Funny that this thread got bumped. This weekend, I was picking up a friend to go to dinner, and as I was turning out of his neighborhood, I noticed a small storefront in a small strip mall with the name Action Video. So, I ask him about it, and sure enough, it's a video rental place! He said it was the last one in our area. I had no idea that we still even had that one! He said that the owner died not long ago, but his son decided to keep it going. I'll have to go explore one of these days.

My Target is going through a re-model and the DVD/BD section got reduced to maybe 1/5th of what it was before.

Went to the Barnes & Noble in Oak Brook, IL a week ago, one of the last bastions of having a good sized physical media department, including a large display of Criterion titles, and it's been gutted down to one and a half small displays.
I wonder if they could have moved more product by cutting their prices, as they were always on the high side, as it was always fun to go there for the Criterion or Arrow sales and walk out with a big stack.

One of the local Best Buy stores near me seems to be going through a re-model and cut down more than half of their media section.

Not surprised to see this happen but still was sad to see.

Shopping for this stuff was one of my favorite pastimes besides watching it at home. There’s hardly any reason to go out now, I’ll just lock myself in here and watch the stuff I picked up when shopping was good.

You're fortunate they at least had one. Seems all blurays here in Canada have be regulated to one shelf by the cash register, treated like impulse buy candy bars.

My local GiantTiger only ever carried bargain bin DVDs and BDs priced between $3 - $9 at the front of the store close to the checkout. That was the only physical media they sold.

Now they have nothing as the bargain bins are gone. It's too bad - I'd rummage through them whenever I'm there and would find some decent BDs at good prices - like The Master and No Country for Old Men for $4.

I stopped by the Target near my house yesterday and their blus/4k’s are now on 2 endcaps. That’s it. Those pictures I posted on thread #72 is where I’ll be living near in a couple of months. It’s about a 10 minute walk from our place in Florence. So I’m fine with Target shuttering their stuff.

I was just in Vancouver last week and found this store at a local mall. Felt like I was back in the 90s and early 2000s Yes I did buy 2 CDs.

Takeaway - most other countries are not lamenting over physical media and/or physical stores.

America is definitely at the vanguard of eliminating media at retail. It's Hollywood's backyard and they want everyone streaming everything where they get a higher cut of the profits.

As soon as streaming in most other parts of the world becomes commonplace like the US, then they’ll disappear as well. Notice no movies in other countries has a digital code.

Canada ain't far behind, sadly.
Though here in Ottawa we do have a Sunrise. Not really well maintained but it's something!

Gone are the days when I'd be on Yonge Street in Toronto and be able to hit up Tower, HMV, Sunrise, World's Biggest Bookstore and Sam the Record Man all within 5 minutes walking from one another.
(And then the other Sunrise five blocks up the road )

Ironically, Sunrise has actually owned HMV in the uk since 2019. Purchased in a bankruptcy proceedings.


https://www.ft.com/content/9d0946f2-...b-ff8ef2b976c7
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKCN1PU0M6


Wonder why the sunrise retail record shops have not been changed to HMV (yet).

Likely the primary difference between Sunrise and HMV, was that HMV had a lot more debt on their books which Hilco was not able to service from revenue alone. (Hilco owned HMV in the uk previously).

Unknown how much debt Sunrise currently has on their books.


(IIRC, unservicable debt was also what killed off Tower Records back in the mid 2000s).

One of my favorite jobs was working at Sunrise on Yonge Street in Toronto. I got to take home all the free samplers, discovered a whole lot of amazing music and, also, got to organize the film section as the managers thought I would know more about movies because I had graduated from film school.

That's what that degree got me.

But that starts with consumers and retailers, who are cutting back their purchases of physical media, regardless of what the studios are doing. People are just not going out and buying them anymore and retailers are certainly not stocking a "library" to look through. If retailers don't stock it, what are consumers going to do? Go on amazon and wait 2 days, or just pay $3.99 to rent it RIGHT THAT SECOND?

My local Best Buy decimated their media section, including games. The movies were maybe 100-200 across very open shelves in tieback of the store where the toys are. It's not a busy location, but damn, it was only new releases and some Disney catalog. I can't even think of a store in SoCal that has a selection worth browsing, except maybe Barnes and Noble. The days of aisles is long gone. I honestly think Goodwill now has a bigger selection of BDs at this point.

Heh.

This sounds like a corporate conspiracy version of the "tail wagging the dog".

Even though their prices on new BDs/DVDs leave much to be desired, isn't there still an Amoeba Music in Los Angeles?

Yes in Hollywood. I went there last November. It’s a decent sized store, but I assume the rent is insane. A lot of product, but prices aren’t attractive. When I was there, most were browsing in Vinyl.

For BDs/DVDs at the San Francisco & Berkeley stores, the prices aren't great either.

The Berkeley store has also significantly paired down their BD/DVD section as well.

If I'm ever in the area of those stores, I always stop by to check out their used product.

Luckily, there are two other independent stores within a 30-50 mile radius that I frequent for new/used BDs/DVDs.

At the local Book Off stores, they don't even buy used DVDs anymore. For most common BDs, they'll pay about $0.50.

At least for me, I always have the memories of visiting, browsing and purchasing media (books, CDs and DVD/Blu-ray) at Sam’s the Record Man, HMV and the World’s Biggest Bookstore here in Toronto. I remember spending my weekends all the time especially during my Summer months. I spent a lot of my non rent/groceries money to physical media and something that just doesn’t exist anymore. Those aisles of books, CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays were something else.

My local Best Buy has reduced their Blu-ray copies to one of those middle aisle rack and the game aisle is a joke.

Those two spinning records were like the gates of heaven to me.

Here we are talking about racks or sections when, once upon a not very long ago, we had entire floors dedicated to genres and even sub-genres.

Worlds Biggest had such an amazing niece horror section. I'd just spend part of an afternoon reading the covers.

This week I have been thinking of upgrading my copy of Touch of Evil and opened up the case to see how the DVD looked. As I did, a receipt for Sam the Record Man fell out. $11.99. November / 2001.