“Chicagoans are lucky,” he says. “There are still a lot of small video stores where you can find things. But when you have someone who lives somewhere in the middle of Ohio or Indiana, there are no independent videos stores.”
Having been in the the navel of Ohio in the not to distant past, I must note that one thing there was no shortage of were really good video stores. You couldn't get drinkable coffee if you stood in a busy intersection waving handfuls of hundred dollar bills while screaming ALL MY WORLDLY WEATH FOR A GOOD CUP OF JOE!, but there was no shortage of joints offering a wide, eclectic range of cinema. Probably because there's literally nothing else to do there, unless your idea of a good time is getting hammered on a case of lite beer and playing Cornhole next to the highway.
And, strictly from an end user perspective, checking their site reveals that the majority of their 'top rentals' list.....is available on Netflix streaming.
Physical movies are dead, in the Monty Python sense of being hauled away on an offal cart protesting the whole way. If you don't offer streaming, you aren't making it through the next decade.
/edit
I also don't think Netflix's selection is as mainstream as that article portrays. I'm not a hardcore devotee of the cinematic avant garde, but I read Film Comment and have fairly sophisticated cinematic tastes. I can only think of a time or two in the last five-odd years when Netflix didn't have what I was after.
I mean, they've got Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and when do I need to venture further into the movie jungle than an esoteric Thai art house flick that never had a domestic release?
Not so often!
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