Some of us remember when this happened, and most folks either ignored or actively hated the idea.
The PA divx player became a recurring character I thought, I’m surprised searching their site only comes up with three comics.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/archive/search?tag=86&sort=old
The first one (IIRC and according to the search)
This is a fun watch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Or4nWQpidk
A very fun watch
Edit: that makes it sound suspicious. It’s a divx sales training tape.
I was mistaken because I thought Circuit City’s downfall was a Bain Capital joint, but they were just run by a different set of idiots Circuit City
In August 2008, the chain’s head office demanded stores destroy all copies of an issue of Mad magazine which described “Sucker City” as a chain with a long list of locations, all in proximity to each other and each adjacent to a rival Best Buy store.[45]
Initially, only a single Zenith player was available starting at $499, along with 20 to 50 titles. Very few players sold during this time period, with The Good Guys chain alleging that fewer than 10 players were sold during this time period.
This seems to be the fundamental flaw in the plan. If the DVDs just faded over time, but were system agnostic, they likely could have worked as a distribution scheme. But who is going to go $500 out of pocket (in '98 no less, so closer to $1000 today) for a player that eats your discs after two days?
This reminds me of Flexplay, which was a DVD that had a coating which made the disk unreadable after 48 hours. Technology Connections did a wonderful video about it.
I used to put them in a plastic baggie, push all the air out, then stick it in the freezer. It seemed to halt the process long enough to give it to a friend and allow them watch it after the 48 hour period.
These disks were designed to self-destruct in the presence of oxygen. They literally rust away.
Oxygen and its O2 form does like to sneak into everything. Even sealed in the original packaging, there’s a limited shelf life. Flexplay claimed stability of only one year, which isn’t much given it comes sealed in a plastic bag.
It’s (the formats) downfall was thinking these companies could charge twice the price of a normal DVD player to consumers, just so the consumers could rent a DVD and not have to return it. That, coupled with the younger crowd not having a working phone line in their house by 1998, as cell phones started taking over.
God, imagine the piles and piles of garbage dvd’s that would have been thrown away if this had taken over normal rentals.
To the curious: Redbox kiosks popped up around 4 years later in 2002.
