It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon as a middle-aged woman walks into Bizarro World, a comic book shop in Davis. In the front are brand-new releases, freshly sealed trading cards and the latest games. In the back is a time machine. There, it’s the year 2003. DVDs are the dominant medium, and this rental store has them lined on shelves by the thousands.

Amazed, the woman tells an employee, “It’s just like the old days.” Owner Dan Urazandi, overhearing the two during our interview, turns to me and says, “Those sorts of conversations are every day here.”

Today, the last Blockbuster is a tourist attraction in Oregon. The chain, which peaked at 8,000 video rental stores worldwide, filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and closed its remaining locations over the next four years. Blockbuster’s killer, streaming giant Netflix, ended its DVD-by-mail rental service in 2023. Redbox, with its red DVD rental kiosks, ceased a year later. As for private businesses that rent out DVDs, only one appears to remain in the greater Sacramento region.

“The industry collapsed on itself. Nobody would think of doing it. Who could possibly invest money into that? That would be crazy, right?” says Urazandi about operating a DVD rental store in the present day.

Urazandi started Four Star Movies about 15 years ago as an adjacent business to Bizarro World. He has 30,000 different titles available for rent on DVD, Blu-ray and even VHS. Demand petered out over the years as streaming became more popular. Urazandi thought he’d close eventually, but upkeep costs were low, so he kept the rental service going. Then, a few years ago, demand plateaued. Now it’s slightly growing. “We’ve passed the low point,” Urazandi says. “I think it could be something that becomes more viable.”

‘I loved it’

In 2011, a year after filing for bankruptcy, Blockbuster closed its Davis store. An independent shop in town called 49er Video also closed that year. At that time, Urazandi had operated his comic shop for two decades and had moved into a property with more space than he knew what to do with. He tried running an arcade in his back room with video games, air hockey and pinball. It was a great spot for his son’s birthday parties, but otherwise proved unpopular. Plus, the machines were too expensive for him to maintain.

Urazandi needed another idea and saw the loss of two video rental stores in town as an opportunity. Thus, Four Star Movies was born. He bought shelves from the defunct 49er Video and began his rental service with a few thousand films. People still wanted DVDs, especially the elderly who weren’t used to streaming. It wasn’t lucrative, but it was sustainable back then. Urazandi liked movies and wanted to keep the business going as the market turned, even though he received snide comments online, like “where’s your horse and buggy?”

The last DVD rental store in Sacramento proper, Awesome Video, closed in 2018, but smaller mom-and-pop shops in the rural edges of the Capital Region lasted slightly longer. Pine Grove Video in Amador County held on for over a decade and a half before closing in 2022. Owner Ray Jennings says, “I lost more money than anybody else doing DVDs in the final five years of the business.” Despite financial pressure, he continued out of a love for his customers, who often stopped by just to chat.

“I loved it,” Jennings says. “There’s the problem, you know. They say if you do what you love, the money will come. That’s not necessarily true, but at least you’re doing what you love.”

Before opening the shop, Jennings mostly worked as a local entertainer, spending time as a birthday clown, juggler, magician, musician and Elton John impersonator. Husband and wife Gary and Pam Reeder started Pine Grove Video in 2006 with around 1,200 DVDs in stock. The owners decided to sell it after six months because they had to take over another family business. At that time, Jennings worked as a mortician and was a frequent customer. He bought the shop after he overheard that it was for sale.

In the early days, Jennings says business was good. He contacted a distributor and eventually grew his catalog to 10,000 titles. He attributed success to the location. The shop was in a rural area with an older population used to DVDs and with poor internet access. “I’m not sure which was faster at that time here, technologically speaking, whether it would have been the internet or using smoke signals,” Jennings says. Business peaked about six years later.

Jennings wanted to continue for as long as possible. He launched several side hustles just to keep the lights on. Along with movie rentals and sales, he sold snacks, take-and-bake pizzas and his wife’s homemade brownies. He operated disk-repairing machines and rented out the recording studio he initially installed in the property for personal use. Then he became proficient at buying items at estate sales and reselling them on eBay. Redbox coming to Pine Grove was the first nail in the coffin. The final nail was COVID-19. It was too much for Jennings. He sold off his inventory and closed shop in 2022.

DVD “was a great medium for entertainment, I thought it really was,” Jennings says. “In its time, it was perfect. And I was obviously sorry to see it go, hoping it comes back.”

‘I’m hanging on’

Some signs point toward a DVD extinction. Brendle Wells is a librarian at the Sacramento Public Library responsible for its movie selection. Pre-pandemic, she’d order 50 copies of the latest Marvel blockbuster. Now she typically orders 30. Overall demand for physical movies is decreasing, but people still turn to the library for films that aren’t available on digital platforms (or ones they aren’t willing to pay for). So far this year, members have checked out DVDs over 30,000 times, though the library also offers the streaming service Kanopy.

Just as with VHS tapes, Wells believes there could come a time when the library no longer offers DVDs if they are discontinued. Apple TV is known for having the vast majority of its original content exclusive to the online service. It’s possible other streamers could eventually follow suit. “There are a number of entertainment companies that just don’t put their product out on physical media anymore,” Wells says. “So it may not be that there’s no more demand, it just may be that there’s no more product.”

There are signs of a DVD revival. The Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association, released a report in February that found “spending on all physical formats, including DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD showed some resilience.” Last year, overall sales dropped by nearly 10 percent, but spending on premium and less common 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray rose by 12 percent compared with 2024. It shows people are willing to spend more for quality physical media. Urazandi says people increasingly want true ownership of a movie that isn’t tied to an internet connection or a monthly subscription.

“People started to think, you know, having an actual physical copy of things has real value, makes sense,” Urazandi says. “The same trends that brought young people back into records brought them back into buying CDs and DVDs.”

One local retailer says there’s a growing demand for an older, discontinued format: VHS. Guy Rogers owns Sparky’s Retro Resale, a vintage collectibles shop in Sacramento. He sells action figures, comic books and old media. In 2024, after he first opened, Rogers sold a few VHS tapes a month. Today, he’s selling a few hundred a month. Sales increased drastically after he grew his inventory. “We got a really nice collection, and from there, it just snowballed,” he says. Last year, Sparky’s sold roughly 1,200 DVDs and Blu-rays and 1,400 VHS. Demand for the analog format is holding steady, if not growing. “It’s really, really popular right now,” Rogers says.

So who’s buying all these tapes? Horror fans, mostly. Not every film made its way onto DVD or streaming, so sometimes VHS is the only way to watch them. Rogers says some people collect their favorite films in every format. Others enjoy the old analog look of VHS played on CRT TVs. Some people prefer the tactility of physical media, just like with vinyl. Nostalgia is a factor, but it isn’t the only one.

Young parents are a growing market. Rogers says they want more control over what their kids watch. Some consumers are experiencing streaming fatigue. They’re tired of paying for multiple services to see all their favorites, with the chance that titles could be removed or censored. Plus, all that choice can be overwhelming. A self-curated VHS or DVD collection can cut down on the hassle. “It’s a way to contain the information overload,” Rogers says.

“Why am I still doing it? I’m a nostalgist and an archivist and kind of a fool,” Urazandi says. “I hang on to things that are obsolete, and I distrust things that are novel. And that’s just been my way my whole life, and it has served me well in the business that I chose to go into, and I’m hanging on.”

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