A Look Back at Why Blockbuster Really Failed and Why It Didn't Have To (2014)
Blockbuster used to have a really crappy selection of mostly mainstream movies, but often it was one of the closest video rental stores around, as they seemed to be everywhere.  They also censored and cut their movies, which was really annoying.  I don&#x27;t know what their agenda was on that front, and why they couldn&#x27;t just let mature adults watch the full films.<p>My friends and I used to much prefer going to independent video rental stores, which had a much better selection and did not cut or censor their films, but we&#x27;d often have to go pretty far to reach them.<p>Then Netflix DVD came around, and that had a pretty good selection.. maybe not as good as some of the best independent movie rental stores, but wider in some ways, and overall good enough so that the added convenience of getting DVDs delivered to my door and being able to return them by merely dropping them in the mailbox whenever I felt like it made me stick with Netflix and never step foot in a brick and mortar movie rental store again.  I had meant to try Greencine, as it supposedly had an even better selection of obscure movies, but I never got around to it, and then it went out of business.<p>Then came Netflix streaming, with a crappy selection comparable to the crappy selection Blockbuster had in the bad old days.<p>I&#x27;ve stayed with Netflix DVD service because of their far better selection, but most people these days don&#x27;t seem to know that Netflix even has a DVD service (not very surprising as Netflix doesn&#x27;t even advertise its presence on netflix.com and you have to go to dvd.netflix.com to reach it).<p>Many of them rarely realize how crappy the selection of Netflix streaming is, as they&#x27;ve been brought up on a diet of crap, and are only vaguely aware that there&#x27;s a whole world of fantastic movies out there beyond Hollywood blockbusters and TV shows.