orangerunner

Two more Rogers Video stores are closing in the next week or two in Richmond, BC, Canada. Two years ago there were five of them, now they're down to one.

That last store is the final stand-alone video store in a city of 180,000 people.

Hard to believe how quickly things have changed!

whotony

Well, ok thanks for the update. I thought this was going to be two more additional companies closing, not just two locations of a current store still open even if only on location left.

Spottedfeather

With the internet, you don't really need rental stores anymore. Video stores haven't been cool since they got rid of VHS. Renting dvds just isn't the same. Not to mention that the discs don't always work. I don't recall renting a tape that didn't work.

Patman

I remember the days of getting VHS tapes that had been "eaten" by previous renter's VCRs and the video/audio looking and sounding crappy. And then you pop out the VHS tape, and look at the tape itself (push in the tape cover security button, and flip open the tape cover), you'd see some damage to the edges of the tape when that usually happened.

Jay G.

Besides normal wear, tapes were broken all the time. Tracking issues, places where the video was all out of whack because someone had paused there for too long, etc.

davidh777

^Sometimes the, er, adult scenes would get fuzzy from continual replay, slow-mo, etc.

RickWJ324

I'll never forget renting a horror movie on VHS back in the mid-80's and when it got to the ending and a killer was about to be revealed it skipped to a recording of some random tv show!! Some idiot recorded over it!! I popped the tape out and noticed that the tape still had the 'record tab' on it (retail movies should have that tab broken off). I was mad as heck but then just kind of laughed it off. When I returned it to the video store I told them about the issue and got the feeling that they were looking at me like I did it!? Ahhh.. the good old days of VHS.

Alan Smithee

In "Video" magazine, I read (this was back when most VHS tapes had several minutes of blank tape after the end of the movie) someone was renting new releases and recording homemade porn on the blank space, recognized as being at a nearby motel. Someone at a video store caught it when they let a tape run to the end, the magazine mentioned "Customers likely didn't notice since most stop watching a tape when the gaffer's name appears anyways." If I had rented any of them I would've seen it

ProfessorEcho

I got one of these once from a rental at the old Wherehouse store on Sunset and La Brea in LA. After the movie ended there were a few seconds of black screen and then a porn scene started to play. I don't think it was homemade though, I think someone just duped a scene or two from an actual porn film. I mentioned it when I returned the tape the next day, but the clerk was more interested in knowing if there were any hot guys in the scene. I told him I wasn't inclined to notice, so he said he would check it out himself. The tape was back on the rental shelf the next time I visited. Ah, the adventures of VHS renting!

Abob Teff

Still bitter that you fell for the "DVD rewinder" joke, aren't you?