Question however, why on earth would you want to own 1941?

Here is what I ended up buying

My Neighbor Totoro
Re-Animator
Tekkon Kinkreet
Gerry
1941
Henry V (Brannagh version)
Dead Alive
Lifeforce
Sexy Beast (I think I might already own this one)
El Aura
Y Tu Mama Tambien
After the Wedding
Save the Green Planet
District 13
Grizzly Man
The Pledge
Fido (I think I might have already own this one)
Iron Monkey
Star Wars – Ewok Adventures (Both movies on one disk)

Not a bad haul now I’ll wait till the 2nd last or last day and then I’ll hit it when everything is 80% off. I could have probably waited as most of these might not have sold with the general crowd that frequents the store but I didn’t really want to risk missing a few of these.

I almost bought Thirst but I had seen it already and both Che disks. They were more pricey so I cut those 3 out. Maybe they will still be there when I go back.

I know, I could likely do that with the Netflix setup as it stands now. That’s fine, I’ll get there. But right now I love having my different stacks of DVDs to choose from at home – my colection, my new additions to the collection, my zip.ca envelopes (Canada’s Netflix), my rentals, scattered screeners, etc. It keeps my pickings wide and usually pretty fresh.

There are IP spoof tools that work around those. I’m sure the legality of that is grey, but just sayin’

You’ll get over it.

I’ve personally never used Redbox (I have Netflix so no need), but my roommates use it all the time. Cheap, quick, easy. But yeah, they’re probably not going to have “3-Iron” available. Though there’s no reason the new BB kiosks can’t have that if they go with their memory card model.

As for streaming I blame the whole lack of world view thing by the movie companies. We don’t have access to Hulu, no one outside of the UK can see the streaming stuff on the BBC. I’d be willing to pay for netflix streaming but can’t cause I’m in Canada.

I love shopping in person much more than online. When I go online I already know what I want and I order it within 5 minutes. I never browse Amazon or YesAsia.

And with BB newest addition of a kiosk selling memory cards gives the amount of films available to be almost limitless and they’ll never run out of stock.

I get your nostalgia factor for wanting to flip through all the cases at the store, John. But that will fade soon. I was the same way with music (I’d literally spend hours in the music store sifting through all the albums and sampling them, etc). But I haven’t been in a music store for ages and you know what? I don’t miss it at all. Sifting through all the music online (of which there is WAY more) in the comfort and ease from my own home is much more satisfying.

And Canada needs to get on the ball. Netflix and BB online is the best model of movie distribution currently out there. They have everything, you always have a movie in hand and the streaming capabilities are of high quality and more and more are available every day. Plus interacting with friends and comparing lists, reviews and star ratings is a real treat. Sorry. If I owned a BB store I’d close up shop right now and invest in Redbox or some other similar model.

We rented the first movie in what seems like forever, Duplicity (which was pretty great, BTW). I like you often go to these stores only to buy from their used bins (often getting cheap Tartan release Asian discs and occasional foreign films at deep discounts), so the act of going up to the counter and paying wasn’t all that strange, the act of ‘returning the disc’ was the alien part. It was indeed alien and will likely only get more strange (despite the 40-50 customers in the store when I was there, it was busy!) as time goes on and VOD-cable closes the distribution window. That window is the only thing holding people to going to the video store, I believe.

On the other hand, Redbox and its ilk seem to really be seeding the death knell of video stores.