I was reading an article in our paper yesterday about Blockbuster closing nearly 1,000 of their brick and mortar stores. I believe the same article is here. Anyway, it made me wax nostalgic on two things:
1) We haven’t wanted to drive to a video store in several years. We were already tired of slogging to the local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, looking for the movie we wanted to be in stock, when we wanted it. We tried Netflix a couple of years ago and have been happy with them ever since. I don’t particularly like to get out and drive to get a movie, when I can have it delivered to me through the mail. And a plus for Netflix – we can watch a lot of things online.
Which brings me to my second point…
2) Just where the whole movie/tv watching thing is going. Waxing nostalgic – I’m old and apparently getting older all the time 😀 I remember the days when we had two rotary dial, plug in the wall phones in our house. There was no such thing as an answering machine, no phone you carry around with you. These days, my phone is always with me, I can text, surf the Internet, play games, keep my shopping lists on it, and a myriad of other things. We’ve sure come a long way. Same with TV and movies. Growing up, we had one tv and three channels. There was no such things as the remote control. Or more precisely, *I* was the remote control. If my dad wanted to change the channel, he just asked me to do it 🙂 My, how things have changed. Not only do we have the channels and programs we have now (not all good, in my mind, some of the stuff on TV is bordering on trash), and the chances to watch them. DVR’s, On Demand and soon, streaming video and movies will be the way to go. We already hook up my laptop occasionally to our big screen TV, and watch things from Netflix like that. I foresee us getting a device to stream tv, movies, etc one day in the not too distant future.
Anyway, it constantly amazes me about how far things have come in my lifetime. Yet, I get stuck in my ruts. I don’t like driving to a store to get a video, so we use the mail order one. So, we have not tried Redbox yet – have you? I understand the appeal, it’s cheaper and fairly easy, I’m assuming. I was not all that surprised to read in the article that RedBox is owned by Coinstar, the brilliant people who started putting coin counter machines in stores and stuff. I think it’s smart, as is Redbox. But, I just don’t want to have to get out and go to a store to get a movie. How about you?
Vote in the poll, if you want, and let me know!
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