As a collector of movies and music, it saddens me that so many movie and music stores went out of business. I hate how things are today with all the streaming. I like to own physical media.

I worked at a small town Blockbuster from 1995-2000. 2002, I got pulled over for speeding, but the cop recognized me from Blockbuster and let me off with a warning. From 2009-2018, I had moved to the next big city over, but as soon as I moved back, as I'm filing my change of address form at the post office, the postal clerk recognized me as "the Blockbuster guy", almost two decades later.

Miss the days me and my family would go to the video store to rent movies usually on a Sunday afternoon, and watch it until late, fond memories indeed 😥

I REALLY miss our local family video.. it was so fun to go pick out 5 favorites on a Friday or Saturday night. I will always cherish those memories

I'm old enough to have experienced both renting from the video store and working at one. Another sad loss from rental stores disappearing is it was a great way for teenagers to dip their feet into the job market. Here in Northern IL, we had a local shop called Video Unlimited. From the mid-1980s until around 1998, it was a Friday ritual to go there, rent a couple movies and games, then go next door and pick up our Little Caesars pizza. Sadly, Hollywood Video moved in across the street and it was over for Video Unlimited by then. Last movie we ever rented from the local shop was Starship Troopers.

The best thing about physical video rental stores is a lot of them had older or harder to find videos that you just don't see on streaming services. You could find some really odd, niche, and cult shows and movies back in the 90s at your local video store. The closest we came to it in the recent 2000s was when Netflix actually rented DVDs and had lots of hard to find movies. Last I checked a few years ago Netflix still rented physical DVDs and still had some of those rare movies, but as the DVDs were progressively more damaged from use they just stopped replacing them so even that era is coming to an end.

I live in Tucson, AZ and we are so lucky to still have the legendary Casa Video. Not only did they survive the dawn of streaming, but remarkably the pandemic lock down as well. Their incredible selection of art house, foreign, rare and random vhs and dvds always fit comfortably alongside the current mainstream releases. Browsing is always half the fun, and they have movies that I've searched for online exhaustively but still have never come across. Casa Video is a true gem, I hope it remains a meaningful community hub for decades to come!

Our only video rental store in the small town of Kaysville UT was locally owned Cosmos Video. My family growing up could not afford a VHS player, so it was a special treat to rent one on a Friday night, that we had to return on Saturday. It was great, because we only had like 4 or 5 TV channels at the time, so renting movies to watch with no commercials was a real treat!

I remember as a kid my dad buying a basic VCR for like $600, and movies were about $7 - $10 for rentals or $80 to purchase. Now you can get a Blue Ray DVD player for less than $50, and new movies for $20.I also remember when Block Buster was on its last legs. You could pay $20 a month for unlimited rentals at two out at a time. I still have my membership card!

I worked for 11+ years in Video Rentals. Different companies (not my fault they kept closing. I was right at the tail end of Video rental stores.) But I loved every minute of that career.

The small scale stores were always the favorite. Partly because it was these Video stores that had those "Special" sections usually in the back. Those of us who were underage always had our plans to sneak into those sections. And just looking at the covers was enough. Then we celebrated becoming 18 so we don't have to sneak into those sections anymore. Another type of Video store that's an endangered species is the Adult Video Stores. A local favorite in San Diego was F-Street Stores. Just about every downtown had 2 or 3 of these stores. Those were the days indeed.

I noticed when the video store disappeared a vending machine popped up outside the shopping centre. Of course by then it held DVD’s and didn’t hold anywhere near the amount that the old video store did. It has also disappeared now. Looks like everything is becoming obsolete now days. Thanks Rhett. ❤️Jodie 🇦🇺

I worked for blockbuster for a while when I was barely an adult. I loved the job perk of free rentals, including one new release each week. We also got to pick one movie to play on the screens each week if we worked on Monday or Tuesday (our boss figured since they were the slowest days we didn't have to just play new releases). It really grew my love of movies as I was exposed to so many different movies and genres in addition to talking with movie enthusiasts.

I had memberships with Hollywood Video, Blockbuster Video, a locally owned place called Discount Video, another local place who's name escapes me, and a couple of grocery stores that rented videos. The last time I recall renting a video from a store, was in the late '90s. By about 1997, the local public library had begun carrying movies. And so I started getting them there, because they were free. The library switched to DVDs (obviously) a couple of years later. And to this day, they still get new releases every few weeks. But I haven't watched a DVD in close to 5 years. My DVD player just sits and collects dust.😁

Oh I miss picking out a movie with my girlfriends on a Friday night and getting that huge bag of popcorn ❣️ As always, thank you for reminding me of simpler times and all the great memories ❣️😊 Blockbuster was our go to video store.

I was born in 2004 and I had many VHS tapes as a kid. I also remember going to Blockbuster many times, and my local library used to have VHS tapes you could check out. Then, one day, they were replaced with DVDs. I’m glad I got to experience those things, even if it was just for a few years.

My local favorite in Lafayette, Louisiana was Alfalfa's. One thing I remember was how excited I would be when I saw there were rental boxes behind the display boxes when I would get to rent a Nintendo game. I must have rented Legend of Zelda ten times. Thanks for the great videos and the memories!

Great video! As a kid of the late 90s & early 2000s, I vividly remember going to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video for video games. We had two Hollywood’s near our house but only 1 Blockbuster, and Hollywood always had better gaming sections. What’s interesting is I’ve never heard of the other stores in this video 🤔

We had a local store called Circus Video that, while it wasn't as cheap as Family Video in terms of rentals, the place felt like the lobby of a movie theater in how they decorated it. This also reminds me of a story about a dog I had named Odie. Odie was a dachshund, and he loved attention. One spring day mom took my sister and I to the Video store to rent movies (and for me games) when we kept hearing a car horn go off and people were gathering at the front of the store, laughing. Turns out, Odie figured out how car horns worked and kept bouncing off of it, even pushing on it when he noticed people looking at him. We got our rentals but we never left video store as fast as we did that day, lol.

I miss Blockbusters and the good old days. Sure, VHS movies were not widescreen and did not have bonus features like DVDs do, but it sure was fun going around the store looking at all the movies they had, and seeing ones I never saw or heard of before. If only there was a way to go back in time.

I grew up in a small town with a small family-owned video rental store. Absolutely loved going there, picking out a movie or two and a video game for the weekend. The shop had photos of customers decorating the walls, and my crush was in one of the photos. After seeing that photo walking into that store made my heart race with excitement but also the bittersweet pang of being crazy for a girl who barely knew I existed. That store has been closed for decades, I’m a middle aged man now, but I can still see that picture in my memory and remember the feeling of walking between those shelves, excited for a fun weekend of movies and video games, wondering if my crush would walk through the door at any moment.

My favorite was on Fridays when I got out of school hurrying to the local video store to get the latest movie released and watch it, sometimes more then once before I had to return it on Sunday. I miss those days so much!! I just stumbled on your channel and have really enjoyed it! Thank you for reminding me how great the 70's, 80's and 90's really were! Man I miss those days!!

I worked in video stores for 12 years when I was younger. I remember when people would sometimes damage their tapes and scream bloody murder when we told them the cost to replace it was $79.99. It's true, though, that's how much new video releases would go for back in the day. And if people rented a few movies and they were 3 or 4 days late, they would charged "additional rental fees" (just a different way of saying "late charges"), and it would cost them $20, 30 or more. Those were the people who never came back, after refusing to pay. And how about membership fees just to be able to rent them at all? The first store I worked at charged $35; but the store down the road cost $75 for a "lifetime membership". Whose life? None of those stores even exist anymore.

I don't know how widespread it was, but in Southeastern Virginia we had a chain called "Video Update." I think the company went into bankruptcy and many of the locations became Movie Gallery stores. Thanks for the great trip down Memory Lane!

I became a member of Hollywood Video when it first opened locally in 1997. I remembered renting a lot of anime titles on VHS in the late '90s. The thing I liked most about Hollywood Video was that they offered a free video rental (excluding new releases) on your birthday, and I took full advantage of that every year until the location closed in 2009.

When I started with Curtis Mathes in 1982 we had 84 videos in our VHS library, when I left in 1986 we had 8,400. We were the first video club in Durham NC to go to $1.00 a night for all titles, Blockbuster hated us for that!

This was great and brought back lots of memories. I remember going to Blockbuster and a smaller local chain called 48 Hour Video. Friday or Saturday night were always movie night. Part of the fun in going to these places was being there with your date, having physical merchandise to look at, and running into friends from the local area. Streaming has really killed the socialization we once had. Oh well. Still a great video 👍

I miss the days of the video store. I remember going to the store and renting a VCR and movies. The VCR used to be encased in hard plastic to protect the machine during rental from damage. Made it heavy. That was before we got a VCR of our own. Loved to go to the video store and spent an hour just looking for movies to rent. Sadly the last local video store closed in my home town about 5 years ago. I miss those days that are gone forever. Love the videos you put out reminding those who remember those days you highlight.

I'm impressed that one store in Australia is still open. Now THAT'S dedication!!!!

I went to Family Video for years and never noticed that there was a discreet adult section. In the store it looked like a passageway for employees, but one day sitting at the traffic light out front I glanced over and saw the letters high on the wall that marked the passageway. At first I thought that a store calling itself "Family" and having an adult section was a contradiction, but then I realized that adults are part of the family, too. Incidentally, I had my first Marco's Pizza last night and it was very good. I'd never bothered with it before.

I remember a lot of Saturday nights in the 1990s wandering around the local Blockbuster searching for videos to watch. A bit of trivia: in the neighborhood I live in in SoCal is located the last Mom and Pop video rental store. It still rents out movies!

Thanks for the video. I'm from South Africa and my grandmother used to work in a video store (I used to help her out after school). Miss the days of video stores (it was an experience).

I remember right next to Hollywood Video there was a video game store called Game Crazy. It was basically like Gamestop but I loved going in there to look at the games. Also rented games from Blockbuster too. Great times.

We had a place called PS Video in Wisconsin in the 80s and like you said new releases were always out. I'll never forget some of the horror VHS boxes as a kid which scared the crap out of me. I remember we rented Teen Wolf Too when we were at our cabin, my dad played it through the camcorder since we didn't have a VCR there. Years later my brother got a job at Hollywood video, the company was so nice though they lost a lot of money I think, people would rent tons of movies and never pay late fees or return them and they'd let it slide. I really liked Family Video also, older movies were only $1 to rent. Sadly they closed but the Marco's Pizza is still open. Streaming and Netflix killed it all. I'm starting to buy some old clamshell vhs's on eBay. Love your channel and nostalgic content! Brings back great memories.

We had Hollywood video, several block busters, family video and movie gallery but we never went to them. We favored the mom and pop video places. In our area it was Video Varieties, or Newark Video. Wow, so many memories.

Blockbusters model of dvds by mail that you could exchange in store was so awesome! I already miss the days of picking out movies to watch at my local video store!

When I was a kid growing up in Hugo MN There was a video store named Country Video Store. Tiny but so much fun and a nice selection of movies. The owner would save movie posters for me when he took them down for the new ones. I am 51 now and such great times back then.

Hollywood Video was my go to Video rental store when I was a kid, in fact, there was a Hollywood video store nearby the Albertsons grocery store near my house. I almost went there all the time. It closed down several years ago, and now it became a paint shop, but I still have my fond memories of the place. Hollywood Video will always have a special place in my heart ❤️

I remember getting videos from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and Budget Video good times,glad I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s.

The last rental i made was in 2008 in Port Hardy. It was a "Movie Gallery", and it shut down in 2009!

This subject always saddens me. We never had a Blockbuster in town, here. The nearest one was 30 minutes away, & instead our big local chain was Movie Gallery. Movie Gallery put all 3 mom & pop video stores here, outta business. Then Movie Gallery went under here, cause of Redbox. I loved those mom & pop video stores. We had 3, Imagination, Main Street Video, & Video Village. I still recall the feel & smell of those places. Seeing all the terrifying horror VHS covers! Memories!!! Today's youth missed out.

I used to love walking around the video store looking for movies. Sometimes the box cover would look really good but you'd get it home and the movie would be horrible. But that was the fun of picking them out and taking a chance. When Movie Gallery and Blockbuster closed down they sold off their inventory super cheap so I bought a bunch of videos of really bad horror movies. Still have them and still love them.📼😆

Man, I haven't thought about Rick's Video in a long time. Thank you for shouting him and Movies Etc. out, cause it was a nice blast of nostalgia for me.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was when my parents would get a movie home and find out that the person before us didn't rewind the video. My mother would always call them a "piss ant" while getting up to rewind the tape herself. lol

I miss video rental stores, those were the good days ! I remember going to Blockbuster renting video games and movies on friday nights !

I worked for MOVIE GALLERY during high school and college ! During college I was a manager and absolutely loved working for the company!!!

Hollywood video was one of my first jobs, I worked with my best friend. Really great memories.

There is nothing like physically going out on the weekends and pick out movies to watch. Be kind please rewind 😆. We even had a stand alone vhs rewinder. . I remember the whole family used to split up in the store and roam to find movies. It's unfortunate those days are over. I need to check out the last blockbuster sometime 👍✨✨✨ we want more 80s videos rhetty!

I remember the curtain door, in the back of the family video. I think everyone wanted to go back there... to see what special videos were being hidden. However, you didn't want to get caught coming out of that back room! 😂

I miss going in blockbuster back in the 90’s when I was a little boy

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! In my family, Blockbuster was king. My family also rented VHS and sometimes BETA MAX machines for the weekend in the early days. We finally convinced dad to buy us one, and he wanted to get a beta max machine!!! We all said in unison, "We're buying a VHS machine". Thank God he listened!

I like that there is still a "Jumbo Video" still located in my city for a looong time. I remember it used to rent PC games and other video games back in the day, actually still rents modern console games. My Cousin and I rented Duke Nukem 3D and that was like my first PC game ever. Now it does a lot of of buy/sell with it's rentals as well. I prefer to just buy myself but TV series can be rented too which is handy if you have trouble finishing a collection.

Cool that you added some Canadian ones in. You neglected to mention Jumbo Video it was one of the biggest chains here in the late 80s and 90s. My hometown London, Ontario has the last one in all of Canada and one of the only stores still renting dvds still around.

The Wherehouse, (which also sold CDs, cassettes, and music related merchandise and magazines) depending on the physical location, would rent VHS, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Atari Lynx, Game Gear and Game Boy games. I loved it there!

I live in San Francisco. Before the Quake of `89, every Friday I would walk to the public library on my lunch hour to check out several VHS (for free) to watch over the weekend, to be returned on Monday. The quake badly damaged the library and was closed for a long time. My favorite video store was in North Beach in the Coppola building. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola owns an iconic triangular shaped building on Columbus Avenue near the Transamerica building. On the first floor was a store that had all the hidden gems and cult classics that larger video stores wouldn't carry.

In the earliest years of my life we had both a Hollywood Videos store and a Blockbusters store near me. I would get to go to Hollywood Videos specifically very often with my family and I remember renting vhs tapes of shows like the original Pokémon anime and a good amount of Random House home video tapes (I still love that logo to this day). That location also had a Game Crazy store next to it and that is where me and my siblings rented video games. The locations closed in the mid 2000's when I was still really young (I was born in 1998) but we were lucky enough to still have the rental boxes for Mario Party 5 and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour with the Hollywood Videos logo on the back of the boxes (these games I remember we bought, very likely they were the last ones available which is why I have the boxes). My Blockbusters is obviously closed as well and I do remember renting an Arthur film there once but Hollywood Videos for me was a great store I was lucky enough to grow up with.

In my home town of Roanoke Rapids, NC we had a video rental store called Video Stereo. They rented videos and sold stereo equipment for home and cars. I had them in stall a Kenwood cassette deck, a Blaupunkt (not sure I spelled it correctly) EQ and 120 watt 4 channel amp with 2 Phillips 6×9 speakers in my 1971 Corvette. By the mid 90's they had either 3 or 4 locations. But by the early 2000's they were out of business. I still have great memories of going there.

I remember the actor James Doohan once made an appearance at some local video store where my family was living near St. Louis at the time. It was probably 1984, so I was pretty little, but I got my photo taken with him while sitting on his lap. I do remember that he was very nice.

I remember not only renting movies and games from Blockbuster but I also remember renting movies from my local library. Those are fond memories I'll never forget.

That would be all of them.

I never forget "Video Town" back in the '80's. I also remember a video store in the grocery called "M & J"s.

The mom and pop video stores were the best. I remember a little video shop in my home town that my friends and i went to in the late 80s and we were so excited to rent Faces of Death. What a time. 7-Eleven got into the video rental game in the late 80s they called it movie quick. Didn't last long. Great memories.

We had a movie gallery , blockbuster, movie connection, movie factory years ago.

Great video! I really enjoyed Hastings Entertainment video store! I remember going and picking out a movie rental or two, browsing the cds, buying posters for my wall and looking at books! It was such a great store! I miss those good ol days!

"Movies To Go" was the first movie rental place my family had a membership to. We bought our VCR at the rental store too.

my hubby loves going to pawn shops, dollar stores and book stores that sell used vhs, dvds, blue rays, etc and finds some real gems. he even gets some on line. so, you all can keep getting your physical media. dont give up.

Anyone remember what movies were available behind the curtain to the back room? Lol. Parents forbid us to go back there or make eye contact with anyone emerging from the nether regions behind the curtain. 🤣🤣

As a teenager in Paris Texas we had a Hastings. Loved renting movies buying records and tapes or other cool collectables. I miss Hastings.

I missed the Movie Gallery here in my small town. Greatest joy of the weekend was going to rent some movies and meeting friends there. Thanks for bringing back the good memories. Oh yes how could I forget Redbox. But the local video store was the best. Had one called ABC VIDEO. OASIS VIDEO. And yes the grocery store video shop.

I worked at a video store in Bloomington IL named "Finnegan's Video" in the early 90s. Still one of the funnest jobs I've had. Still remember people freaking out over the store having an "adult section".

This is makes me so sad. I used to go to music stores like Tower Records and loved it. I still enjoy collecting DVDs, CDs,etc… I also had a blockbuster store close by my house but it closed down years ago. I miss it so much. Streaming and all is just not the same. There were Bradley Video stores and Hollywood Video stores too. One of my brothers worked at one and enjoyed it a lot. He even bought home movies for our family to watch too. The sweet old memories. I am getting nostalgic😰. Love these videos! It brings me back in time and makes me both happy and sad. New subscriber here.

Renting video games for the weekend was my childhood in the 90's. The first video store near me was called "Latest and Greatest Video" and I still remember much of its appearance.

You have a photo of my all time favorite video store, Captain Video! It’s in San Mateo, California where I grew up. It was on the other side of town from us so I didn’t get to go very often, but when I did it was a real treat. It was the only video store in town where you could rent all of the Wrestlemania videos! I remember begging my mom to drive me down there… sometimes it worked. When I saw your photo, I had to look them up to see if they are still there, and they are! I’ll have to stop by and visit next time go back home. Great video by the way!

I loved going to rent videos at a mom and pop store called Loko Video next to El Pollo Loco in Reseda, CA. After they closed, across the street opened one called Movies and More, then there was 20/20 video. Later I enjoyed Hollywood Video and they had a small section that was like a GameStop. I was never a big fan of blockbusters video but I did rent from them. I have to say the best was the mom and pop stores. Those were the days. Oh yeah 7-11 use to also rent videos, I rented Top Gun from them.

I remember as a kid going to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Sometimes we’d also go to Family Video.

I grew up with movie gallery in chattanooga. Loved it and the local stores my family frequented. Then there was the video stores in grocery stored. The 90s were an awesome time

In my small town of Oroville we had a small video store called Cinema Videos. It was the only one in town that rented VHS and VHS players. I would go there every weekend and rent 10 videos and a player for the weekend. Sadly, they went out of business when Blockbuster Videos came to town. All the small private video stores closed because they couldn't keep up with the prices and enormous selections at Blockbuster. I really miss the small privately owned video stores. Remember, back then we had dial up internet. So no Netflix, no streaming, no online rentals etc. You can go to the theater or rent VHS movies.

We had rented many videos & video games from our neighborhood Blockbuster Video, right up to the time my father passed away back in 1990. 📼

Wow - Moore, OK. That's where I live today! Cool. Don't forget about Hasting's Entertainment. Competed against Blockbuster in our area and was a blast to visit on Friday nights and the weekend with friends!

Our local videostore just closed down like 2 years ago. I only went there a handful of times, but my Fiancé has many childhood memories of going there and renting movies

You know the best thing about renting VHS tapes was that you could actually fast forward and skip all the commercials unlike when DVD came out and tried to force you to watch all the adverts. Even online when you have a paid subscription there are still adverts everywhere sometimes the ones you cant skip.

A friend of my first boyfriend worked at one of those mom & pop video stores in the mid-90s. His friend and the owners got robbed one night, but were OK.

Hollywood videos and Blockbusters were my childhood stories I use to go in them every day as kid to buy Vhs tapes in the early and mid 2000s.

HEB grocery had a video section in their store where you can rent vhs and a vcr. I saw First Blood like that. Later on HEB opened their own video rental separate from the grocery store. We also had Blockbuster and Hollywood Video as well. HEB was first ones that I can recall that you could rent older films for less than the new releases. And you always had to make sure the vhs tapes rewound with the saying "Be Kind Please Rewind" on the boxes. Many people had vhs rewinders for that purpose.

I miss those days. Spend an hour picking out movies then the rest of the night watching them. Good times

My favorites were BlockBuster and Hollywood Video. Favorite memories was renting your favorite movies so much they become a free rental after a certain amount of time back in the day.

I grew up with Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, and (one not mentioned) Hastings. Such nostalgia! ♥

Mr. Movies and Celebrity Video were my local video rental stores. We did have a Blockbuster too. I miss those days.

Hell. I remember when even 7-11 rented movies for a while. But they had the most limited selection ever. Which is probably why nobody I knew rented videos there.

Movies, Etc hung on as long as it could. Miss riding my bike there as a teen and renting whatever N64 selection they had at the time. The building remains but as with everything else, a Vape Store.

Video shops were awesome! Friday nights as a kid always ended in the video shop!

We had a local chain simply called Super Video. It was where we went to rent both movies and video games in our small town. The closest Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were in a neighboring town, 30 miles away. So it was a treat when we got to go to those but I always preferred Hollywood over Blockbuster. The building in our little town where Super Video used to be has been many businesses in the years since. But every time a business fails in that spot and they remove their sign, the old Super Video logo can been seen as it was painted directly on the building. I still carry my old Super Video rental card which was literally just a photocopy of their logo on colored printer paper with a spot where they would hand write in your "renter number" with a permanent marker.

We didn’t have a Blockbuster Video near my house until the early 90s. We have Video Zone, Tony’s Video and All Star Video. I remember as a kid my mom would rent a Beta Max for the weekend and turn it in with videos Monday before noon. Then we got a VCR and an Atari 2600 the same Christmas back in 1980 something.😊 Good times.👍🏾

When I moved to Exton, PA… one great memory was West Coast Video. It was a vhs, dvd and video game heaven.

I miss walking into blockbuster with my dad and renting movies those were the days.

Here in new zealand. Before civic, united and blockbuster videos came along we mainly had THE VIDEOSTATION. United video took over them in like 1987-88. Good ol days of vhs and beta

My favorite line from the small local video store employee was when you asked for a title they would respond “VHS or Beta?”

I miss video stores so much. I mean streaming is fast and easy. But nothing like a video store. Makes me sad they’re gone forever now.

i like seeing old tv shows on dvd at video rental stores that was fun

Movie Warehouse is the one that comes to mind for me....I had a video rewinder that looked like a red Corvette. Renting a video was a Friday night thing......