Where do you even rent movies in this post-Blockbuster, fragmented streaming world???

[feliciacraft]

I tried to find a site/service to legally stream Deadpool this weekend, and I couldn't. That's with subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. I even checked out Google Play Store for movies (which embarrassingly for me required a Google search because I'd never used it for movies before), and everywhere, the price is $14.99 to buy, and

Comments

[badfalcon]

... and then they wonder why people still acquire things illegally. Well if we could get them legally, we would! I'm grumbling along with you

[feliciacraft]

Seriously! The Internet is supposed to deliver everything to our fingertips 24-7. Except that content is still controlled by monopolies and arbitrarily locked down by weird deals that are never meant to benefit consumers, but instead just guarantee their maximum profit.

DO NOT LIKE. :(

[torrilin]

Thing is, it's fairly difficult to hide a malware payload in a DRM stripped DVD file. Not impossible, but it takes a pretty hefty level of technical sophistication to do it. I won't say there's no confirmed cases of hacking that way, but there's a lot more confirmed cases from buying legit copies. (Dear Sony, suck less)

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[chelseagirl]

I miss my old neighborhood video store so much! He actually had enough of a loyal client base to keep going -- though we'd moved to a different neighborhood so suddenly factoring in two round-trip subway rides, renting was starting to cost the same as buying -- but the rent went up exponentially and he had to close his doors. It was indie and the owner was great and I rented from him for over 20 years -- we keep in touch on Facebook.

[feliciacraft]

It's wonderful that you still keep in touch.

I'm a sporadic media consumer, and convenience is a major factor. I think it was entirely due to BtVS and AtS being available for Netflix streaming that I got into the fandom. So if a movie is only watchable for $15? It just means that I put off watching it for as long as the price is outrageous, and go stream something else instead.

[herself_nyc]

Doesn't your public library have DVDs? Here, I can reserve them online and pick them up from my local branch. NYPL has a deep bench of classic movies as well as new ones, and TV shows, foreign films, etc. It seems most libraries feature a lot of DVDs, I suspect because people probably end up paying more late return fees for them than for anything else. :)

[feliciacraft]

I'm sure they have DVDs. OTOH the local branch of the library is only open for a subset of my work hours on weekdays, something like 12-5pm on most days. There's nothing more frustrating than missing the pickup period for a book I've been looking forward to that's become available in the "hold" area for me, and not being able to do a thing about it.

[kazzy_cee]

There are a lot of films that never seem to be available to stream legally. I am yet to find the last X men movie which we missed at the cinema and the only option in the UK is to buy it ... :(

[feliciacraft]

Wow, so it's a global problem. Ugh!

[snogged]

We still have a video rental store. It's called Family Video.
We also have Redbox.

[feliciacraft]

That's great that you still have local movie rental places!

I think I saw Redbox at one point but it's disappeared from my local supermarket? Maybe because it wasn't doing well? :/