Likely BlockBuster could have been more stable and financed the stores for longer if they wanted to. As late as pre-corona-pandemic there were lots of little independent rental stores specialising in the one niche still available - blockbuster BluRays (and DVDs!) with what had just left the local theaters, but weren't yet widely available on streaming services.
During the pandemic there was a pause in theatrical releases and the little rental chains couldn't weather that, so they disappeared.
In a world of increasing rents, video-rental stores would have faced pressure regardless of the pandemic. And in some particularly high-rent locations, video rental moved from a store staffed with employees to automated kiosks already in the first decade of the new millennium.
Redbox is still a reasonable option for mainstream recent releases but it does mean you have to commit to watching something tonight and return it the next day-ish. Netflix was nice in that it had a huge back catalog and, when you got a disk in the mail, it was fine if you didn't watch it for a week.
At the end of the day, there are alternatives but, if you liked watching a variety of movies, Netflix DVD was a pretty low friction way of doing so.
The last rental place in my city converted to be a fancy candy and snacks store, also selling Funko Pops etc. Nothing changed except the shelves of newly released movies now stock funko pops.
> During the pandemic there was a pause in theatrical releases and the little rental chains couldn't weather that, so they disappeared.
Funny enough the pandemic was the reason I canceled my Netflix DVD subscription.
During the early days there was no information about how it spread. The DVDs are sanitized (wiping finger prints, etc.) but I wasn't sure about the sleeves. I know a number of organic things can survive for over a year without a host (fuck you ringworm) so I wanted to play it safe.
As a mail carrier during the outbreak I was deemed essential and forced to work 6 days a week. The volume increased 3 or 4 fold since everyone was at home. I touched many thousands of packages and much more mail, it took me 3 years to catch the COVID and I got it from my brother's family at Thanksgiving.
