I remember it very well. You also needed a special player to play them, which only Circuit City sold. It was all cheaper than DVDs and DVD players, but obviously only if you watched it once or twice. And it was more expensive than renting it at Blockbuster.
Just a stupid idea.
Ironically the “viewable for 48 hours” is now the model for renting streamed movies using a special device. They were ahead of their time.
It’s not that ironic.
Renting used to exist, and it required you to have a dvd or vhs player. Renting on streaming doesn’t require a ‘special device.’ In fact it is the least special device needed by comparison, as you can watch on so many different devices.
48 hours was pretty common on new release rentals too, if not even less time.
Imagine if instead you needed to buy another tablet that only functioned as a video rental device. And nothing else could watch the rentals. That would be closer to reality.
I remember DirecTV in the late 90s used this model. When you wanted to watch a pay-per-view, you had access to a channel that was streaming broadcasting it for 24 or 48 hours.
And I had a dude down the road always ready with a card to slap in my box so I could watch every channel for free.
I watched Bigger, Longer, and Uncut first, then Cruel Intentions. I don’t remember the movie, but I was way into the actresses. Good god Sarah Michelle Gellar and Reese Witherspoon really made my 14 year old brain short out bad. I can’t remember a single thing, seriously, but I watched it like 30 times.
I’d say less stupid and more shortsighted. If the cost of DVDs were to have stayed high for, say, 10+ years, then I could see getting a user base for DIVX and having at least moderate success.
But a giant tech retailer of all things should be aware that new tech tends not to stay prohibitively expensive for too long.
