Video Mailbox: Like Netflix, Only 15 Years Too Early
I had always thought that mail-order video rental only came to be after the invention of DVDs because video tapes are too bulky and delicate to send through the mail on a regular basis. I was wrong.
Hacking Netflix alerted us to the existence of Video Mailbox, a service that let you rent, by mail, as many videos as you wanted for the low, low price of $29.95 per month. If you lacked a VCR, you could rent one for only $10 per month. Video Mailbox made its debut in 1987.
Their hilarious commercial features Ralph, owner of a local video store, shuttering his business because of mail-order competition—again, 15 years too early. Who can compete with ten thousand titles? The service is memorialized on its own web site.
...Video Mailbox came up with several breakthrough ideas: Why not allow the customer to rent as many videos as they like for a flat monthly fee? Why not ship the movies to the customer via mail, using a special pre-paid mailer? Why not give the customer a huge selection — practically every major film that was available? Why not have the customer indicate their favorite movies in a "queue" so that when they return a movie, the next movie on their list would be automatically dispatched? Why not use a sophisticated software program to manage each customer's queue, to ensure that videos were dispatched quickly and efficiently?
Indeed! While Video Mailbox didn't survive, it's a great example of a brilliant idea existing before the technology to support it could.
Was Video Mailbox The First Movies-By-Mail Rental Company? [Hacking Netflix]
The Story of Video Mailbox [Fan Page]
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Comments:
That was pretty cool + I love old commercials. Netflix can start renting out Blu-ray players
I miss you the 80's. Crazy though how that was $30 bucks twenty-two years ago, that was a substantially larger number back then.
How did you manage your queue and such without the Internets? Or ... did you use the Internets? Did they have Internets back then?
@TCama: With a sheet of paper that you mail them. You list your "Favorite 50" movies, and they randomly send you movies from that list, two at a time.
And yes, the Internet existed, but not the web.
@mcnerd85: According to one calculator I found, $30 in 1987 is $56 in 2008 dollars. And the VCR? $220 after the year.
A great idea before its time...like the Newton or Velvet Underground.
@dpeters11:
Where did you find that calculator? I often find myself wanting to calculate today's dollar versus the dollar of past years.
Just think, with the right patent they could have taken NetFlix to the cleaners!
@TCama:
We did have BBS back in 1987 so it could have been done via the phone lines. We used these very slow modems back then that used the term baud to determine their connection rate.
A queue could have been done with properly written code back then on a BBS board. We did have chat rooms back in the day as well. Was always fun to find a BBS that had multiple connections.
I miss those days at times as everyone that did BBS knew each other on a much more personal level as we often meet in person
I wonder how many "business model" patents Netflix holds where Video Mailbox's existence serves as "prior art"?
Two answer my own questions: TWO.
Shit, I remember paying $500.00 at Sears for a Sony VCR and paying over $100.00 for a VCR tape of Cool Hand Luke for my Dad one Christmas around '87 or '88.
I suspect that the problem was less the issues of mailing video tapes and more the fact that managing rentals online is much easier than managing them via pen, paper, and snail mail.
I mean, video tapes are bulkier and more prone to damage than dvd's, but they aren't exactly as heavy as a cinder block or as fragile as glass.
Actually, there was another player in the mail-order rental business, starting up at around the same time: VIDEO LIBRARY, of Germantown, PA. Was run in pretty-much the same way as VM, and from what I remember continued well-into the 90's (by then you could choose whether you wanted DVD or VHS format).
Even though we had a fair amount of chain rental stores here in NJ back then (including several mom-and-pop shops) they couldn't hold a candle to the incredible array of independent/foreign/subtitled/classic/OOP movies that VL stocked. They gave me the chance to enjoy rare and unique films I would never have seen otherwise, all from the comfort of home. Awesome. :-)
FWIW VL is still in business (www.mtairyvideolibrary.com) although the mail-order services are no longer offered.
@Karl - the market would have been tiny if relying on the % of people using the internet back then. That could not have been a major part of any realistic business plan.
Hey, what was that early internet/AOL thingy with the tiny keyboard with rubber keys? We had it in my school library. 1987-ish.
@tbax929: [data.bls.gov] Love this thing.
I used it as the basis for an entire blog post once. [blog.timesunion.com]
I've been using Video Mailbox for 20 years now. WTF is Netflix?
That's kinda pricey since the mom and pop stores were usually a buck a movie $2 for new releases. Over 10 years ago I took submissions of indie films and public access shows, people sent in the VHS tape and I digitized them into 14.4/28.8/56/ISDN speeds, and put them up on Xoom.. I didn't have the financial backing to expand it, and video over the internet was still new, but not long after came atom films and later youtube. So I know the feeling.
Wait. You mean they had color movies back then?
@Bitter_Old_Punk: Where I lived, the mom and pop stores were charging $100 or so annually for memberships.
My dad used to own a shop called "Dial-A-Video." It was a video delivery service, call em up and then they deliver your video in 30 minutes.
@NotYou007: I met my husband on such a BBS. We were 14 at the time. The BBS had 3-4 lines, one of the bigger ones around. Fond memories.
@madanthony: In some Asian herb shops, they still do all of their transactions by pen and paper. There are big binders of paper with account information like order history and prices for reference in case a customer wants to buy a batch of herbs, but is unsure of the combination. It's amazing that a lot of places still work like this.
Interesting commercial until he screwed it up with the Leonard v. Hagler reference. All knowing boxing fans know Hagler won that fight and Leonard stole it by being flashy. So this guy is saying Video Mailbox is just a flashy company going to steal you money?
@Haggie1:
Another reason why business model patents are stupid. Gee, I send you my product in the mail, I have a patent on it and anyone else who ever wants to send a product in the mail again will have to pay me for the right!
Video-To-Go in the DC area around '84-'85 was even kludgier. You called in your rental order from a catalog, and it was delivered the next day to the nearest participating store (People's Drug for us). It combined waiting a day with having to leave the house! And they carried Beta! Brilliant!
I rented videos by mail in 1978...from a company in New York. Rentals were for one week at a time when video stores seemed non existent.
FYI, my RCA VCR cost $979. and weighed about 30 lbs. Blank tapes cost $20.
The great thing about NetFlix...and Video Mailbox...
It let you make your own video rental at home.
@Trai_Dep: No, it was owls, not pigeons. And how did you know, you Muggle, you?!?
Memory Charm coming right up!
I love how you can see the guy stop and begin to turn around at the end of it. I wonder how many takes he did.
Madden even came out with his own delivery rental service. I still have the box installed on the side of my house where they would drop off your videos (under lock and key of course). I think I just threw away the catalogue from it a few months ago.
Those were the days.
This from a 1966 TVSCIFI Zine:
"ViewMaster Discs Delivered to Your Door!
For a small $9.55 fee, a new service allows you to rent ViewMaster discs. Once you view the disc, you simply pop it back in the mail to return it. Then they send you another disc on your list. (Now that ViewMaster Discs have sound, we expect it's only a matter of time before your favorite TV program will be delivered to your door along with the daily newspaper!)"
@tonalanswer: Did Video Mailbox rent out porn movies? Those backroom rentals made up a lot of Mom and Pops video business back in the VHS glory days. Renting out DEBBIE DOES DALLAS was the American way. The secret was to not run a sleazzy store.
I worked in the very first video store in 1985 in my small Midwestern town. We had about 250 titles at most. 200 mainstream and 50 pornos. We could buy 10 new titles a month for the store because they cost between $80 and $120. For the more popular titles customers might have to wait 3 months on a waiting list. I remember having to "fine" customers because they would bring their tapes back without rewinding. That always made people happy. My childhood innocence was shattered when the kindly old janitor from my elementary school came to the checkout counter and rented "New Wave Hookers" and "Coffee, Tea, or Me".
@wvFrugan: Hell yeah - and our first VCR had a remote control that was remote only in the strictest sense: it had a CORD!
Being ahead of your time must suck. Philo Farnsworth invent the theory of CRT TV in 1922. He was plowing a field and you keep the plow in the ground all the time. It gave hime the idea of a scanning beam. We used it from the 1950's up til their replacement by LCD and Plasma sets. Poor Philo never made anything off of his 17 year patent.
@dpeters11: Wow. At first, I thought you actually had a magic, physical calculator that calculated inflation, and I was impressed. Then, I had coffee, and my reading comprehension kicked in.
That's nothing...I subscribe to CycloramaFlix.
@Haggie1: Thank link reinforced how much of a shyster Michael Pachter really is, by the way. He was saying back in 05 that Netflix was unsustainable, and here we are four years later, and everything appears to be working just fine for the company.
Why anyone listens to the man is beyond me.
Facets in Chicago started their rent by mail program back in 1983. It was called "Critics' Membership" and cost $100 a year. That got you 12 rentals shipped to you with a return postage label. Each rental after cost $10 with you supplying the return shipping cost or, when your 12 ran out, you could buy another pack of 12 for $100. Sounds awfully cumbersome. Now their rentals service is on-line (facetsmovies.com), costs the same as Netflix and even still rents a bunch of VHS if it's not yet available on DVD. It's pretty cool. Wow have times changed...
@mcnerd85:
I kind of laugh when people complain about the cost of an xbox 360, ps3, wii, etc...or how much games cost today. When the Atari 2600 came out (about 30 years ago), it was $199. Nintendo games were originally $50-$60 20 years ago. So I'd say systems are about half the cost they were back in the day, considering minimum wage was about $3.50 back then.
@Saboth: Exactly. I remember getting an Atari 2600 (actually, a Sears Tele-Games model) Christmas 1977 - and it was $200. A *lot* of money back then.
Cartridges were $20 as well.
Perhaps the price of shipping the movies back hurt them? Maybe I missed it, but I don't think that was free.