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It's time to take the old blue and yellow membership tag off your key chain, Canberra - our last Blockbuster video store officially closes this weekend. Blockbuster Dickson will cease trading on Sunday night after a decade on Woolley Street and more than a million rentals. Acclaimed love story The Notebook and French film The Intouchables will go down as two of the stores most rented movies, along with Marvel's Iron Man and The Avengers. But if you remember ducking into the Dickson store to grab a movie to go with dinner from brand new burger joint McDonald's in the early 1980s - you're right. The 63 Woolley Street location has been operating as a video store for 34 years, opening in 1983 as Videoville under the management of Bob Maidment. Mr Maidment went on to build the Video Ezy empire, including sponsoring the Canberra Raiders to two premiership wins and owning 1000 stores worldwide during the glory days of video rental in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He said prior to the opening of Videoville, Canberrans were renting movies on beta tapes from the shelves of newsagencies and pharmacies across the city. "Kate Carnell had the pharmacy at Red Hill and we even had tapes on the shelves there," Mr Maidment recalled. "We were putting out tapes about 12 months after the movies were released in cinemas, so there was a fair wait." Mr Maidment described Australia as "the envy of the world, especially the US" when it came to video rental marketing in the early 1980s, and he was often asked to speak internationally on his store marketing strategies. The first Videoville television commercial featured Canberra Cannons basketball coach Bob Turner sitting on the store counter offering 'Five movies for five days for $5', while Mr Maidment's genius 'rent it first time or rent it free' marketing tactic is still used in the world's few remaining video stores. He remembered being the guest of many Warner Bros, Paramount and 20th Century Fox parties, including an event at Skywalker Ranch in San Francisco where he shared a wine with George Lucas and bought home a replica of a jacket worn by Luke Skywalker in one of the Star Wars movies. "It was a great time, the industry was so alive back in the day - we went to parties all over the world," Mr Maidment said. "It's a shame the Dickson store is closing but I liken it to Uber, in a way, taking over from the taxi industry. "It's a change in technology and it was always inevitable. I'm amazed it's lasted this long." It truly is the end of an era for Blockbuster Dickson owners Paul and Liat Davis, who at one stage owned six Blockbuster franchises across Canberra, as well as stores in Wagga and Albury, employing 140 people in total. "We've employed hundreds and hundreds of kids over the years and for many of them, it was their first job," Mr Davis said. "A lot of them still pop back in and say hello." Blockbuster Dickson has more than 50,000 Canberrans on its member database but in recent times has only been doing about 1000 hires a week. The introduction of streaming services like Netflix and Stan had a massive impact on business in recent times, Mr Davis said, but he attributed the introduction of almost 50 new free-to-air digital television channels in 2010 as the turning point for his business. "Overnight we had this proliferation of new free-to-air stations and they of course started filling them with movies," he said. "Traffic in the store has gone from about 4000 hires a week down to 1200, all with the same operating costs." The Davis' still think of Canberra suburbs in terms of movie genres - Belconnen residents were all about "shoot em up" action films while Kingston residents were more into independent and foreign films. Blockbuster Dickson - including the Cold Rock Icecream counter at the front of the store - will officially close on Sunday night, but a closing down sale will be held from 1pm next Wednesday 16 August. More than 25,000 DVDs and Blurays will be available for purchase. "There are movie titles here that you just won't see anywhere else," Mr Davis said. "We think there'll be a lot of demand so I'd encourage Canberrans to get in early for a little piece of movie rental history." Are there any video stores left in Canberra? We believe there's one operating at the Charnwood shops but we're on the search for others. Email bree.winchester@fairfaxmedia.com.au

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