For most of us, popping down to the local video store on a Saturday night is a distant memory.
But the entertainment option's only just ending in the South Island, with the last United Video store closing its doors in Invercargill after nearly four decades.
Well before Netflix, Disney+ and even TVNZ+, the South City location in Invercargill was the place to go for your drama, sci-fi and fantasy content.
You may even remember the United Video jingle — 'we've got the world of video'.
After a long haul in the movie hire business, owners Daryle and Kim Blackler have pressed the stop button for good.
"To be honest, I don't know where the 40 years have gone," Daryle told 1News.
Customers 1News spoke to in-store recalled their fond memories of the store.
"It's very sad that this is closing. It's a piece of Invercargill history," one said.
"A few memories come back... my daughter [worked] here," another added.
"[Customers] have fond memories when they were kids, they used to come here and then they'd become teenagers and adults and they still came here," he said.
Despite a loyal membership base and diversifying with pop culture art, comics and trading cards, it wasn't enough to keep up with the growing popularity of streaming services.
It was also impacted by a lack of new material due to some media giants not supplying DVDs anymore, and the Covid-19 pandemic made for a hard call for the Invercargill owners.
"We suffered from not just the technology change but we suffered through Covid... we would have lost around 50% of our customers in the first lockdown in 2020."
He said having to produce the DVD, the case and the artwork, and then ship to a warehouse for them to sell was costly for the big film players who could now save that money and put the content online.
There are just a small handful of United Video stores left, notably the 'M&Ms' (Masterton and Morrinsville) — and both of them are in the North Island.
There are still some independent players operating across the country, however.
The Blacklers owned multiple locations in the lower south, including two in Invercargill, two in Dunedin, one in Gore and one in Queenstown, Daryle said.
They have all closed, with remaining stock – around 80,000 DVDs and video games – ending up back in the home base store in South City. Some of the stock had to be stored in containers because there were so many.
Since announcing the closure more than six weeks ago, DVDs have still been in hot demand, with the Blacklers selling off around 30,000 so far.
Back in the heyday
There were plenty of franchise stores dotted around the country during the '80s and '90s.
The South Invercargill store is quite simply huge, especially for a video store in 2023.
"This used to be a Woolworths supermarket," Daryle said.
"I thought, 'It's big, is it too big?' And I thought, 'Nah, I can work it'."
He's seen a lot of change during his time in business, one of them being the battle between videotape formats.
"The VHS tape and the Beta tape... amazingly we picked the winner on that one and went VHS!"
There were some perks to the job, too, like meeting actors.
"We used to do trips overseas to Las Vegas, Los Angeles... and the industry keeps changing," he said.
But in the '90s, the DVD arrived and a few years later, Blu-Ray discs.
"A lot of late nights if you wanna watch them all too!" he said.
The owners would go the extra mile and search the world for DVDs that they did not have in-store, in the hope that customers would continue to come back.
He recalled having "four staff on the tills" as they were "running flat out in the weekends" with lines out the doors.
The Blacklers thanked their staff for all their hard work keeping the doors open as long as they did.
When asked about his favourite film, his response was immediate.
"I get asked that all the time. I will have to say Pulp Fiction.
"We will wake up on Monday to... what are we going to do now?"
The Blacklers are now taking a break before their next adventure.
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