Yahoo Finance Overdue Idea: The DVD Swap Club
THE ISSUE: It’s movie night and the DVD collection is looking tired. You’ve seen The Dark Knight too many times to count, and your copy of Raging Bull is dead from overuse. Netflix doesn’t have the answer (The U.S. version might, but you’re scared the Feds will be on to you) and iTunes has some new releases, but you don’t have AppleTV on the big screen in the basement.
You check out other online options and see mail order rentals, but they’ll take two days to deliver, and nothing should take two days in 2015.
Out of options, you go one more round with The Dark Knight, wishing you had a time machine to roll back 5 years to when the Dollar Store down the road was still a Blockbuster Video.
THE VICTIMS: It’s a cruel irony that the digital age has gifted us with theatre-quality 50-inch TVs that cost next to nothing, but has somehow made it tougher to get the movies we want when we want them.
Sure, certain flicks are available everywhere (If you want to watch a kidnapping-themed Liam Neeson movie, you certainly have options). But if you want anything made before the late 90s, the online choices start to thin out.
Back when video stores existed, you could walk down the aisle and browse a library that would grow as new movies arrived, instead of shrink like current online backlists that are managed smaller due to the shifting costs of broadcast rights.
Think I’m wrong? Try and watch a Star Wars movie tomorrow night. (And by “Star Wars”, I mean Ewan McGregor is NOT in it). Unless you’re prepared to drive halfway across town to that one awesome video store that has survived, the Force will probably not be with you.
THE FIX: The real fix would be a Costco-sized video store two blocks from my front door. But we have to work with what we have.
While the DVD rental may by dead, the DVD collection is not. We all have one, probably jammed into a bookshelf next to the TV in the basement. You’ve seen the movies a million times, so they just sit there. But there are other bookshelves in other basements with different options. We just need to access them.
The DVD Swap Club would operate on the premise that a hell of a video store can be cobbled from the rec rooms of the city.
When you sign up, you list your DVD library on the website, and also gain access to other libraries of people who live near you. When you want to borrow a DVD, you send in a request, which is matched with a willing lender, and you go pick up the film yourself (at least until the drone fleet is ready).
It could either operate on a credit system, or just be a free swap, whichever keeps the lawyers away.
I’m willing to bet you’d have more than a few options for Star Wars. And there’s no reason the idea couldn’t be expanded to video games, or even books, since bookstores are probably buried in the same cemetery as video stores.
And hey, if you want to borrow Dark Knight, I’m almost done with it.
