services and brick/mortar stores sucked. They were poorly managed and inept to handle anything properly.

There's a reason Redbox smashed their shit in and digital buried the corpse.

Good riddance. You have to have the nostalgia addled mind of someone who was a child around their demise and never grew up to actually be the ones renting the shit at the places and paying/running around town to get the videos to have any good will toward it.

>tfw it's Friday night and my friends and I can rent a vidya and a movie and get some sour patch kids and popcorn and junior mints

>be spoiled shithead
>convince mother to rent a n64 and some games/controllers
>brother and I get into a fight mid-game
>pick up the console and throw it across the room
>it slams into the wall
>..still works
>return it later and get our refund

We did get a n64 a month later for christmas :^)

>return tape on time at gas station
>clerk just chucks it somewhere
>3 years later
>$400+ late fees

My dad was so fucking pissed.

and now you are stuck on Sup Forums

forever

Not forever, it's only been 9 years

>parents rent their first dvd
>dad comes up to me when their done
>how do we rewind it so we can return it?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK


THE FEELS


KIDS THESE DAYS WILL NEVER KNOW THE FEEL OF GOING TO BLOCKBUSTER AND HOPING THAT NEW GAME WILL STILL BE IN.

>What was it like to return Video Tapes on time?
Shit thread. Your public library carries DVDs and BDs you can borrow and return just like a rental place used to have. For free.

>tfw going on 13 years soon

>friend has a ps1, we go and rent a n64
>costs $5/day, pay in advance
>late return is $3/day penalty
>realize it's cheaper to rent for one day, and then pay the penalty that is less

I don't get how 10 year old me saw the problem when the adult running it didn't.

Actually, pretty damn good. Now that I think about it.

>I wouldn't be.

You wouldn't be polite about somebody asking for their shit back when you don't own it and have kept it past the period you paid to rent it?

>go to rent game
>check high scores
>some bastard beat your high scores
>spend all night long beating his high scores
>return game in morning
>repeat next week

Disc fags know nothing.

It doesn't here. Everything is on disposable USB drives now.

In my family, we always recorded copies of the movies we rented and did the shortest rental time. If we didn't get around to watching it, we still had the tape copied for later. That's how we did things back before we could just pirate shit off the internet.

Also, there was something to be said for being able to walk through shelf after shelf at movies. More impractical than something like netflix, but I still have nostalgic feelings about that.

Same here. We had over 2k movies at one time, 2-4 movies per tape. When Netflix started we had the most expensive membership, 10 dvds out at once and we lived right near the shipping warehouse. Turn around was like 30 dvds a week.

>so much life wasted watching movies

I'm so fucking jaded now.

>New video games were always guaranteed out for weeks and then they had a one day rental
Lame as fuck

>employees always had first dibs and the new movies and games were out forever

>mfw erasing people's save files off the cartridge
Grand tier mischief

it used to satisfy my autism. it was a thing for me to return them on time

>get used ps1
>up from Atarii 2600
>play it for years without a memory card because I didn't know that was a thing and it didn't come with one
>all games played had to be played all the way through without saving or dying

My world changed when someone came over with their memory card. I also got lazy at playing games from then on.

Jokes on you, there's still 2 dvd rental shops in my town.

two full days + half day to return
5 full days + half day to return

seems fine to me senpai

>renting a cartridge and snooping through old saves to compare power levels
>characters named dicks, shit, fuckyou
>lastsaves stuck at the plebfilter stages
all these moments

Blockbuster fucking sucked and I'm glad it's gone.

>oh you wanna watch this movie, we'll it's gonna cost as much as it did to see it in a fucking cinema

fuck you Blockbuster.

>80s/90s/Early 2000's
>Want to watch a movie at home
>Get in your car and drive to the video store
>Walk through the aisles and look at all of the covers
>Pick one or two that look interesting
>Go to the front counter
>Pay for your rental
>"Alright, that will be due by the 26th, which is 2 days from now. Please remember to rewind your tapes before returning them to either the front counter, or the convenient rental return slot located right outside the front of the store. Thank you for choosing Blockbuster, enjoy your weekend!"
>Leave the store and drive home
>Set up your VCR
>Pop the tape in
>Sit through (Or should I say, fast forward through) the advertisements in the beginning
>Finally get to watch your movie through the squished resolution of your CRT television
>When it's finally done, rewind the tape
>Drive back to the video store within the time you're allowed to keep your tapes
>Go to the front counter to return them, or just push them through the convenient rental return slot
>Drive back home and continue living your meaningless existence of no GF and watching TV

>Now
>Want to watch a movie at home
>Turn on Netflix or your favorite torrent client
>Choose literally any movie you want, in any resolution and quality you want
>Watch your movie without having to leave your house
>Go on Sup Forums and shitpost on Sup Forums before jerking off to HD 4K pornography and laughing at memes on the internet

Anyone who genuinely believes that renting physical tapes was better than all the digital media we have now is simply blinded by nostalgia.

Pretty sure they charged you for the day plus the 3$

>Also, there was something to be said for being able to walk through shelf after shelf at movies.
Picking one was always hard though. You knew you wouldn't be able to just shut it off and pick another one. I would be at the rental store for an hour trying to find just the right movie.

But user that first part sounded comfy as fuck. The second part sounded miserable and lonely.

>muh comfy

>Having to get up, get dressed, drive to a store, interact with people, and drive all the way back home is somehow more "comfy" than staying at home in bed and watching any movie you want for free with no hassle

Face it: You have no argument besides nostalgia. Most people prefer digital streaming to physical media because it's much more convenient and cheaper.

>go to video store
>find movie you want
>fullscreen version is out
>only widescreen is in stock
>pick something you dont actually want
>get home and it hasnt been rewound

>14 years old
>got to Blockbuster on GTA SA launch day
>not a single copy left
>a bunch of black kids with their moms holding the last copies of the game

God I fucking hated being a poorfag

Now that I have money I have so many games in my steam account that I haven't even played

Annoying.
Fortunately my father was a clever bloke who knew how to copy tapes.

Being a teen/young adult and wandering around in independent video stores with little handwritten staff recs for each section was pretty kewl iirc

I also liked it that you were limited to what was there or could be ordered, now rares arent really a thing

>you got the last copy of the new release
>choosing what to see based on the cover art

fugg

11 for me

Memory cards somehow took the fun out of non-stop gaming

It felt kinda fun. I would run out of the car and return them while my mom sat in the car. Good memory desu.

walking into a building and dropping things into a box then leaving.

Guys, ive been here since november 2004. And i hate myself. Ive done a lot of board migration over the years. Im here for now

>tfw you're young and you go into the horror section

I have mostly been on Sup Forums these past couple years but in 2007-2008 i was on Sup Forums all the time spamming shit with balkifags

I started to miss Sup Forums lately but really all of Sup Forums is just shit to me now and I come here due to addiction

It was better than sex.

Blockbuster made everything confusing as shit (and ultimately helped destroy the video rental industry) with their bizarre "no late fees" policy which totally had late fees, after a month, or if you were a shitter. No one I talked to could explain it in concrete terms.

>tfw you peeked into the porn backroom and there was always some weird looking guy there

>tfw local video places all to intelligent for porn backrooms.

Used to work for a smal chain and we had a good computer system for tracking late fees. Also there was a note system where everyone of the staff could add whatever they liked. It got pretty cash sometimes. Mostly notes where about crappy customers who we did not want to rent out new stuff to before they settled their account. At the hight of the rental business around 1996 to 1998 we had so much unpayed debt we ended creating our own debt collection company. Made our own stamp for it all to look official and we got alot of return customers who payed their debt in the store and bought and rented new shit :)