Depending on when you were born, watching a movie has changed dramatically. Ways of buying and renting movies has improved along with renting from stores or online.

When I was younger, I would watch a VHS tape on a VCR and I still do.

Yet, some of my friends haven’t even seen one. They are so surprised and confused why you have to wait for a movie to rewind, instead of just hitting a start over button.

One problem of the VHS tapes that many don’t miss is when a sibling or small children pull out all of the film for that movie. Then having to wind all of it back inside the tape and hoping it still works.

I grew up on watching VHS tapes. I still own every Disney classic on tape too. They are in three boxes stacked in my closet full of VHS movies. Watching Disney, Barbie, Strawberry Shortcake and every princess movie known was all I did as a child.

My family started purchasing more DVDs then they did VHSs and it happened over the course of about a year. It was weird going from a tape to a small disk. I wasn’t used to having to rewind my movie, or being careful not to scratch a disc. Most of my friends know what a DVD is. It’s the easier form of watching a movie compared to a VHS.

Once different ways of watching a movie were discovered, places opened up to where you could rent a movie for a certain amount of time.

The main movie rental store people would go to was Blockbuster. They rented DVDs and VHSs for certain amounts of time depending on what you pay. New releases were $2.99 for the first night and older films were $1.99. Each day after would be 99 cents. I think that is extremely expensive. What if someone didn’t like the movie they rented?

Would you have to force yourself to watch it to get the money’s worth?

Most Blockbusters went out of business once other rental places like Redbox started opening. Redbox started opening in 2002 outside of every store, but weren’t everywhere in the beginning. Then they started popping up at popular stores like McDonald’s, Walgreens, Shop ‘n Save, Walmart and Dierbergs. Also, Redbox was open 24/7 depending where they were located, compared to the store closing at 8.

You could rent a movie at 2 in the morning and return them as late as you wanted. The one problem was you would have to watch the movie in one day. Redbox only allowed 24 hour rentals, and each day it’s late it raises the price.

Prices range from $1.50 to $2.00 per movie and would increase $1.00 each day it was late.

Redbox soon died down when people started discovering Netflix.

Netflix at one point sent you movies in the mail, and still do. You were able to go online, find a movie you wanted to watch, and they would send the movie to you in the mail. You could also keep the movie for as long as you wanted. But you wouldn’t receive your next movie until you sent the first movie back. Netflix charged $7.99 a month and you could rent any movie they had stock off. Netflix is now a huge industry that everyone uses. It’s also way more expensive. Netflix now charges $19.99 a month.

You are able to watch whatever you want whenever you want, as long as they have it online.

Movies went from watching a film you had to constantly rewind, to literally watching it on your phone. You can change the show or movie with a touch of a button. No more having to leave your house. You don’t even have to worry about not liking the movie.