Introduction

Have you been inside a video store lately? Our fearless leader recently had occasion to pay a visit to his local Blockbuster. When he returned to the Orbiting HQ, we couldn't tell whether he was angry, disappointed, or just having a bout with diphtheria. Maybe it was all three.

To cut a long and depressing story very short, the store didn't have what he had been looking for. In fact, it had virtually nothing worthy of Ken's attention for two hours. We resolved then and there to do a thorough breakdown of the options available to today's film connoisseurs, the good and the bad, and figure out who actually uses any of them. Masochist that I am, I volunteered for the job.

Wal-Mart

Why not start with the largest DVD retailer in the world? If you're looking for new releases, very popular catalog titles, or whatever is in the deep discount bin today, you can't go wrong here. Nobody can stock a shelf quite like Sam Walton's boys and girls, so the latest and greatest is virtually guaranteed to be there at all times.

Sometimes you might have to hunt across the 200,000 square feet of the Supercenter to find the conveniently placed "hot titles" display rack you need. But you know the latest Adam Sandler masterpiece is going to be worth it. Who needs rentals when you can buy your movies for five times the price, and then get to dust the DVD rack every couple of weeks until you've forgotten what movies you have? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Let's move on.

Blockbuster

That brings us to the raison d'êtré of this little treatise. Your average Blockbuster store, or at least those close to where I live in the Tampa Bay area, is becoming less of a movie rental venue these days. The store walls are covered in new releases by the bucketful, and the floor space in between holds about twenty chest-height display racks.

But about half of the available square footage, and half of the rack space, is occupied by video games, snack foods, and used discs for sale. I can understand the urge to feed the gamers, but all the extraneous material makes actual DVD rentals a breed threatened with extinction in here. VHS tapes are nowhere to be found, of course, but surely Little Johnny's grandma can afford a US$40 DVD player if she can handle the late fees?

Yes, the late fees. The much-publicized "no late fees" program was not universally adopted by owners of franchised stores, and even where it is in effect, it basically amounts to a "rent to own" program. Keep the movie as long as you like, but you'll eventually have to pay up and become a proud new owner of Gigli: the Extended Edition. The behind-the-scenes material alone is worth every penny.

I brought a list of 70 movies to two local stores and started checking titles off. It was a somewhat eclectic mix of Orbiting HQ favorites, quality anime, Oscar winners of various kinds, and a few international titles for that musky French spice. The results were downright depressing. Sure, they both had Kentucky Fried Movie and Fight Club. One store even carried a copy of Princess Bride, but neither had Weird Al's UHF, recent Oscar nominee Evil, or any of the anime titles. Not Noir, not Fullmetal Alchemist, not even Akira for crying out loud.

When I say they didn't have these movies, that's exactly what I mean. It's not that they were rented out; they didn't exist in those little worlds. All in all, I found 22 movies from my checklist in one store and in 23 the other. And that's mostly because I had 12 new releases on my list. I'm in a charitable mood, so I'll point out that new releases were reliably in the store. Walk the Line was closest to an exhausted supply, and there were still about a dozen copies of that one in each Blockbuster.

So what exactly did they have? I took the trouble of counting and estimating a couple of genres in the biggest store I saw. It had 70 anime titles, about 150 foreign films, and about 5,000 to 6,000 titles in all. I tried to speak to the store managers and ask about title counts in different categories, but neither one would talk to the media. However, the corporate office was more forthcoming, and company spokesman Jeff Sieg said the average Blockbuster store carries 7,000 titles.

The selection at Blockbuster stores will vary from location to location. We are able to tailor the movies at a given store based on the rental habits of customers at the store. We make every effort to stock our stores with titles that reflect the lifestyles and interests of the communities they are located in. We always try to offer a wide selection of titles and genres that will appeal to our diverse customer base, both in-store and online.

Mr. Sieg declined to break the numbers out into genres or categories. Maybe my list just didn't represent the average taste in my neck of the woods, and I'd be better off trying to match it in a New York or Los Angeles video store. But I doubt it.

In all fairness, it is possible that my search wasn't entirely fair to Blockbuster, which in turn points to another problem: it's not always easy to find the movies they do have. New releases, great. Anime, no problem. And you know that Million Dollar Baby is a drama. But where do you place Life Is Beautiful? Is Princess Bride in the "family" section or in comedy? And are you sure it's not squeezed in between the new releases on the wall somewhere?

Maybe some people find the categorizing helpful, and I could appreciate something like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress classification of the movies. But there are no clear guidelines, the movies aren't properly marked, and like I said, they're not always in their respective category sections anyway. Just alphabetize everything and be done with it, guys.

The Blockbuster Online site is trying to pull you into the actual store once in a while. It's done with free rental coupons, and by letting you check online whether the movies you want are available in your favorite store. Sounds good, so I checked every single one of the movies on my list through that interface, and crosschecked the results with documented reality. I'd say the status was correct about half the time.

Much of the time, a movie listed as available just wasn't there. Other times, it was the other way around, as I knew the store had a copy or two but the online tool told me that this wasn't the case. Very frustrating, and not all that useful.

To sum up the Blockbuster store experience, I had to get in my car and drive to the store, hope against hope that they would have anything besides the latest and not-so-greatest from Hollywood, resist the temptation to buy overpriced snacks, and then return in a few days to avoid having to pay the full purchase price for my movies.

If you think Movie Gallery or their subsidiary Hollywood Video would do any better, I'd have to ask you to find out for yourself. Blockbuster's store managers didn't want to talk but at least they let me browse the store with a clipboard and a pen at the ready. Their largest traditional competitor wouldn't even let me do that much. And their corporate PR department never answered my information requests.

Another local option

I had better luck with Video Barn, a locally owned and operated store in Lutz, FL. Owner Susan Lang told me that her little store, tucked into a strip mall still under construction by SR54, stocks 5,800 movies, and about 5,000 unique titles. She said that the business is doing well thanks to a couple of factors that the big boys like Blockbuster and Movie Gallery may have trouble duplicating.

Video Barn carries VHS tapes alongside DVDs. It may sound antiquated—and it is—but it also means that Blockbuster stores in the area send customers Susan's way when they ask for old-fashioned video tapes. The chain stores have left the format for dead, but there are still technological stragglers, sticking to the choice of the last generation.

But the customer referrals flow both ways. If something isn't available at Video Barn, Susan will point you to Blockbuster, or Netflix, or wherever else that particular movie is likely to be available. And if you're willing to wait, your obscure pick can be added to the inventory. Susan says that the one thing that really sets her service apart is this openness and honesty. Customers are happy to be treated with respect, and that creates repeat customers.

So the Video Barn carries a wider range of movies than the Blockbusters of the world do, with a lower percentage of new releases and a larger catalog of old or unusual titles. It's still a far cry from carrying every DVD in existence, and you still have to drive down to the store to rent or return your picks. And in contrast to Blockbuster, this store has a strict return policy with late fees after your three-day rental expires. Susan said that doing it this way keeps the store better stocked. All things considered, your local independent video store has greater freedom to react to customer needs and demands, and are likely to be owned and operated by people who care about what they're doing rather than by teenagers who didn't feel like flipping burgers this summer. But bricks and mortar still comes with serious baggage, and the business model in general is no longer the wave of the future.