The weekly visit to the local video store was one of the highlights of my youth. I could browse for hours. I remember the first Blockbuster that opened near me. It had zero atmosphere or charisma. I guess if you just want to watch a movie, that's the way to go. and that's why Netflix killed them.
About 10 years ago I was driving through remote Texas and stopped at a gas station that had, to my utter surprise, a video rental section. VHS tapes, not DVDs. And there was a young family browsing! It made me so happy to see.
The shift to digital for movies and music stripped away something real from the experience. Better picture and sound? Sure. At the cost of atmosphere and fun. I recently watched a 4K remastered Aliens (1986). There were maybe 3 short scenes where I said 'wow, the detail is amazing'. The entire rest of the film was me thinking how they had stripped the atmosphere from the film experience. The blue hue was gone. The murky, exoplanet looked fake.
Close Encounters (1977) on 4K is a different experience. It looks great, but there are scenes that play totally different in 4K. What once was a dark shadow moving against the starry sky is now very clearly a spaceship. The shadow was better. At the end, the aliens were clearly kids in crappy costumes. But on VHS they were child-sized aliens standing in front of a bright light, leaving much to the imagination. Outside of those who saw it in the theater during it's original run, everyone since has had the same experience, pretty much. The 4K version changes that. And don't get me started on the massive changes to color grading in Eyes Wide Shut and Trainspotting. Or how they jacked up the color and brightness on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) so it better matched the cartoonish, and inferior, sequels.
