“The End of an Era”
Photo by Pixabay: A pile of VHS tapes.
By Scott Hamilton
I can still remember the excitement when our family got our first video cassette recorder (VCR). There were two options on the market, the VHS and the Beta, which each had their advantages. The VHS was a larger tape, but it was based on an industry standard, and the Beta was a much smaller tape, had higher quality video encoding and was probably the better technology, but it was not an industry standard. Thankfully we went the route of the VHS, probably because it was less expensive. It was only a few years later that Beta was no longer available.
Our initial excitement was that we could record the “Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Muppet Show,” which both aired during our Sunday evening church service, and watch it later. No individual really thought about the VCR as a way of bringing new entertainment to the home, at least not initially. The big selling factor was recording live TV for viewing later. In 1977, the year the VHS player released, there were only three American films available: “The Sound of Music,” “Patton,” and “M*A*S*H.” However, it did not take long for this new genus of home entertainment to take the industry by storm. In fact, the technology dominated the home entertainment industry for almost three decades.
This industry led to a new type of store; in 1985 Blockbuster Video opened their first stores, renting videos to homes and businesses. The company saw mass expansion throughout the 1990s until it reached its peak in 2004, employing 84.300 people in 9,094 stores worldwide. In 2014 the last 300 Blockbuster stores closed their doors for the last time. This was due in part to growing competition from Netflix and RedBox.
There was another major change in the home entertainment industry that occurred during the peak of the video rental boom. The invention of the Digital Video Disk (DVD). This technology led to the end of the VHS tape. The DVD, first released in 1990, began to gain popularity shortly after release, mainly due to the smaller size and ease of use. There was no more waiting for the tape to rewind so you could watch the movie again. You could jump to any scene in the film at a moment’s notice. It took until March 14, 2006, for VHS to fully die as a home entertainment media, when “A History of Violence” became the last major movie released on VHS.
RedBox was founded in 2002 and originally owned by the McDonald’s Corporation; their main focus was to offer DVD sales and rentals through automated vending machines. They also offered a mail order service for DVD rentals. The new thin and easy to handle DVD made all of this possible, and it became difficult for stores like Blockbuster to compete. However, RedBox’s time in the spotlight was short-lived with the release of the latest technology in home entertainment – the video streaming service, which was conceived by NetFlix.
Netflix started pretty much just like their main competitor, RedBox. They were both offering home delivery via mail of DVD entertainment. RedBox was charging per movie rental while NetFlix chose to make a subscription service. Netflix offered packages based on the number of DVDs one could have in their possession at any given time. The lowest cost of these plans allowed you to rent a single DVD, keep it as long as you wanted, and have another sent on its return for a monthly subscription fee. This meant for about the cost of a single rental at RedBox, you could watch about ten movies in a given month with NetFlix.
NetFlix became the pioneer in video streaming services with the release of its on-demand streaming service on January 16, 2007, and is now the most subscribed to streaming service in the world. RedBox attempted to follow in their path but was not nearly as successful, mainly because NetFlix paid very large royalties for exclusive release of many of the most popular films. This made it very difficult for any competition in the market. In fact it was not until very recently that NetFlix had any real competition, and most if it comes from the film industry directly. With Disney and Paramount offering their own services, NetFlix can no longer get the exclusive rights to many popular films.
This brings me to the inspiration for the walk down memory lane. This last week RedBox filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, likely ending one of the last surviving DVD rental businesses and bringing about the end of an era in home entertainment. Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@te**********.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.
