I've had a feeling this would happen for quite a while now.

I wonder if Blockbuster could survive by adding comics and non-video games to its stores. A lot of cities lack a decent comics and games store. I avoid renting from Blockbuster because of its ridiculous late-fee stunts, but I'd be unable to resist the pull of new comics. :-).

I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.

I hate to see any business go under, but I can't say this will break my heart.

And I'm really glad they didn't buy Netflix, because the Blockbuster website is about as clunky as clunky gets.

I tried Blockbuster once, since I live out in the boonies and you can bring the DVDs right back to the store instead of having to wait for the mail cycle, but it still sucked because they had a crappy selection and the employees were totally clueless and sometimes flat-out rude.

Blockbuster really should have had the edge since they've got physical stores; they could have kept a short stack of discs from people's queue's right there onsite.

They had the advantage of physical presence and they still blew it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Good riddance. The writing has been on the wall for years that home video rental is a twilight industry. Blockbuster didn't adapt in time and continued to gorge itself on punitive late fees. They will not be missed.

Another company bites the dust with Enron.

How does this affect the branches in the UK? I can't stand them. I went back once after not renting for many months and they wanted me to register again to which I said fuck that pile of red tape.

I realised then that I didn't really NEED to rent. DVDs are dirt cheap to buy anyway and once you have a DVR you find yourself with programmes you actually want to watch.

Netflix teaming up w/ Microsoft is the death nail for Blockbuster and any other competitor imo. For one fee, I can rent hardcopies and keep them as long as I like, watch movies online, or through my xbox360. Blockbuster can't compete anymore.

Good riddance. Poor selections, poor employee attitude, poor business model.

Intelligence wins again.

Ditto the good riddance sentiment.

It's pretty interesting to see the physical media rental industry coming to a close. When Netflix started it was a popular fad that before too long started seeing a bit of financial trouble. At the time I found myself figuring Netflix was an experiment that would fail and video rental stores would never go away. (In the early days of iTunes I also couldn't imagine people giving up on owning the physical property of music CDs to trade it for worthless, intangible electronic music files.)

Now here we are just a few years later and we're actually witnessing the vanishing of video rentals for the interim of rental-by-mail, which will be a placeholder as the real future of electronic delivery becomes king.

There will probably remain mom & pop video rental shops to serve small and/or poor communities where high speed Internet isn't very common, but it's quite interesting to be here on the brink of a new age.