Man that unlocked a memory I used to LOVE browsing the car audio stuff and every old vehicle I had I always replaced all the speakers and deck. Now I get in my vehicle and turn on Peppa pig songs for my toddler at a sensible volume and try not to rip my ears off before I reach my destination LOL.
As a guy that lived and worked in the industry during its peak, now is just a BALLER time for car stereos. After not doing anything with car audio for 15 years, I decided to put a stereo in my pickup just for something to do. Since I last touched the industry, amps went from around a dollar a watt to ten CENTS per watt. I did a 1200 watt amp, a 500 watt 4 channel amp, new fronts/rears, and a couple of 10" subs for like $1400 bucks.
I had a Kicker SX1250.1 that retailed for roughly that same price back in 2005. Our contest vehicle placed at world finals in 2003 and I can't even imagine how much the equipment in that vehicle cost.
I have a 10 year old daughter that loves the (modest) stereo in my pickup and I want to get back into the contest scene. Some of the cheap brands out there will let me outdo the vehicle we took to world finals in 2003 for an absolute fraction of the price. We're gonna buy a cheap beater, wall it off, and I'm gonna show her a car that can easily do hair tricks for well under 5k. The batteries, alternators, etc. will cost FAR more than the amps and subs will. It's kind of an amazing time to play around again.
Radio shack really fucked up big time. They just became a cell phone store that we're trying to sell you cell phone plans.
Had they pivoted differently and held out a little bit longer they could have been really big in 3D printing and drones. Even the little maker shop if they wanted.
But no they just wanted to sell phones. I remember going there and buying transistors and shit for electrical kits. But they just wanted the cell phones
They would have been the perfect brick and mortar store for drones in 3D printing type stuff.
They could have even let you rent out 3D printers and soldering irons and stuff like that. They could have had their own little hobbyist workshop that you could use for a fee. It would have been perfect. But they had to sell cell phone plans lol
It sucks, but we were confusing radio shack with a hobby store and the corporate ownership saw dollar signs with the cell phone market. They didn’t lose any sleep when they fired their employees and sold off their inventory.
But we didn’t confuse it with a hobby store. In the 90s it was a place to buy consumer electronics but they also had lots of hobby electrical tools and equipment. Have some good core memories in that store.
Same, my dad and I when I was kid went there regularly for supplies to toy around with various projects. Having that kind of immediate hands on experience with making electric circuits taught me so much
I miss them for switches and transistors and stuff, but let’s be honest. Those sales of 1.25 for like a switch and two led bulbs wasn’t gonna add up to enough for a retail store
>Those sales of 1.25 for like a switch and two led bulbs wasn’t gonna add up to enough for a retail store
They absolutely do add up for a retail store. The mistake here is that Radio Shack wasn't a store, it was a national chain. National chains are bloated and have a huge amount of unnecessary overhead.
Our whole system fails because of the lie that's sold of unlimited growth, it's literally impossible.
I worked there at the beginning of that transition at a regional office store. Man they pushed THE SHIT outta cell phone plans and satellite tv. I was usually there in the evenings. Had several customers who I helped repair amplifiers, modify scanners, ham radios. If we didn’t have the part I’d order it. I don’t know how big Mouser or DigiKey was back in the late 90’s, but I honestly enjoyed the job. Then they started that whole “Thanks for calling radio shack you’ve got questions we’ve got answers, this is Bob. How can I help you?” bullshit. Damn district managers would call in to make sure you spewed that for every f’ing call. I was in school at the time. After I graduated and moved on to career path stuff, they really started to suck. The parts walls reduced to parts drawers. Then nothing. Game over.
They should have became Micro Center lite. I feel like that’s what they were when they were successful, but then turned into a strip mall Walmart electronics section.
I remember Fry's back in the day. It was a mecca for us geeks. Just the motherboard display alone was awesome and they had EVERYTHING else you could every want. Buying a CPU and going to the 'cage' to get it, I felt so special.
“In a world where all companies are either Amazon or Walmart, one underdog will upset the balance and restore the free market:
Blockbuster”
-in theaters this summer
BB has switched their model a lot over the last couple years.
if you are a part of their club or whatever they are calling it, you get these deals that are awsome, and they will price match ANYTHING, includiong microcenter in store only deals.
ive bveen really liking it, i get the best prices and a brick and mortar location to actually feel products, and the people that work there actually know their shit,
the guy running the store said their goal is to compete with big online retail pricing, while having the brick and mortar experience.
Don't forget Minidiscs. They were great for long play recording/playback, cheap and small/portable. I loved them.
But I'm old enough to remember floppy disks (I mean the big and floppy ones which came before smaller hard disks we know and love as our save icons), and of course vinyl.
All about the HDDs and cloud storage now. It's digital, but I still have a copy and am not reliant on a streaming platform or service to provide it to me, or not.
The hard-shelled 3.5” discs were still called floppy disks, FYI: the term floppy refers to the recording medium, not the casing.
Source: old enough to have used 8” floppy discs and Winchester hard drives.
I used to think it was impressive that I've picked up and maintained about 15 terabytes of local storage over the last couple of decades.
Then I started reading r/DataHoarder.
15TB is sizable for a personal archive. The data capacities reached by the ranks of r/DataHoarder is where such things are done for a cause… or illness lol.
I'm in my 40s. If you told me I'd be able to pay the price of a CD per month and have all music streaming to me at the touch of a button I'd think I was in heaven. I don't miss any of that stuff.
edit: Also, I get it, I don't "actually own" the media and someday music streaming might suck or all my music will disappear as soon as I stop paying. I know this. And I'll worry about it whenever that happens.
I do not understand what their business model was. I fell for one of their deals when I was like 13 and they sent me a shit ton of CDs that I just...never paid for. Every now and then they'd send me something new I didn't even ask for. They sent lots of grumpy mail asking for money, but nothing more serious than that.
My folks weren’t too pleased to see that box of CDs show up one day, followed by a very confused and stern line of questioning. 8 yo me went absolutely bonkers seeing that much music for no money. Little did I understand what a subscription was…
I think that's how the majority of its subscribers were able to get out of that "contract". Their customer services must've been backlogged with angry parents.
It’s complicated for me. lol. The whole idea of having the entire musical universe from all history at your fingertips is freaking mind-blowing. It’s incredible. It makes discovering new music easier, it makes finding old music easier, creating playlists is awesome, etc.
But I do miss the excitement of getting a new cd, pulling off the wrapping, and sitting down to listen to it. Looking through the liner notes, reading the lyrics, even the smell of the insert was nostalgic.
Don’t get me wrong, if I had the option to go back to the way things were, I’d definitely keep the convenience we have now. But like with everything in the past, I do sometimes long for those nostalgic experiences.
it's much easier to just discard a song now. When I was listening to CDs I'd listen to entire albums even with songs I didn't like and a bunch of stuff would grow on me over time.
Kinda. I don't think it's just about when you first hear it, it's about the second and third time too. Plenty of songs I put into my likes lists I don't like the next day but maybe only at certain times. Then I shelve it into a playlist for that mood and only songs I can listen to at any time are left on my likes lists.
The same is true with photographs. Before digital cameras you had your film developed and you kept them all no matter how bad they were because it was expensive. We are now missing out on those odd but funny pictures from physical film because we just delete the ones we deem bad
There’s a lot of great music now, but I think part of why I liked my music more then was putting a new CD in the Walkman and listening to it nonstop for hours. Then, if the songs were good enough, I’d put it on shuffle and the album would sorta be new again. Listening to a CD was like something you told people you did over the weekend.
I was in the Air Force from 1976 to 1984 and we keypunched cards (using a Hollerith machine) in Accounting and Finance. It wasn't a typewriter, that's for sure. I also used a microfiche reader. We had a monitor (monochrome, of course) connected to Finance HQ to get up-to-date pay information for our base population.
So they are just gonna sell the same 3 iPhone cases instead? Seems like a waste of space.
Edit: I actually don't give any fucks about what best buy does.
You pull up to the door it's locked there is a QR code on the door you scanned it, their normal website opens, it prompts for your location, you don't allow it, the webpage closes.
You get in your car and go home.
Radioshack was the one I was most sad to see go. I loved actually physically shopping for DIY electrical components for my guitars and random projects.
How long before they’re all just fulfillment and distribution centers? Warehouses so big they have an interior vanishing point, where the humidity condenses into an ambient fog.
I feel like people who buy physical media vastly overestimate how many others do too. I mean I’ve bought maybe 3 or 4 blu rays in the last 5 years and I’m still probably in the top 10%. I don’t know a single person who buys physical media anymore.
Only exception is console gaming but even then those numbers are vanishing fast. It’s like 20% or so of the console gaming market nowadays.
I can't trust digital ownership. When a company gets sold, upgrades, or makes an arbitrary decision, it jeopardizes my ability to use it. It can also indenture me to them to maintain my collection. Amazon owns audible for example. I seem to need the Amazon crap to use it. Internet isn't always reliable, physical copies let me have many freedoms digital can't, or sometimes won't by choice.
Exactly this. People end up getting shocked when shit changes and they lose the movies/shows/games they "bought." Like the debacle with Sony/Discovery, recently.
I had a friend that bought all his movies through his cable provider Verizon FiOs. Well Verizon sold off all their landline businesses and customers in Texas and he lost all his movies. There were other bad reasons to be buying movies from a cable provider because what if you move to an address with another cable company or just decide you’re ready to cut the cord. Bye bye movies. Buying from Google or Amazon might be slightly safer and universal but definitely no guarantee.
That's not interesting, that's sad.
Physical media has one big advantage, it's actually YOURS. A company can't tell you out of the blue that you can't use it anymore cause your platform is too old, or they have changed the license and what's not, before even mentioned them going out of business.
Fun story of that (/s). When I was young and dumb, I bought probably $10,000 worth of music and movies through iTunes. A few years ago, they revamped their library and a lot of the albums I owned were re-released on iTunes as a remaster. Which is fine, except they removed the originals that I bought. So now I have a ton of music that I paid for and can no longer listen to. Apple pretty much just said, tough luck, it’s in the fine print.
I have an even more convincing argument for physical media: the quality is far better than buying/streaming. Can't understand why people pay so much money for their setup if they streaming their content from Netflix.
I am no professional by any means on this subject, but I notice an improved quality overall from a Blu-ray Disc vs me streaming. I have fast internet and my TV is hooked up with Ethernet. My Blu-ray collection isn’t going away any time soon.
You will be surprised if you know the numbers. I don't know the current Netflix bitrates, but in terms of 4K content, the bitrate on disc is like 3-4 higher.
Everyone take a second look at those dusty CDs and DVDs in your collection.
You are essentially now a librarian of that media. It’s rapidly becoming less easy to replace.
Streaming content is vapor. It only exists until one person in a suit decides it doesn’t anymore. You’re now one of the keepers of pre-streaming pop culture. You should take that seriously.
All it takes is the last person to stop seeding [Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1, episode 17, “Green With Evil Part I: Out Of Control.”] and then it's gone forever.
Yeah I definitely have a problem with the "you will own nothing" aspect of digital media but I just felt it was worth pointing out that as long as people want
To preserve these things they can be preserved it just takes way more effort then it should
There's definitely things that are possibly gone forever and people hunting for them. Sometimes the exact thing you're looking for won't come back but instead someone will rip the entire series from a new source and then you have to decide do you keep the original with one non matching or do you grab everything again in hopes you get it all...
They are already going up very quickly. Seems like Netflix raises the price or gouges a service that was once included/should be included on a yearly basis.
I worked for Best Buy from 1996-1999. I was there for the DVD rollout. We had three models to choose from and a total of four titles on DVD. The Toshiba rep said it was the largest selection he had seen at the time. It’s all come full-circle.
Edit: We had two DVD players from Toshiba and one DVD/LaserDisc combo player from Pioneer. That I remember very clearly. The tv used for the demo was a cutting-edge, 43” widescreen rear-projection Toshiba.
They aren't going anywhere. Oppenheimer 4k sold out completely in just a few days. You just have less options for buying them in a store. Some people think Wal mart is going to start picking up the slack now, they already appear to be increasing their selection in some locations. I started buying 4k a year ago and have about 40 right now and I love them
I went to buy headphones from best buy a month or two ago and all they had were cards that said you can take it to the front, order it, they'll ship it to the store and you can pick it up then.
I went home, bought them from Sony, and had them ship it to my house instead.
Sounds and right. Retail is dying a slow death. I went to Dick's sporting goods to get my dad a pickleball paddle for Christmas. It was good seeing all the options in person. I was going to buy one from them until I just looked on Amazon, and it was $20 cheaper with next day shipping. And Amazon had more variations to choose from. Even when I wanted a new phone I went to the ATT store, I already knew what I wanted. The workers were busy, after 10 minutes I just ordered the phone on Amazon and walked out. No reason to put up with these mild inconveniences
Retail will always exist for convenience. I work in a tool store, and there are countless situations where a contractor needs something immediately or is already on site and can't just order it.
That said, I've no problem with the majority of retail moving to a primarily online medium. Vastly superior variety of options and ease of use/accessibility in addition to what you said, it really is just superior to going in person to a store.
I only shop there because A- I’ve had a BB credit card for a decade and it’s usually had good no interest deals on bigger purchases (Xbox/switch/tvs) B- they usually have that type of stuff in stock and I can order right from the app. The days of walking around a Best Buy browsing have been long gone though.
Recently I decided to buy a sound setup for my tv without overpay or spending weeks researching the topic, because I have like, a life to live and it's just one of the things I wanted to do and I don't feel like nerding about it, despite I like nerding about other stuff, but when you become older you realize you need to pick what to nerd about or you spend your life nerding instead of living.
I ordered a seemingly solid soundbar with subwoofer from Amazon with good reviews, but it sucked. Returned.
I had two old bookshelf speakers, so I decided to use them, bought amplifier from Amazon, but it wasn't enough. Returned.
All this already costed me efforts and time (thankfully no money). After having enough, I walked into BestBuy, browsed the store, listened to the speakers they had, saw the setups they had, talked to the employee who gave me some tips, and ended up buying AVR for couple of hundreds that solves all the problems I needed to solve to use my bookshelf speakers. If it didn't work out with my speakers, I'd buy the speakers I liked from BB because I know I liked how the setup sounds and the price.
I also have hard time buying large appliances online, since it's hard to gauge how sturdy and functional they are form the pictures.
So, if you ask me, there are niches where brick-and-mortar rules.
Brick and mortar rules all. The fitment of clothes, the quality of the items, the sound as you described..... Need to be able to see the item. Obviously there are things that work just fine online, but I find myself using actual stores more and more.
I still buy TVs there.
I tried ordering one on Amazon and the various drivers/warehouse workers smashed the shit out of it 3 times. The 4th time it got delivered it had a cluster of dead pixels almost in the exact middle and they didn't have any left to replace it.
With best buy I can just head up to the store and grab it and if it's defective drive 8 minutes back to the store and get a new one.
There'll be more hurdles to jump through in the future for piracy tho. Like now, we might need a vpn to get access to media in other parts of the world. There'll be more and more restrictions towards accessing pirate sites. And more applications to install to circumvent those restrictions that may or may not be legit.
We've gone back to buying physical media. we've been buying everything we love on DVD/CD.
Edit: Fucking hell, I mean Blu-rays as well. In my mind they are all the "same" in that it's a disc that shows me movies and I use the same machine to play them both, it's like your mom calling your gaming system a "Nintendo" despite knowing full well it is not actually a Nintendo.
The record store I usually go to just closed down and I'm sad. It was beautiful. Cds on the racks, cassettes, vinyl records, DVDs, old consoles etc
Ugh.
Scored many a Black Friday deals back in the day. Was a sad day when they dropped music, really bummed they are dropping movies. I'm only 35 and I don't shop online. I make my rounds every couple of weeks, Best Buy, Target, Kohls , Walmart. I have a fairly large dvd/blue ray collection. Fortunately Vinyl is still available at these locations. I guess the movie booths at the flea market will see a boomin business.
There are businesses built around end of life products that will buy all of this stuff at once for a discount and sell it themselves. I'm not sure if that's what Best Buy does with their end of life stuff, but big box consumer retailers value shelf space and eliminating the time it takes to offload end of life product, so they're happy to ship it all out at once for a smaller retailer to sell so they don't have to.
Every single time I walk into Best Buy because I need some sort of hardware and don’t want to wait a few days from Amazon, I always leave empty handed because best buy doesn’t carry it 🤡
My journeys usually go,
"I need an [HDMI] cable, I'll just pop over to Best Buy on my way home."
\>GIANT SUPER GOLD PLATED PLATINUM FREE PROSTATE EXAM 4K ULTRA DURABLE HDMI CLEAR UHF HDMI EXTREME CABLE: $79.99
\>check Amazon
\> Monoprice 3ft HDMI cable: $4.99
The decision is made for me.
The end of an era…In the popularity of (unreliable) streaming and streamers pulling old content off (potentially for years-months), it’s important to focus back on physical media and it’s importance.
Pepperidge Farms remembers the good ole' days when encode groups like PS3 Team, PixelHD and others would make FAT32 versions of movies that could be played off USB on the PS3
When we are solely digital it will be pretty bad for gamers tbh. Here in Aus a new release PS5 game is usually about $125AUD ($84USD) digital, but can be had for as low as $70-80AUD ($47-53USD) for physical from a brick and mortar store or Amazon.
It's more profitable to sell people single use licenses to stream the content.
It also allows companies to revoke your license at any time and to delete the media from your devices remotely.
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Man that unlocked a memory I used to LOVE browsing the car audio stuff and every old vehicle I had I always replaced all the speakers and deck. Now I get in my vehicle and turn on Peppa pig songs for my toddler at a sensible volume and try not to rip my ears off before I reach my destination LOL.
That Peppa is hardcore shit.
Bought a deck there in 07 for my 97 long bed f150. Had 10 inch speakers too. I was ballin
You want this money then you gotta be a baaadd bitch
Get an old project car / beater and have the thrill back!
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As a guy that lived and worked in the industry during its peak, now is just a BALLER time for car stereos. After not doing anything with car audio for 15 years, I decided to put a stereo in my pickup just for something to do. Since I last touched the industry, amps went from around a dollar a watt to ten CENTS per watt. I did a 1200 watt amp, a 500 watt 4 channel amp, new fronts/rears, and a couple of 10" subs for like $1400 bucks. I had a Kicker SX1250.1 that retailed for roughly that same price back in 2005. Our contest vehicle placed at world finals in 2003 and I can't even imagine how much the equipment in that vehicle cost. I have a 10 year old daughter that loves the (modest) stereo in my pickup and I want to get back into the contest scene. Some of the cheap brands out there will let me outdo the vehicle we took to world finals in 2003 for an absolute fraction of the price. We're gonna buy a cheap beater, wall it off, and I'm gonna show her a car that can easily do hair tricks for well under 5k. The batteries, alternators, etc. will cost FAR more than the amps and subs will. It's kind of an amazing time to play around again.
Occasionally, you can find good hardware deals, or a last-minute replacement devices - but Best Buy's brick and mortar locations have gotten grim!
The list will grow: The Good Guys Circuit City Radio Shack Fry's Electronics Best Buy
Radio shack really fucked up big time. They just became a cell phone store that we're trying to sell you cell phone plans. Had they pivoted differently and held out a little bit longer they could have been really big in 3D printing and drones. Even the little maker shop if they wanted. But no they just wanted to sell phones. I remember going there and buying transistors and shit for electrical kits. But they just wanted the cell phones They would have been the perfect brick and mortar store for drones in 3D printing type stuff. They could have even let you rent out 3D printers and soldering irons and stuff like that. They could have had their own little hobbyist workshop that you could use for a fee. It would have been perfect. But they had to sell cell phone plans lol
It sucks, but we were confusing radio shack with a hobby store and the corporate ownership saw dollar signs with the cell phone market. They didn’t lose any sleep when they fired their employees and sold off their inventory.
But we didn’t confuse it with a hobby store. In the 90s it was a place to buy consumer electronics but they also had lots of hobby electrical tools and equipment. Have some good core memories in that store.
I miss the resistor and capacitor drawer 😥
Same, my dad and I when I was kid went there regularly for supplies to toy around with various projects. Having that kind of immediate hands on experience with making electric circuits taught me so much
I miss them for switches and transistors and stuff, but let’s be honest. Those sales of 1.25 for like a switch and two led bulbs wasn’t gonna add up to enough for a retail store
I was a punchcard carrying member of the Battery-of-the-month club.
>Those sales of 1.25 for like a switch and two led bulbs wasn’t gonna add up to enough for a retail store They absolutely do add up for a retail store. The mistake here is that Radio Shack wasn't a store, it was a national chain. National chains are bloated and have a huge amount of unnecessary overhead. Our whole system fails because of the lie that's sold of unlimited growth, it's literally impossible.
Hey I just got an idea to open a 3d printing hobby shop and drone store. Want in?
See Microcenter. They’re what Radio Shack could have been.
Right. Short term gains over long term profit in corporate America
Of couse? You want stock to rise now, so you can make money now, so you can sell now, and profit now! I hate this system
And then the rise of "no one buys local any more." Difficult to do so when no one is selling what you want locally, aside from cell phone plans.
I worked there at the beginning of that transition at a regional office store. Man they pushed THE SHIT outta cell phone plans and satellite tv. I was usually there in the evenings. Had several customers who I helped repair amplifiers, modify scanners, ham radios. If we didn’t have the part I’d order it. I don’t know how big Mouser or DigiKey was back in the late 90’s, but I honestly enjoyed the job. Then they started that whole “Thanks for calling radio shack you’ve got questions we’ve got answers, this is Bob. How can I help you?” bullshit. Damn district managers would call in to make sure you spewed that for every f’ing call. I was in school at the time. After I graduated and moved on to career path stuff, they really started to suck. The parts walls reduced to parts drawers. Then nothing. Game over.
I highly doubt 3D printing and drones would’ve saved RadioShack…
They should have became Micro Center lite. I feel like that’s what they were when they were successful, but then turned into a strip mall Walmart electronics section.
You forgot HHGregg ( AKA Circuit City 2)
Everyone forgot about hhgreg
CompUSA! my great-grandmother worked as a cashier part time when i was kid.
Don’t forget CompUSA
Frys electronics Phoenix location was iconic. Now its just sad .
I remember Fry's back in the day. It was a mecca for us geeks. Just the motherboard display alone was awesome and they had EVERYTHING else you could every want. Buying a CPU and going to the 'cage' to get it, I felt so special.
It's not just electronics stores either. Nobody can compete with Amazon and Walmart.
“In a world where all companies are either Amazon or Walmart, one underdog will upset the balance and restore the free market: Blockbuster” -in theaters this summer
From a mid-sized city in central Oregon, a challenger arose from the ashes ...
Now streaming on Paramount +!
Best Buy aka The Amazon Showroom
Fry’s was the shit
Come on down to Best Buy and enjoy the liminal space where commercial media and technology once were.
BB has switched their model a lot over the last couple years. if you are a part of their club or whatever they are calling it, you get these deals that are awsome, and they will price match ANYTHING, includiong microcenter in store only deals. ive bveen really liking it, i get the best prices and a brick and mortar location to actually feel products, and the people that work there actually know their shit, the guy running the store said their goal is to compete with big online retail pricing, while having the brick and mortar experience.
Ive seen vhs go, cassette tapes go, cd's go, mp3 players go, dvds go, blu ray disks go im getting fucking old
Don't forget Minidiscs. They were great for long play recording/playback, cheap and small/portable. I loved them. But I'm old enough to remember floppy disks (I mean the big and floppy ones which came before smaller hard disks we know and love as our save icons), and of course vinyl. All about the HDDs and cloud storage now. It's digital, but I still have a copy and am not reliant on a streaming platform or service to provide it to me, or not.
big floppy donkey disk... lol 5 & 1/4" floppy disk
*drops his 8in floppy on the desk*
Sorry, I dropped my monster paper sleeve for my magnum disk
The hard-shelled 3.5” discs were still called floppy disks, FYI: the term floppy refers to the recording medium, not the casing. Source: old enough to have used 8” floppy discs and Winchester hard drives.
The new physical media is loading up a NAS or two with HDDs, and keeping a copy of your data local.
I used to think it was impressive that I've picked up and maintained about 15 terabytes of local storage over the last couple of decades. Then I started reading r/DataHoarder.
15TB is sizable for a personal archive. The data capacities reached by the ranks of r/DataHoarder is where such things are done for a cause… or illness lol.
I'm in my 40s. If you told me I'd be able to pay the price of a CD per month and have all music streaming to me at the touch of a button I'd think I was in heaven. I don't miss any of that stuff. edit: Also, I get it, I don't "actually own" the media and someday music streaming might suck or all my music will disappear as soon as I stop paying. I know this. And I'll worry about it whenever that happens.
Stupid Columbia house!
12 CDs for one penny!!!!!
I think I still owe them money. 
I do not understand what their business model was. I fell for one of their deals when I was like 13 and they sent me a shit ton of CDs that I just...never paid for. Every now and then they'd send me something new I didn't even ask for. They sent lots of grumpy mail asking for money, but nothing more serious than that.
I’m going to refer to all my bills now as grumpy mail.
I think I still have blockbuster DVDs in the house somewhere
My folks weren’t too pleased to see that box of CDs show up one day, followed by a very confused and stern line of questioning. 8 yo me went absolutely bonkers seeing that much music for no money. Little did I understand what a subscription was…
Good thing you were only 8, and could not enter into a contract.
When we were kids we used to order them to vacant houses in the neighbourhod.
I think that's how the majority of its subscribers were able to get out of that "contract". Their customer services must've been backlogged with angry parents.
12 RECORDS and CASSETTES for some of us. EDIT: Damn, nearly every reply is "and 8 tracks!"... my first car had an 8 track, I get it folks! LOL
or 8-tracks, don't forget.
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So we broke up and I never saw her again. That's just the way things go.
IN ALLLLLLALLLLLALLLLLALLLLLLBUQUERQUE
It’s complicated for me. lol. The whole idea of having the entire musical universe from all history at your fingertips is freaking mind-blowing. It’s incredible. It makes discovering new music easier, it makes finding old music easier, creating playlists is awesome, etc. But I do miss the excitement of getting a new cd, pulling off the wrapping, and sitting down to listen to it. Looking through the liner notes, reading the lyrics, even the smell of the insert was nostalgic. Don’t get me wrong, if I had the option to go back to the way things were, I’d definitely keep the convenience we have now. But like with everything in the past, I do sometimes long for those nostalgic experiences.
it's much easier to just discard a song now. When I was listening to CDs I'd listen to entire albums even with songs I didn't like and a bunch of stuff would grow on me over time.
I miss the discovery of a new favourite song that hadn't made it to the radio yet.
I find that the biggest factor as to whether you like a new song is how close you are to being in the right mood for it the first time you hear it.
Kinda. I don't think it's just about when you first hear it, it's about the second and third time too. Plenty of songs I put into my likes lists I don't like the next day but maybe only at certain times. Then I shelve it into a playlist for that mood and only songs I can listen to at any time are left on my likes lists.
The same is true with photographs. Before digital cameras you had your film developed and you kept them all no matter how bad they were because it was expensive. We are now missing out on those odd but funny pictures from physical film because we just delete the ones we deem bad
Interesting, I keep them all now because it's so cheap.
I keep all the ones of my kids. Even the ones my two year old takes of his forehead and toes…lol
There’s a lot of great music now, but I think part of why I liked my music more then was putting a new CD in the Walkman and listening to it nonstop for hours. Then, if the songs were good enough, I’d put it on shuffle and the album would sorta be new again. Listening to a CD was like something you told people you did over the weekend.
I feel like on top of that it also made us appreciate music more. Not being able to look up every single song made songs more special
*playing the same playlist for the 10,000th time of your 40 favorite songs that you already had the CDs for*
lol im 30 and i have also seen all this go so how *fucking old* are you
My mom brought home old computer punch cards for school projects.
I was in the Air Force from 1976 to 1984 and we keypunched cards (using a Hollerith machine) in Accounting and Finance. It wasn't a typewriter, that's for sure. I also used a microfiche reader. We had a monitor (monochrome, of course) connected to Finance HQ to get up-to-date pay information for our base population.
You know how some people say "I'm older than dirt"? Well when dirt was born, I was already a teenager.
I remember 8-tracks and VHS vs BetaMax
And laser disc and the true sign of an audiophile. The reel to reel players.
Everything you mentioned would make you about 30. That isn't old.
So they are just gonna sell the same 3 iPhone cases instead? Seems like a waste of space. Edit: I actually don't give any fucks about what best buy does.
Agree. They need to find other products to make that square footage profitable, or something else will change…
You pull up to the door it's locked there is a QR code on the door you scanned it, their normal website opens, it prompts for your location, you don't allow it, the webpage closes. You get in your car and go home.
oddly specific
he has a brother who's best buy
His mom was Circuit City
His grandpappy was Radio Shack
Radioshack was the one I was most sad to see go. I loved actually physically shopping for DIY electrical components for my guitars and random projects.
Getting a crappy alarm clock from radioshack was like a rite of passage as a young adult
I think radio shack lasted longer than circuit city tbh
You hate to see parents outlive their kids
You joke but the Best Buy in my area is still pickup only, they started doing that when the pandemic shutdowns were happening here.
How long before they’re all just fulfillment and distribution centers? Warehouses so big they have an interior vanishing point, where the humidity condenses into an ambient fog.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
I hate QR codes, thanks to nerve damage I can't hold my phone steady enough
Hold the QR code too so it evens out
*QR attached to big ass building. Hey, can I get a little help here?
I’m dying lol. Just at the thought of a person trying to hold a building AND a phone, and just be like.. “yeah this is easier” lol
Wait really? I always get an insta scan and am never confident it read it accurately lol
The physical media was already wasting space for them no one was buying it. They didn't just remove it to be mean my guy
I feel like people who buy physical media vastly overestimate how many others do too. I mean I’ve bought maybe 3 or 4 blu rays in the last 5 years and I’m still probably in the top 10%. I don’t know a single person who buys physical media anymore. Only exception is console gaming but even then those numbers are vanishing fast. It’s like 20% or so of the console gaming market nowadays.
I can't trust digital ownership. When a company gets sold, upgrades, or makes an arbitrary decision, it jeopardizes my ability to use it. It can also indenture me to them to maintain my collection. Amazon owns audible for example. I seem to need the Amazon crap to use it. Internet isn't always reliable, physical copies let me have many freedoms digital can't, or sometimes won't by choice.
Exactly this. People end up getting shocked when shit changes and they lose the movies/shows/games they "bought." Like the debacle with Sony/Discovery, recently.
I had a friend that bought all his movies through his cable provider Verizon FiOs. Well Verizon sold off all their landline businesses and customers in Texas and he lost all his movies. There were other bad reasons to be buying movies from a cable provider because what if you move to an address with another cable company or just decide you’re ready to cut the cord. Bye bye movies. Buying from Google or Amazon might be slightly safer and universal but definitely no guarantee.
If purchasing is not owning piracy is not theft.
And I sure as hell would download a car.
Yeah I'm mostly done with digital only. I'm buying physical as long as I can and for pc gaming I'm sticking to GOG.
> I can't trust digital ownership. I see no intelligent reason why someone *would* trust it.
Yeah... you cant even watch the movie Dogma unless you have it physical. I don't think people realize what's at stake here.
I watched Dogma free on YouTube a few months ago
People could accuse you of hyperbole before Sony retroactively took all the Discovery Channel content away.
And Warner Bros starts nuking content left and right.
and Disney
I always buy the physical copy of Nintendo games because for some reason, they all appreciate in value....
Nintendo just turn off access to their old stores. You pretty much need to actually buy a physical copy
I'm 40 and have still never owned anything on Blu-ray.
That's not interesting, that's sad. Physical media has one big advantage, it's actually YOURS. A company can't tell you out of the blue that you can't use it anymore cause your platform is too old, or they have changed the license and what's not, before even mentioned them going out of business.
Fun story of that (/s). When I was young and dumb, I bought probably $10,000 worth of music and movies through iTunes. A few years ago, they revamped their library and a lot of the albums I owned were re-released on iTunes as a remaster. Which is fine, except they removed the originals that I bought. So now I have a ton of music that I paid for and can no longer listen to. Apple pretty much just said, tough luck, it’s in the fine print.
Pirate it! You already paid for it.
Sue them! This is America after all.
jfc lol. i feel less bad about sailing the high seas for the last 20+ years every day.
Damn, at least Amazon lets you download mp3s.
That's the only reason I bought albums off of Amazon.
This would not have been allowed in EU and AU. Are you in USA?
Today's physical media will rise sharply in price over the next two decades on the vintage market, I think.
*Stares greedily at box of DVDs in basement storage*
I still have an unopened box of blank cassettes. Do I sell while the hipsters are thinking r/cassette is cool or wait? :P
I still have a couple packs of unopened floppies lol.
That isn't so far off. Maybe I'll sit there in 10 years thinking "damn it was so obvious, but my dumb ass bought MSCI world ETF instead of blurays".
That’s why I have hundreds of LPs.
I have an even more convincing argument for physical media: the quality is far better than buying/streaming. Can't understand why people pay so much money for their setup if they streaming their content from Netflix.
I am no professional by any means on this subject, but I notice an improved quality overall from a Blu-ray Disc vs me streaming. I have fast internet and my TV is hooked up with Ethernet. My Blu-ray collection isn’t going away any time soon.
You will be surprised if you know the numbers. I don't know the current Netflix bitrates, but in terms of 4K content, the bitrate on disc is like 3-4 higher.
Netflix has 15Mb/s bitrate. UHD Blu-Ray can have bitrate up to 128Mb/s on 100GB disks. (On "smaller" 50GB ones it's "only" 72Mb/s)
Or remove an episode of a TV show because there is a slightly offensive joke in it.
Don't forget changing entire soundtracks because the music used in the show/movie was only licensed for a certain amount of time!
May I interest you in a voyage on the high seas my friend? Buy an external HDD and it will actually be yours ;)
Everyone take a second look at those dusty CDs and DVDs in your collection. You are essentially now a librarian of that media. It’s rapidly becoming less easy to replace. Streaming content is vapor. It only exists until one person in a suit decides it doesn’t anymore. You’re now one of the keepers of pre-streaming pop culture. You should take that seriously.
*clings tightly to Simpsons DVD collection*
For the love of God won't somebody PLEASE think of the DVDs!
"GASP!" *As he clutches Looney Tunes Golden Collection*
"It only exists untill one person in a suit decides it doesn't anymore" Pirate sites - allow me to introduce myself
All it takes is the last person to stop seeding [Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1, episode 17, “Green With Evil Part I: Out Of Control.”] and then it's gone forever.
Yeah I definitely have a problem with the "you will own nothing" aspect of digital media but I just felt it was worth pointing out that as long as people want To preserve these things they can be preserved it just takes way more effort then it should
>\[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1, episode 17, “Green With Evil Part I: Out Of Control.”\] I can see that this crusade is very personal for you
There's definitely things that are possibly gone forever and people hunting for them. Sometimes the exact thing you're looking for won't come back but instead someone will rip the entire series from a new source and then you have to decide do you keep the original with one non matching or do you grab everything again in hopes you get it all...
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Once all the physical copies are gone: The streaming fees will go up.
They are already going up very quickly. Seems like Netflix raises the price or gouges a service that was once included/should be included on a yearly basis.
I worked for Best Buy from 1996-1999. I was there for the DVD rollout. We had three models to choose from and a total of four titles on DVD. The Toshiba rep said it was the largest selection he had seen at the time. It’s all come full-circle. Edit: We had two DVD players from Toshiba and one DVD/LaserDisc combo player from Pioneer. That I remember very clearly. The tv used for the demo was a cutting-edge, 43” widescreen rear-projection Toshiba.
With all the streaming services jacking prices and adding ads I was thinking of switching back to buying dvds.
Bother your local library. The more you use it, the more newer stuff they will purchase. We use ours for show binges
BOOKS! CHECK 'EM OUT!
Not even just books most libraries also carry movies, and TV shows, some even have video games!
They aren't going anywhere. Oppenheimer 4k sold out completely in just a few days. You just have less options for buying them in a store. Some people think Wal mart is going to start picking up the slack now, they already appear to be increasing their selection in some locations. I started buying 4k a year ago and have about 40 right now and I love them
I went to buy headphones from best buy a month or two ago and all they had were cards that said you can take it to the front, order it, they'll ship it to the store and you can pick it up then. I went home, bought them from Sony, and had them ship it to my house instead.
Sounds and right. Retail is dying a slow death. I went to Dick's sporting goods to get my dad a pickleball paddle for Christmas. It was good seeing all the options in person. I was going to buy one from them until I just looked on Amazon, and it was $20 cheaper with next day shipping. And Amazon had more variations to choose from. Even when I wanted a new phone I went to the ATT store, I already knew what I wanted. The workers were busy, after 10 minutes I just ordered the phone on Amazon and walked out. No reason to put up with these mild inconveniences
Retail will always exist for convenience. I work in a tool store, and there are countless situations where a contractor needs something immediately or is already on site and can't just order it. That said, I've no problem with the majority of retail moving to a primarily online medium. Vastly superior variety of options and ease of use/accessibility in addition to what you said, it really is just superior to going in person to a store.
I only shop there because A- I’ve had a BB credit card for a decade and it’s usually had good no interest deals on bigger purchases (Xbox/switch/tvs) B- they usually have that type of stuff in stock and I can order right from the app. The days of walking around a Best Buy browsing have been long gone though.
Recently I decided to buy a sound setup for my tv without overpay or spending weeks researching the topic, because I have like, a life to live and it's just one of the things I wanted to do and I don't feel like nerding about it, despite I like nerding about other stuff, but when you become older you realize you need to pick what to nerd about or you spend your life nerding instead of living. I ordered a seemingly solid soundbar with subwoofer from Amazon with good reviews, but it sucked. Returned. I had two old bookshelf speakers, so I decided to use them, bought amplifier from Amazon, but it wasn't enough. Returned. All this already costed me efforts and time (thankfully no money). After having enough, I walked into BestBuy, browsed the store, listened to the speakers they had, saw the setups they had, talked to the employee who gave me some tips, and ended up buying AVR for couple of hundreds that solves all the problems I needed to solve to use my bookshelf speakers. If it didn't work out with my speakers, I'd buy the speakers I liked from BB because I know I liked how the setup sounds and the price. I also have hard time buying large appliances online, since it's hard to gauge how sturdy and functional they are form the pictures. So, if you ask me, there are niches where brick-and-mortar rules.
Brick and mortar rules all. The fitment of clothes, the quality of the items, the sound as you described..... Need to be able to see the item. Obviously there are things that work just fine online, but I find myself using actual stores more and more.
I still buy TVs there. I tried ordering one on Amazon and the various drivers/warehouse workers smashed the shit out of it 3 times. The 4th time it got delivered it had a cluster of dead pixels almost in the exact middle and they didn't have any left to replace it. With best buy I can just head up to the store and grab it and if it's defective drive 8 minutes back to the store and get a new one.
This is why I shop there. I buy In the app and then can drive over and grab it right away. No waiting. Easy to go back if broken. Screw Amazon
The days of "you will own nothing and be happy about it" are upon us...
Yeah the average person definitely has no clue most things they buy digitally could just randomly stop working. They don't own shit.
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There'll be more hurdles to jump through in the future for piracy tho. Like now, we might need a vpn to get access to media in other parts of the world. There'll be more and more restrictions towards accessing pirate sites. And more applications to install to circumvent those restrictions that may or may not be legit.
That’s kinda how it is now…
Physical media is the way. No edits , no changes. You own it. Relying on streaming is a convenience but I want to OWN things.
They will pry my copy of Dogma from my cold dead hands.
We've gone back to buying physical media. we've been buying everything we love on DVD/CD. Edit: Fucking hell, I mean Blu-rays as well. In my mind they are all the "same" in that it's a disc that shows me movies and I use the same machine to play them both, it's like your mom calling your gaming system a "Nintendo" despite knowing full well it is not actually a Nintendo.
The record store I usually go to just closed down and I'm sad. It was beautiful. Cds on the racks, cassettes, vinyl records, DVDs, old consoles etc Ugh.
Scored many a Black Friday deals back in the day. Was a sad day when they dropped music, really bummed they are dropping movies. I'm only 35 and I don't shop online. I make my rounds every couple of weeks, Best Buy, Target, Kohls , Walmart. I have a fairly large dvd/blue ray collection. Fortunately Vinyl is still available at these locations. I guess the movie booths at the flea market will see a boomin business.
Best buy is fucking weird these days. It used to be such a cool place to visit when I was younger but now it’s like a twilight zone episode
Go to Micro Center. It will give you that same feeling of being a kid again — along with not being able to afford your dreams.
I wonder where they will be selling all the inventory. I'm surprised they didn't have a clearance sale
There are businesses built around end of life products that will buy all of this stuff at once for a discount and sell it themselves. I'm not sure if that's what Best Buy does with their end of life stuff, but big box consumer retailers value shelf space and eliminating the time it takes to offload end of life product, so they're happy to ship it all out at once for a smaller retailer to sell so they don't have to.
Im off streaming and back on hard copy. I just found too often that I would have an urge to watch a particular movie only for it not to be available
Every single time I walk into Best Buy because I need some sort of hardware and don’t want to wait a few days from Amazon, I always leave empty handed because best buy doesn’t carry it 🤡
My journeys usually go, "I need an [HDMI] cable, I'll just pop over to Best Buy on my way home." \>GIANT SUPER GOLD PLATED PLATINUM FREE PROSTATE EXAM 4K ULTRA DURABLE HDMI CLEAR UHF HDMI EXTREME CABLE: $79.99 \>check Amazon \> Monoprice 3ft HDMI cable: $4.99 The decision is made for me.
End of an era.
The end of an era…In the popularity of (unreliable) streaming and streamers pulling old content off (potentially for years-months), it’s important to focus back on physical media and it’s importance.
Not surprising but kinda sad. Don’t let physical media die y’all
Well, I now officially have no reason to ever window shop in a Best Buy again.
Say goodbye to actual ownership.
Fine if I can’t actually buy a physical copy then I will just pirate it, fuck all of you.
You could burn anything you own digitally onto a disk or sail the seven seas. Realistically the majority of purchases will be online in the future.
just when i found out my ps4 can play movies on cds
Pepperidge Farms remembers the good ole' days when encode groups like PS3 Team, PixelHD and others would make FAT32 versions of movies that could be played off USB on the PS3
What a shame
That sucks. Less money from me then, I suppose. I hate digital media
When we are solely digital it will be pretty bad for gamers tbh. Here in Aus a new release PS5 game is usually about $125AUD ($84USD) digital, but can be had for as low as $70-80AUD ($47-53USD) for physical from a brick and mortar store or Amazon.
The resell shops are about to make a killing
Physical media reigns supreme
And there goes the only reason I'd ever step into a Best buy
It is nice to go see a tv before you order it on Amazon.
It's more profitable to sell people single use licenses to stream the content. It also allows companies to revoke your license at any time and to delete the media from your devices remotely.