

Blockbuster files for bankruptcy - cryptoz
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68M10320100923

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city41
Not to dance on someone's grave but to me this is fantastic news. When
Blockbuster was the dominate player, they were quite the nasty bully.
Ridiculously high late fees that were very hard to avoid. Half the time you'd
return the DVD on time, but the employees wouldn't inventory it until it was
too late and still hit you with a fee. A fee which they were extremely
reluctant to remove. Their customer service was downright awful. Before
Netflix came around I responded by stopping shopping at Blockbuster altogether
and just started buying my own movies. Even at $20+ a pop, it was still more
convenient and less stress filled than hoping Blockbuster would show you some
mercy.

I'm very glad to see the market can respond and a new player can come in with
a better business model and treat customers better, and win. It's reassuring.

~~~
nhebb
I never understood the concept of buying movies. How many times can you watch
the same damn thing?

~~~
avar
That's like asking how many times you can read the same damn book.

~~~
nkassis
I don't get it when people find it weird that I will reread some books
multiple times. I've read some books once every year or so and even my wife
thinks I'm weird. She's a serial book reader (150 books as of now for the
year, almost one a day) and will sell them as soon as she reads them, I don't
work that way even after she tries to push me into selling some books I just
can't.

~~~
Psyonic
What kind of books does she read, that she can read 150 in a 9 months And when
does she read these books? Good Lord! Unless she reads like Kim Peak... a page
in like 2 seconds, then I suppose 150 books is well within reason.

~~~
nkassis
She had the summer off before starting a master(in library science no less
;p). She also participated in a few 24 hour reading marathons. She has a blog
about stuff she reads: <http://talesandtreats.blogspot.com/>

~~~
Psyonic
Impressive list, definitely. Sounds like you have yourself an interesting
lady!

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cromulent
And some background on the one big mistake that hastened their death by years:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2133995/>

~~~
liamk
From the article you posted:

"Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere $50
million, instead entering a disastrous home-delivery deal with Enron."

Wow...

~~~
AtTheLast
I'm so glad they didn't sell to blockbuster! I wish more companies would stick
with it and not sell to their competitors so early on.

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T_S_
This is a financial event, not an operational one. The debt holders will now
own the company and operations will continue on whatever trend is set. There
is no new technology trend in this story.

The businesses lesson is that Blockbuster was once an extremely hot startup,
then it became a big company able to issue large amounts of debt at favorable
rates. And now this.

Innovation destroys some businesses as it creates others. It can take a while
though.

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serverdude
Having worked at Netflix for 2 years (a fantastic performance driven culture -
at least 2 years back), I can say I am happy for them! Netflix vs BB is one of
the more fantastic David Vs Goliath stories of recent times!:)

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krschultz
I wouldn't go long on Barnes & Noble or Borders either.

~~~
robryan
It would be a sad day if you couldn't go to a local bookstore and randomly
browse/ buy books. Not that I'm against ebooks or online purchasing of
physical books as well as bookshops.

~~~
WillyF
Barnes & Noble and Borders aren't "local" bookstores. They already put most of
the local bookstores out of business. Now it's their turn to get run out of
business. Right now I can't imagine someone running Amazon out of business,
but I'm sure the day will come.

~~~
robryan
I guess it's possible once those stores are run out of business and smaller
operators can fill the need again for a niche space.

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sgoraya
Not a fan of blockbuster been using Netflix for a long time (I did jump ship
to blockbusters online service temporarily when it first came out - the
incentives were too good).

To get nostalgic for a second, I will miss the _experience_ of visiting the
movie rental stores. The excitement was palpable as a kid - walking the rows,
looking at all the movie covers, hoping that Dad would let me rent a game,
etc.

The social experience of walking around with other strangers, looking for the
entertainment of the evening...there was something fun and special about it
that Netflix will never capture.

...the convenience of netflix trumps that though ;-)

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gehant
Does anyone else find it interesting that they plan to restructure with the
intention of keeping ~3000 brick & mortar stores? Then they will try to re-
enter the ring and compete with the same digital, by-mail, on-demand, and
kiosk players that squeezed them out in the first place.

I feel like they would need to do an impressive reinvention of space use or
turn their real estate inventory into a revenue stream instead of the bloated
cost that is ends up being.

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joanou
In 1998 they tried to charge me for a late fee which I thought was not
correct. So, in a long line on Friday night at Blockbuster, I asked the
employee for the scissors where I promptly cut the card up and left it for
them on the counter. I never went back and was happier shopping elsewhere.
Then Netflix came around and I've been loyal to them ever since.

Losing customers by overcharging doesn't make for a good long-term strategy.

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labboy
I'm really really going to take that dusty old Blockbuster card out of my
wallet one of these days....

~~~
vegashacker
You don't need it, even if you do ever go back to a Blockbuster. You can just
show them your ID.

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brianbreslin
I just got an email from NCR telling me not to worry about Blockbuster
Express, that it is wholly owned by NCR, and will continue serving videos for
a while. So if NCR owned the express kiosks, wtf did blockbuster own that was
still valuable?

~~~
pyre
Blockbuster is sort of like 7-11. IIRC, most of the stores are franchisees.
NCR was probably just using Blockbuster's name and bargaining position with
the studios on the price of movies.

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dbrannan
I used to call them "Ballbuster" due to their late fee policy. They were worse
than taking out a loan from the the mafia, and eventually I started to avoid
them in favor of Netflix where I could return the DVD when it was convient for
me.

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marknutter
Congratulations, Netflix!

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danielha
Netflix is one of my favorite things in the world. I've been using it since I
was something like 11 years old.

I've still never had to purchase a cable subscription.

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charlief
Blockbuster Canada is unaffected by the U.S. bankruptcy and is still
financially stable

[http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100923/bankruptcy-
protect...](http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100923/bankruptcy-
protection-100923/)

I wonder how the US and Canada businesses diverged, maybe less competition in
Canada.

~~~
cryptoz
There's no Hulu in Canada. Until this week (or was it last week?) there was no
Netflix either. Now that we have netflix, I doubt Blockbuster Canada has long
to live.

You might not believe it, but Canada is _way_ behind the USA when it comes to
the Internet, media, movies, mobile communication, and all of that. As we
slowly catch up, traditional stores like Blockbuster will fail.

~~~
jp_sc
But is not Canada who is behind. Media producers are way behind the Internet
in general.

~~~
smokinn
It's definitely Canada that's behind.

Sure, the media producers are behind but so is everything else. It's recently
been decided by the CRTC a few months ago that Bell will be allowed to apply
metered billing for their wholesale resellers. Those were the last companies
that would offer unlimited internet packages. Once this finally gets applied
there will be no way, anywhere in Canada, to get a consumer-level Internet
connection that does not have a bandwidth cap. Insane.

And there are other examples too. Why do all American internet stores need to
create a whole separate store (amazon.ca, newegg.ca) before they sell to
Canada? Because of Canadian laws and regulations. There's a LOT of reform
needed in the Canadian technological sector if we're ever going to catch up to
the rest of the world. Right now we're behind and only getting further.

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jfb
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

------
michaelhalligan
A blockbuster employee once stole some dvds I returned, and destroyed my
credit.

To this news, I sing, "We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn!".

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jw84
What's funny is that they just recently entered into a partnership agreement
with NCR to buy up DVDplay and replaced all the newer, more compact, and
better designed DVDplay boxes with crappier, buggier, and bulkier Blockbuster
boxes.

So their copycat of Redbox sucked. Their copycat of GameStop in-store video
game sections sucked. Their copycat of Netflix sucked. It's like watching a
kid trying too hard to become an adult. We're post-Sharper Image now, B&Ms: do
something meaningful.

~~~
Psyonic
What's wrong with their copycat of Netflix? I was a subscriber for the past
few years until recently, and never had a problem. It was actually cheaper
than Netflix for me, blu-rays were included for free, and I got 5 in-store
trades a month for spur-of-the-moment selections. Perhaps their collection is
a bit smaller, but it's definitely big enough for most people. It rarely
disappointed me, and I have film friends recommending esoteric movies for me.

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sabat
Outside of the fact that Blockbuster was often not a very nice company: did it
really have to turn out this way? I think it didn't have to end in bankruptcy.
Someone will eventually write a whole screed about missed opportunities (e.g.
expanding beyond movies, early strong internet presence) and the reasons BB
management missed them (stuck in the '80s?). But I'm sure a smarter team would
have capitalized on the future instead of ignoring it.

~~~
nkassis
Well it hasn't ended, they can still come out of this but they will never be
the pre-Netflix BB.

