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Some of us remember when this happened, and most folks either ignored or actively hated the idea.
The PA divx player became a recurring character I thought, I'm surprised searching their site only comes up with three comics.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/archive/search?tag=86&sort=old
The first one (IIRC and according to the search)
This is a fun watch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Or4nWQpidk
A very fun watch
Edit: that makes it sound suspicious. It's a divx sales training tape.
"What if DIVX goes bankrupt?”
"Well, its almost impossible to believe that DIVX could go under!"
Well that aged poorly.
I was mistaken because I thought Circuit City's downfall was a Bain Capital joint, but they were just run by a different set of idiots Circuit City
In August 2008, the chain's head office demanded stores destroy all copies of an issue of Mad magazine which described "Sucker City" as a chain with a long list of locations, all in proximity to each other and each adjacent to a rival Best Buy store.[45]
Initially, only a single Zenith player was available starting at $499, along with 20 to 50 titles. Very few players sold during this time period, with The Good Guys chain alleging that fewer than 10 players were sold during this time period.
This seems to be the fundamental flaw in the plan. If the DVDs just faded over time, but were system agnostic, they likely could have worked as a distribution scheme. But who is going to go $500 out of pocket (in '98 no less, so closer to $1000 today) for a player that eats your discs after two days?
This reminds me of Flexplay, which was a DVD that had a coating which made the disk unreadable after 48 hours. Technology Connections did a wonderful video about it.
I used to put them in a plastic baggie, push all the air out, then stick it in the freezer. It seemed to halt the process long enough to give it to a friend and allow them watch it after the 48 hour period.
That seems like a lot of work relative to just buying a normal DVD
Kids often have access to resources like that, but no cash. It checks out.
You’re right. I only bought one or two of those, total. They were dumb.
Could you just hit them with clearcoat right out of the gate?
These disks were designed to self-destruct in the presence of oxygen. They literally rust away.
Oxygen and its O2 form does like to sneak into everything. Even sealed in the original packaging, there's a limited shelf life. Flexplay claimed stability of only one year, which isn't much given it comes sealed in a plastic bag.
It's (the formats) downfall was thinking these companies could charge twice the price of a normal DVD player to consumers, just so the consumers could rent a DVD and not have to return it. That, coupled with the younger crowd not having a working phone line in their house by 1998, as cell phones started taking over.
God, imagine the piles and piles of garbage dvd's that would have been thrown away if this had taken over normal rentals.
To the curious: Redbox kiosks popped up around 4 years later in 2002.
twice the price of a normal DVD player to consumers
$500 was the standard rate for a player in '98. Maybe a little cheaper. But why bother buying a marginally smaller newer version of Laserdisc if the discs themselves evaporate?
I distinctly remember my last time in a Circuit City. I don't recall the date, but I'm going to say it was circa 2006. I had purchased a Nintendo Wii at one of CC's competitors but the competitor did not have any suitable Game Cube controllers. So I went over to Circuit City to see what they had since they were essentially in the same shopping complex. In a surprising turn of events, they actually did have Game Cube controllers in stock, they had the style/brand I was hoping for, and the price was actually reasonable.
They had dozens of employees out in the various sections of the store, at least one per department. There were a plethora of customers. However, they had literally 1 cash register open. The line was backed up into the aisles. I am pretty sure I waited 45 minutes just to check out with this one single item, and that's only because the customer service manager came over after about 40 minutes and offered to check out anybody with only 1 or 2 items.
Might be a complete surprise to the former corporate overlords, but for some odd reason I decided never to go back after that.
Circuit City had a rough transition out of the 90s. For a while they were pretty highly-regarded because they had salesmen who actually knew their shit. They had specialization of skills within the store, so the sales experience was excellent.
But with the rise of internet sales, mega-store's like Frys, and Best Buy going to the Walmart model, they couldn't keep up that level of service while being price competitive. Some stores really tried to keep the service excellent, but they did it by cutting back on things like maintenance and checkout staff, so you had some stores that were filthy and took forever to check out, but had full staffing in the sales departments.
But in the end their salespeople weren't enough to keep them alive. Especially when you could learn what you needed from them, then go to the next strip mall down the road and buy the products at Best Buy for 20% less.
I miss Fry's. I need to go to my local microcenter.
My last time there I was trying to buy a GPS for someone. I walked up to the counter and saw the GPS I wanted. I couldn't get either of the people behind that counter to sell it too me. They were pushing something else and simply wouldn't sell it to me. I went to best buy and purchased it. A few years later they were done.
Fucked around, found out.