Blockbuster closing 600 stores on April 1st

[TheForce]

Just got word today that the last day to rent videos at Blockbuster will be This Thursday. They will be open in March for store wide retail sales of used DVD's and Games only. Prices will go lower as we get into the last days of March.

My local store just emptied out all certain studios like Disney and these are required to be returned to Disney for destruction. From what I was told the company is closing stores based on real estate lease renewals and my store's lease is up April 1. Another BB closed its dorrs here last month as it's lease was up last month. That seems to be the plan for the company wide store closings now.

We all knew this day would come since the company entered chapter 11 and had not done anything to reshape the financial picture of the company.

So that means I will be looking for an alternative way to rent BluRay DVD. I have been less than pleased with the very poor availability from Netflix so far. But then maybe I was just spoiled with the excellent service at Blockbuster. Too bad they didn't work out a way to make a profit.

I also will be looking for a better way to screen games as I had Game pass at Blockbuster which allowed me to rent as many games in the big 3 formats as I wanted two out at a time for a ridiculous $5 a month.

 

[Mr Tony]

our local BB has had a closing sale for like a month now

ironically a "Family Video" is coming to town soon. They're remodeling an old drug store

 

[satjay]

Blockbuster puts itself up for sale
Associated Press / Associated Press
Dallas — Movie rental chain Blockbuster Inc. says a group of investors is offering $290 million to buy it out of bankruptcy protection.

The group includes funds that are creditors in Blockbuster. It's a so-called "stalking horse" bid, which Blockbuster hopes will attract other bidders who will offer more.

Article that was in posted in our local paper


From The Detroit News: Blockbuster puts itself up for sale | detnews.com | The Detroit News

 

[TheForce]

Thanks satjay. I guess things will be heating up over the next 2 months. Meanwhile, most of the stores around here are closing down.

 

[Steve Mehs]

Not surprising. Blockbuster failed to innovate and now they soon will be gone. There are very few Blockbusters left around here, I've been a most that are left in the past few weeks, and the selection of movies is really poor. While they have plenty of new releases, there selection of older movies is anorexic at best and their Blu Ray selection is close to nonexistent. Family Video on the other hand seems to be doing pretty well, there used to be only one in the area, now I can think of at least 7. But I haven’t been to one.

 

[satjay]

There is one blockbuster just around the corner from us, the last video store standing. First were the "mom and pop" video stores to close about what 10-15 years ago. Recently Hollywood video went away, I guess next is blockbuster, I should pop in to the one by our house to see what its looking like. Note about the mom and pop video stores, there are couple left in our area dont know how they do it.

Kind of funny about Family video, I can remember the first one I went to about ten years ago in my college town, at that time I thought they were a "rural" thing, but there have been a few here and there in the city as well

If the video rental phase does move away from "stores" and goes to total kiosk or VOD type, nothing can replace the video store worker, always seems to be an intresting person working there

 

[Bodo Fenrirsson]

Has anything been said about their online video streaming service? I have one of their machines(2WIRE) for viewing videos online,I wonder if it will still be any good?

 

[TheForce]

Steve- I keep hearing the story of how Blockbuster failed to innovate but the few people who state specifics are quite incorrect on this. They say that Blockbuster didn't offer a video online service while in fact they did. They offered everything Netflix did almost the same time frame as Netflix and they offered better service back then with a program that allowed you the option of getting double movies out using a store return of the mailed DVD's. They had a streaming service on line about 6 months after Netflix started theirs. Here's what is known to investors on what Blockbuster failed to do- Carl Ichan was a controlling Board member when the company had the opportunity to buy out Netflix back when Blockbuster was doing well and Netflix was failing. He fought the board and refused claiming that the Netflix system would never work. Few years later Netflix took off leaving Blockbuster in the red dust. The failure of Blockbuster was not that it failed to innovate but that it allowed a new company to take the limelight away from them. Additionally, the actual financial picture at Netflix, while much more profitable than Blockbuster today, is still not very good. The stock has soared much to the delight of investors who played it right but it is all based on a projection of future profitability of the earnings. Companies with high P/E ratios are all very speculative and if the business model is shaky it can fall as quickly as it rose to power. Netflix has a very risky balancing act to maintain. They could be brought down to reality of a $12- $20 stock with a strong arm tactic from the studios, or from the ISP's. I doubt a competitor could affect them but the resources needed for Netflix to survive are what keeps the company barely in the black at this time. They are a three legged stool with only one leg that isn't yet vulnerable.

The inventory at Blockbusters varies. The store that I went to had a huge selection of both HDDVD and BluRays until HDDVD ended. Last week the BluRay selection occupied 15 shelves and a third of the wall shelves with new releases. They also had several thousand previously viewed BluRays ranging from $6.99 to $12.99. But, it was one of the largest Blockbuster stores in the area. It was a good deal for me with Movie/game pass and I'm sorry to see it go.

 

[TheForce]

Has anything been said about their online video streaming service? I have one of their machines(2WIRE) for viewing videos online,I wonder if it will still be any good?

I checked it out last evening and it is about the same as PQ as Netflix. I have the service on my OPPO BD93 and can review the previews of each movie. They do have new releases up in HD quality, same as Netflix but Netflix does not offer these until a 28 day delay. I also noticed that the service has some frame skipping but when I checked Netflix on the OPPO it also skipped frames. Netflix on PS3 and XBOX works fine. Blockbuster claims to work with the XBOX360 as well but I didn't try it last night. It has to be set up with a PC and windows Media server. Hoping the frame skipping issue is just with OPPO.

 

[mdram]

the one here closed up last year.
i think its more of redbox hurting them then streaming service, no need to drive the extra 15 miles when you can go to the convenience store and get soemthing

 

[TheForce]

Nice theory but Blockbuster was in financial trouble long before Redbox was known. Besides they also had the "BlueBox" system in some areas to compete with Redbox. Here, you'll see the two side by side at many places like CVS pharmacies.

You know, if Blockbuster corporate didn't assume they were untouchable they would have advertised these competitive services along side Netflix ad campaign. Also, they would have made their online service available on many devices like Netflix did. I used the term limelight because it became the perception that Blockbuster didn't offer these services. I recall a few years ago when Netflix was all the rage and I said I had the movie pass and could do 5 times the number of movies because I didn't have to use the mail. Most people refused to believe Blockbuster had this. You can look up my posts in the archives!

 

[mdram]

i have never looked into any of the online services, since as i have mentioned before, i am in an area not served by any high speed.
i have also never seen the blue box.
the only options i have are physical rentals or buying, i prefer to buy, so i am a bit out of the loop

 

[Peter Parker]

The thread title is misleading

So far they have announced 600 store closures which is a lot but the title makes it sound like the whole cahin folds on april 1-----which might happen but that has not yet been announced.

 

[Steve Mehs]

Netflix pioneered the DVD mail rental market, they pioneered the video streaming market as we know it today and Redbox pioneered the DVD vending machines. All while Blockbuster sat back and made half assed attempts to follow the leader and failed to market it. I have never seen Blockbusters version of Redbox, in fact never heard of it until a few months ago. And their mail service has a lot to be desired.

I had Blockbusters mail service before I had Netflix, it sucked big time. I had the two week free trial. The first three movies on my queue (and they weren’t big time new releases either) were the South Park movie, Wrong Turn and School of Rock. I got South Park:BLU a few days after I signed up, got School of Rock about a week later and was waiting on Wrong Turn. After 10 days, when I still didn’t get Wrong Turn, I canceled my trial period as I was completely unimpressed with the deathly slow arrivals. Those jerks at Blockbuster had the nerve to send me an email stating that I have one of their DVDs and if not returned in 5 days I’ll be charged full price for it. F’ Them! I didn’t even get the damn thing in the mail yet and they threaten to charge me! After that that I was done with Blockbuster. Screw ‘em! No wonder why they’re a failure.

 

[TheForce]

Misleading title? Yes, I agree. I should have said MY Blockbuster store closing April 1st. (Maybe a mod can fix that) But the actual closings are being based on store lease expiration or the Bankruptcy court shutting them down sooner. I found one of the last BB stores here in town that is not scheduled to close until later this summer. I may transfer my movie/game pass to them but they are 5 miles more travel. They have the longest running lease this year here in town. I'm going to check them out later today.

Blockbuster sat back and made half assed attempts to follow the leader and failed to market it.

Yes they followed the lead of Netflix but offered a better, not half "assed" variation to it with the store swap and combined with moviepass in store you could get several times as many new release movies that Netflix still to this day can't do. Marketing? Actually, they failed to advertise which is why so many people were just unaware of the advantage of Blockbuster over Netflix. Your personal experience with dispute with an employee is, well, personal. I don't like one person at Dish Network CSR but I don't hold it against the company. I just filed a formal complaint about the employee and left it to them to do what they wanted with him.

 

[TheForce]

Update- The remaining store after Friday in this area is pretty nice but I have to travel 6 additional miles. Same price, same deal for movie game pass of 2 out at a time. The Manager said he was told this store will remain open unless the company is sold off or closes but they had no plans to close it and will renew the lease. He showed me the company just upgraded all their monitors to HD LCD/LED and blu ray players. On the down side this store has about 2/3 the BluRay and Game inventory. So, unless that changes, I'm sure the availability will be less. I can cancel at any time so hopefully, a few more months may allow me to continue to have the best deal going for movies and games.

 

[Steve Mehs]

I’m guessing offering in store movie rentals for Blockbuster Online subscribers was a way of cheaping out. Much easier and cheaper to let subscribers rent a few movies a month at the store instead of building more large distribution centers all around the country to improve shipping and turn around times. It must not have been that big of an advantage since Nextflix spanked Blockbuster in the DVD mail rental market. Personally I'd rather have faster turn around times then a token DVD every now and then.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

So far they have announced 600 store closures which is a lot but the title makes it sound like the whole cahin folds on april 1-----which might happen but that has not yet been announced.

Yeah, just saw this thread and will fix the title.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

We had two Blockbusters, and now have one. But it has been going downhill rapidly. When it leaves, we will have two "Family Videos" and those vending machines, and that will be it.

 

[TheForce]

Thanks for fixing the title.

I forgot to also post that this week an investor group has offered to purchase Blockbuster for $290M and keep remaining stores open. Blockbuster said they are considering the offer but would like to see if there are other bids as well. Additionally, they said the court has the final say on the offer.