I was thinking the same thing. What's going to happen to all that Russell Crowe memorabilia?

I still rent at Family Video. They're good for 4K releases.

Redbox is still around? They seem to have disappeared from every location (in two different parts of the U.S.) that I know had one.

there are a TON of Redbox locations near me in MA. It's a stupid number of boxes....

Only Red Boxes left in my area. I rarely rent from Red Box. Just doesn't have the same appeal.

Last video store in my area closed a few years ago. The owner was struggling to pay his rent due to the decline in rentals and chose not to renew his lease. Big loss in my area as he was around for 20+ years.

As for Blockbuster, I do honestly kind of miss going there. It was more for the experience of dropping in on a Friday or Saturday night and seeing if they had anything good.

Plenty of Redbox machines around here(never used one) but there's just something different about perusing a video store.

They deserve their fate for putting so many mom and pop operations out of business.

I've never actually used Red Box but I do miss browsing video stores.

The remaining stores, including the 2 closing in Alaska, essentially are mom and pop operations. There is no Blockbuster corporation, just some franchise owners that decided to remain in business.

It was such a good feeling driving down with family to blockbuster...then coming home and putting a dirty disc with boogers, fingerprints and cum stains into your player.

Ahhh those were the good ole days.

I’ve only used Red Box once. I thought it was going to have a wide variety of new releases. I was disappointed to find 4 or 5 relatively new releases and then a shit ton of crap. I ended up walking away empty handed and haven’t been back since.

I too miss browsing brick and mortar video rental stores. There was just something about the fun atmosphere (ironically, once Blockbuster monopolized video stores that fun atmosphere disappeared). As a kid, I used to love browsing the horror section and seeing the cool VHS cover art for all those 80s horror flicks.

At this point in my life, ALL of my rentals come through Amazon Prime. I still blind buy blu-rays for movies I’m fairly certain I’ll view more than once but that’s becoming rarer and rarer.

In fairness, the boogers and fingerprints are all that arrived from Blockbuster. The cum stains happened once you got the disc home.

Hey, you rent something like The Gift (2000) you know what you're getting into.

I'm sure the VHS days had it rougher with some parts being rewound over and over.

I remember hearing stories of VHS copies of Fast Times at Ridgemont High always having a worn out spot in one part of the movie.

I just read they still have to pay a licensing fee to Dish network. I imagine that's lower than the franchise fee.

I really can’t think of a time I brought home a disc that was gross or stained with a bunch of crap. At most some scratches or the plastic stickers they put on top sometimes peeled or had air pockets.

Redbox if like having a video store on every corner. If that video store only let one customer in at a time and you had to sit and wait while morons weigh if they want to rent Emoji Movie or some Norman Reedus straight to video crap.

To me, the smudges got worse as DVDs became more popular. I remember the first couple years of renting DVDs they were mostly treated well and were rarely scratched. About the time blockbusters started closin down it seemed like renters stopped giving a shit and a lot of the DVDs I would get would be so scratched and smudged almost to the point of unplayability. Back when I used to get the discs in the mail from Netflix, it was the same way. I ended up sending a handful of discs back because they were unplayable.

NBC Nightly News did a feature on the last store

They made a documentary about the last Blockbuster. I bought a Blu-ray copy of it and a t-shirt from the last Blockbuster to help support them. https://bendblockbuster.com/

Netflix should carry it on their streaming service

Hope it’s rated NC-17.

Are there any remaining Hollywood Videos left?

According to Wikipedia: "The last US Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video locations closed on July 31, 2010" I forgot that Movie Gallery acquired Hollywood Video.