I grew up in a small Southern town that had one movie theater. Almost every Friday, a new movie came out. As a teenager, our theater was upgrade to a “Cinema,” which meant we had 4 screens, all playing different movies.
Then came HBO and VCR’s. My dad loved that one monthly fee allowed him to collect hundreds of movie titles on VHS tape, with no commercials! It was a little work, but well worth it to have easy access to all the movies HBO ever showed. (Those tapes were the main part of my inheritance.)
We all know about the well-chronicled rise and fall of Blockbuster video/DVD rental business. We know how Netflix came along began mailing DVD’s, then streaming movies directly into the home.
Your age dramatically influenced your relationship with Blockbuster Videos. For me, it was a weekend ritual. I remember many Friday nights roaming around the store looking for something to grab me. Two for the kids, two for the whole family and a scary one for daddy after everyone went to bed.
We lived through the transition from VHS to DVD and tried to see the added benefits of BlueRay. It was during this time of Blockbuster domination, that many of us were investing in home theater systems. Big screens, big sounds and for some – big, fancy chairs!
Netflix introduced me to downloading movies and to the frustration of “buffering.” I always took it personally when my family blamed me for the random pauses in a movie while it buffered. As much as we hated pauses, grainy pictures and other troubles; we stopped our visits to Blockbuster.
This trend continued so much that now my kids rarely even look at a tv, but instead watch their phones and laptops constantly. As I am sure you can imagine, this bothers me. They seem to be satisfied watching their choice of movie on whatever screen they are holding.
Saved by The Incredibles!
Pixar’s movie, The Incredibles came out in 2004 and was a big hit in our house. My kids were in elementary school, we saw it in the theater and of course, bought the DVD. My son was even Dash for Halloween, twice.
By the time that The Incredibles 2 came out in 2018, both of my kids are in college and wanted to relive the glory days by going to see it on the big screen. To gear up for the event, we dug through our library, and found the DVD. We realized the DVD player still worked and decided we would watch it. Amazingly, the sound system was still connected to the DVD player so we went old school and LOVED it!
Great picture, crisp sound and the room even shook! I was blown away at how good it was. How did we give up on this?
It is another example of "easy beating good."
In our practices, we sometimes convince ourselves that our patients are willing to deal with a little inconvenience since the quality of our care is so good. It is important that we are careful with this line of thinking.
In my experience, most practices have a problem with wait times. What’s worse is that most practices don’t think it’s a problem or they say it out of their control. My advice is to find a way to measure how long patients are in your practice and keep working to improve it.
Keep watching this blog for more conversations about making visits to your practice "easier" for your patients.
I was not invited to go to the Cinema to see The Incredibles 2, but the kids said it was good. I couldn’t get much out of them about the details, but there was something about JackJack that you didn’t make sense unless you had seen the DVD – which they had!
(Did you know Netflix still will mail you a DVD?)
Look forward to seeing you soon,
Mike Rothschild, Leadership OD
p.s. This is an interesting article about a Michigan mom arguing for a return to the "good old days."