Lost Cokato: Movie Rental Stores

Museum Staff. "Lost Cokato: Movie Rental Stores." In The Midst Of Blog. Cokato Historical Society. (March 25, 2023) www.cokatomuseum.org.

Dana Buttenhoff at "Dana's Movies Unlimited, 1984. Photograph is property of the Dassel-Cokato Enterprise Dispatch, used with permission.

In the late 1970s, movies were transferred from theatres to homes in Cokato with the invention of a device called the Video Home System (VHS). A black plastic rectangle encasing two white reels wound with magnetic tape, the VHS was projected onto people's televisions using device called a Videocassette Recorder (VCR). The VCR was an innovative system, which allowed a VHS tape to be physically played, rewound, or fast forwarded. There was no jumping from scene to scene like streaming devises allow today. VHS tapes were affected by dust and humidity, and when watched would produce thin lines that would dart across the screen. VHS tapes also had poor audio and fuzzy resolution (at least compared to today's standards). Content on VHS tapes could even be recorded over. In fact, to prevent the risk of someone recording over something important, like your wedding video, there was a special tab on the VHS that had to be removed. As the popularity of VHS tapes and VCRs began to grow in the early 1980s, businesses like Blockbuster emerged in the U.S., providing the public with a variety of movie selections through rental. In Cokato, one of the first movie rental stores was "Dana's Movies Unlimited."1

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