It has been reported that a small fringe cinema may return to a Sidcup High Street site, previously occupied by the video/DVD rental store Blockbuster. This presents a most wonderful irony.
Prior to the advent of mainstream television in the home, the cinema, alongside theatre and the music halls, was an extremely popular pastime. At its peak, practically every High Street in the UK had its own cinema.
Following the boom in the home video movie rental market, to satisfy the surging popularity of home VHS video players in the 1980s and DVD players during the 1990s, Blockbuster outlets were opening on every other corner at the same rate that the High Street cinemas were closing their doors. The cinema on Sidcup High Street was sadly replaced by a residential development in the early 2000s.
DVD technology served the fatal blow to VHS and DVD itself, despite the relatively recent introduction of various HD incarnations, is an ageing format and rapidly haemorrhaging market share to the satellite and cable TV and online streaming. Blockbusters, along with its competitors, left our High Streets a number of years ago and are now only a distant memory.
What a magnificent quirk of fate that the onetime site of a home video rental store, a participant in the near complete demise of the High Street cinema, will itself be replaced by a cinema as the popularity of the big screen returns.
