From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video (Inside Technology) Review

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From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video (Inside Technology) ReviewIt may be hard to remember now, but when the first VCRs came on the market in the late 1970's, they were marketed to consumers primarily as a piece of high end video gear that would allow time-shifting of television programs. If you doubt this, just watch some of the early Betamax commercials on Youtube. A secondary use was the making and viewing of home videos to replace clunky 8mm home movies.
A third possible use - the viewing of mainstream Hollywood films on pre-recorded tapes - was barely even considered. After all, who but the most dedicated videophiles or home theater geeks would shell out the $90 or more that the studios wanted to charge for such tapes? And why would anyone want to own a film they would probably watch just once?
As we all know, by 1985 this paradigm had shifted 180 degrees. Few consumers seemed to be able to figure out how to program their VCRs, or even set the clocks, and home videos turned out to be a bore. The real "killer app" turned out to be the overnight rental of a Hollywood film at the local video store. The VCR had changed completely from a television-watching device to a movie-watching device.
Joshua Greenberg's book tells the story of how this shift happened. In an interesting approach, Greenberg mostly ignores the major players - the studios, equipment manufacturers, and major retailers - and focuses on the minor players. The minor players are people like the guy who published a videophile newsletter, or the visionaries who opened the first video rental stores. And this approach works very well indeed for this story, as it is a classic study of innovative underdogs finding a market niche no one had expected. In fact this book would be excellent reading for any business school class in entrepenuership.
Although this book is a very good read, I have to deduct a star for a few reasons. Greenberg has put in some discussions of media theory that are unneccessary and bog the book down at times. Also, I normally don't mind typos, but this book has several cases thst go beyond misspellings to actually having the wrong word, or a word in the wrong place in the sentence. Doesn't anyone proof-read this stuff?
Really fun parts of this book are reading about some of the misfires that happened as the rental business evolved. Some we can classify as seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the time failures - Rent-a-Beta (a rental VCR with the selected tape locked in), or tape-rental services in movie theater lobbies. Other just make no sense at all - like U-haul's attempt to enter the tape rental business (SAY WHAT???). I also liked the parts about the "pan-and-scan" versus letterbox debate, and the colorization debate.
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