Video library
A video library is analogous to a library , a business in which films or media collected, archived and made available to the customer. Video libraries are almost exclusively private commercial operations , where it is possible to borrow movies , PC and console games and similar titles for a fee.
The name is derived from the original core business, the rental of video films. Since other media are now also being loaned out, the term media library has established itself, at least in industry and in retail , while the vernacular continues to stick to the familiar term video library .
The data carriers are usually loaned out as a rental , since in the legal sense a loan is free of charge.
Types of video rental stores
Traditionally, there are three types of commercial video rental shops:
- The family video library with unrestricted access because no indexed media are accessible to the customer
- The adult video library with restricted access from the age of 18, because indexed media are also accessible to the customer
- The combination video store , a combination of family video library and adults video library , with separate premises separate cash register and separate inputs, or a two-door "lock" between the different areas
In addition to the classic video rental stores located in business premises, other forms of media lending have established themselves:
- Mail order or online video libraries that have established themselves with the spread of the Internet . There movies are ordered online and in the mail delivered.
- Vending machine video libraries where you can borrow films from a vending machine regardless of opening times
- Program video libraries , which are characterized by a particularly extensive range of artistic films. Some of them have formed a working group and draw attention to themselves with the term Cinethek video archive .
- Video taxi companies , where you can order films by phone, which are brought to the customer by a delivery service.
- “Virtual video libraries ” from pay TV broadcasters , IPTV providers and streaming portals that implement film access through video on demand (VoD) or pay-per-view (PPV).
history
Beginnings and heyday
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the oldest video library in the world is in Kassel . It was opened by Eckhard Baum in 1975, and by the end of 1980 there were already around a thousand. In the fall of 1977 opened George Atkinson in Los Angeles the first video rental in the United States. A film on videotape cost about $ 50 at the time and was loaned by Atkinson for $ 10. In the spring of 1982, the major American film distributors also put their A and B films on cassette on the market, which significantly increased the range. In 1983 there were 3,664 cinemas with 125 million visitors in the Federal Republic of Germany, compared to 4850 video stores with 128 million borrowed videos. The video market had thus established itself in the media structure within a very short time. The distribution dominated, cassettes remained the exception in the first half of the 1980s. With the video market, an economic factor has established itself that has decisively changed the production and distribution of films. In addition, the consumer has become autonomous in terms of film selection, time and place.
While the first licensed rental cassettes in Germany cost up to 300 D-Marks , nowadays around 50 euros for a DVD or Blu-Ray with rental rights and a so-called rental window (depending on the rental company, this varies from one week to a maximum of three months before regular sales start) the upper limit. On the other hand, direct marketing is the term used to describe films whose sales and rental versions are released at the same time, whereby the rental license costs are charged with a surcharge of around 50 percent.
Decline from the 2000s
Various new types of access such as online lending and streaming and the increasing increase in circulating black copies have led to the "video library around the corner" being threatened with extinction since the beginning of 2003. Possible after-effects of the cost-intensive conversion from VHS to DVD at the end of the 1990s are also cited as the reason for the crisis. As a consequence, many smaller video rental companies, especially in rural areas, have already ceased operations.
According to GfK , the number of customers who borrow film data carriers in Germany has halved from 14.5 million in 2000 to 6.9 million in 2010. There has been an increase in the digital rental market (VoD / PpV / streaming) since 2009 to 1.4 million customers in 2010.
Due to the increased competition from internet-based streaming services, the listed company Blockbuster , the largest video rental chain in the USA with 3,000 branches in the USA and more than 5,000 branches worldwide, had to file for bankruptcy in September 2010 . In Germany, too, the number of video stores has fallen massively from more than 3000 (plus 1000 vending machine video stores) in 2007 to 600 in 2017. Streaming is also cited as the main reason here.
Criticism and protection of minors
From the end of 1981, the criticism of educators about the way young people deal with videos increased. Since the FSK was only responsible for public film screenings until then, video cassettes were not checked before they were put on the market, so that even children and young people could access the video films without major problems. In March 1982, the Neuss Youth Welfare Office applied to the Federal Inspectorate to index 744 video films. Der Spiegel first reported critically on August 23, 1982 under the title Bombs on the Shelf , after positive reports about video technology had previously dominated.
On March 1, 1984, the ZDF broadcast a 45-minute documentary entitled Mama Papa Zombie , referring to the information provided by a video lender . Just two days later, the question Video guilty appeared on the cover of the picture . . A killer should be a fan of horror films , cannibal films, and porn films . On March 12, Der Spiegel published the cover story For Breakfast a Zombie on a Bell Rope , and on March 16, Die Zeit reported under the title The Blood on the Tile about a gruesome murder modeled on a video. Author Michael Sontheimer asked whether horror films were a drug. In addition to the film producers, the main culprits were mainly the operators of video stores, as well as irresponsible parents.
Renate Faerber-Husemannstraße wrote on 1 April 1984 at the Deutsche Allgemeine Sunday newspaper : "The state must terrorists video put the craft." Hans Schueler called in the On 14 December 1984 Time under the title free Horror House. Violence videos must be banned : "People who do business with lustful depictions of violence should be treated the same as drug dealers."
As early as June 1983, the major video distributors voluntarily submitted their tapes to the FSK, whose working committee was now chaired by the permanent representative of the state youth authorities. In future, video cassettes that had not been tested by the FSK could neither be sold nor lent. From 1985 the media turned away from the video problem again. Nevertheless, a change in media competence was triggered, which changed drastically with the introduction of video. In a complex interplay between technology, consumers and films, a historically new perspective on films emerged that undermined the critical discourse and ultimately let it fall silent.
Similar developments in relation to suspected video threats were seen in Sweden in 1981, Great Britain in 1982/83, New Zealand in the mid-1980s and Nigeria in the early 1990s.
literature
- Jürgen Kniep: “No youth approval!”. Film censorship in West Germany 1949–1990 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0638-7 .
- Tobias Haupts: The video library as an interface to film history. An obituary in Michel Gondry's “Be kind rewind” . In: Annika Richterich, Gabriele Schabacher (Ed.): Space as Interface . (= MuK 187/188), Siegen 2011.
- Tobias Haupts: The video library. On the history and media practice of a cultural institution . transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2628-5 .
References
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ “My video library is a cultural heritage” - conversation with the inventor of the world's first video library: Eckhard Baum
- ↑ George Atkinson, video rental pioneer, dies at 69th USA today, March 8, 2005, accessed August 29, 2018 .
- ↑ Martin Spletter: The death of the video stores , September 29, 2010
- ↑ US video rental chain Blockbuster is bankrupt Report on Onlinekosten.de from September 25, 2010, accessed on August 13, 2017
- ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Branche-stirbt-weiter-Videotheken-schliessen-reihenweise-4198940.html
- ↑ Medienwandel - Die Videothek dies , tagesspiegel.de, March 14, 2018, accessed on August 29, 2018
- ↑ Bombs on the Shelf , Der Spiegel 34/1982, accessed online on August 29, 2018
- ↑ Jürgen Kniep, p. 304