The Colorado based Dish Network bought the 1,100 store Blockbuster video rental chain out of bankruptcy in 2011. It has closed about 750 of them since then, including all of the retail locations in Denver. Another 300 will close by January, leaving just 50 franchise owned stores under the brand in ten states that don't include Colorado.
The move virtually eliminates the non-Kiosk based, non-streaming or mail based, video rental business from the United States because prior to going bankrupt Blockbuster engaged in a massive wave of industry consolidation and expansion - at one point there were three of them within a block of 6th Avenue and Grant Street in Denver, leaving Blockbuster with a near monopoly on the storefront video rental business.
Dish will continue to operate a streaming service under the Blockbuster trademark.
I've been caught by surprise at how completely both the DVD (including the never quite caught on Blu-Ray format) and CD music markets have evaporated without much fanfare A recent trip to Best Buy revealed only two devices I could find that played music CDs (valuable to anyone who wants to listen to CD media from local libraries) - a kitchen radio and an alarm clock. CD-ROM data storage also seems to have disappeared.
2 comments:
1. Borrow CD from library.
2. Rip to FLAC.
3. Create MP3 version from FLAC.
Now you have an archive version and a version that will play on many devices.
4. Return CD to library.
I'm not really concerned with dealing with the transition on a practical level, so much as I am stunned by how swiftly the transition has taken place.
Leaving media like DVDs and CDs behind is sort of the final step removing the training wheels from a medium based view of information to one in which information is completely divorced from the medium on a nearly universal basis.
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