Hello, neighbors! We're Tom and Gail, and this is the home page for Small Screen Video, the video store you've been renting from since the days when you had to put down a deposit and the tape came in a big plastic clamshell that didn't fit in anything. We've been on Elm Street since March of 1985, we know most of you by name, and we know what you rented last weekend. (We'll never tell.)

Gail made this page at the library's Internet class and Tom has been adding to it since. Please forgive the layout; Tom thinks it looks like the inside of a movie theater, and Gail thinks it looks like a wine stain.

New titles come in every Tuesday, which is why the store is a zoo on Tuesday afternoons. We get several copies of the big ones and one or two of everything else. If the box is on the wall, it's in. If the box is turned around backwards, they're all out, and you can put your name on the clipboard by the register and we'll call you when one comes back. First come, first served, no exceptions, not even for Tom's mother.

We don't list titles on this page because the wall changes every week and Gail would have to redo the page every Tuesday. Come see. Or call. Well, don't call, we're busy on Tuesdays. Come see.

Guaranteed in stock: the top three new releases each week are guaranteed. If they're all out when you come in, you get a free older rental for your trouble. We started this in 1997 and it's cost us maybe forty free rentals, which tells you we buy enough copies.

Membership is free. Bring a driver's license or a photo ID and something with your address on it. Takes two minutes. Kids under 18 rent on a parent's card. We still have the very first membership card from 1985 taped to the register; she still comes in every Friday.

The 10-punch card: ten rentals, the eleventh is free. Ask for one. Lose it and you start over, we're sorry, we tried keeping track and it was a nightmare.

In April of this year we put in a DVD rack. We started with forty discs and a lot of doubt, and as of this week we're at about 150 and adding every Tuesday. We waited two years after the format came out because we wanted to see if it would stick. It stuck. Every month more of you come in and say you got a player, and the players themselves have come way down in price this year; we've heard of folks getting one for under $300 now, and Tom says they'll keep dropping for Christmas.

What you get with a DVD: a sharper picture than tape, no rewinding, the sound is terrific if you have the stereo hooked up, and a lot of them have extras: the trailer, deleted scenes, sometimes the director talking over the movie. Also they don't wear out the way tapes do, which for a rental store is the best part.

What you need: a DVD player, hooked up to your TV. That's it. A DVD will not play in your VCR or your CD player, and no, we cannot rent you a DVD player yet, though Tom is looking into it.

The big one: The Matrix came out on DVD this week, and we got four copies, and they were gone in an hour. Clipboard's by the register. We'll call you.

A word about Divx. Some of you asked last year why we never carried those Divx discs, the ones where you bought a disc for a few dollars and it was only good for 48 hours unless you paid to unlock it. We looked at it in 1998 and decided it was a lot of hassle for a small store, and we'd rather you just rented a regular DVD from us. Well, they shut the whole Divx thing down this past June, and we're glad we sat that one out. Regular DVD is the one. You can buy them or rent them and they just play.

DVDs rent for $3.50 for two nights, same as a new release tape. Please, please return them in the case, and don't leave them on the dashboard. We've lost two to the sun already.

Nobody likes late fees, including us. Here's how we do them, and we think it's fair:

• $1.00 per day per tape or disc after the due date. That's it. No "re-rental at full price" tricks, no doubling.
• The fee stops at the price of the tape. If you've had a $1.50 rental for a month, you owe us the replacement cost, about $15 for most back-shelf tapes and $20 for a DVD, and you can keep it. You've earned it.
• Due by close on the due date. Not midnight, close. There's a drop slot in the front door for after hours; anything in the slot when Tom opens in the morning counts as returned the night before.
• Rewind, please. We're old-fashioned about this. If a tape comes back unrewound we do it ourselves on the rewinder behind the counter, and the third time it happens we charge you 50 cents. Nobody has ever gotten to a fourth time. (DVDs don't need rewinding. That's another point for DVD.)
• Snow days: if school's cancelled, late fees are cancelled. Been that way since 1987.
• Honest mistakes: if you honestly forgot and it's been a day, tell Gail and she'll probably wave it. Don't tell Tom. Tom is the enforcer.

The Kids' Corner is the low shelves at the front, on the right as you come in, where the carpet is orange. About 400 tapes: cartoons, the singing dinosaur, the animated fairy tales, the talking-animal movies, the ones with the songs you can't get out of your head. Everything on the orange carpet is rated G or is a kids' show, so if your kid can reach it, your kid can watch it. That's the rule and it's why we built the shelves low.

$1.50 a tape or two for $2.50, five nights. On your kid's birthday, one Kids' Corner rental is on us; just tell us. And there's a bench and a box of picture books by the window so you can browse the grown-up shelves in peace for four whole minutes.

Anything not on the orange carpet, you're the parent; the ratings are on the boxes and we're glad to tell you what's in a movie if you ask.

We opened Small Screen in March 1985 with 300 tapes, a $40 deposit on every one, and a VCR that Tom's brother lent us to check the returns. Tom had been laid off from the plant, Gail was working at the bank, and we'd both noticed there was nowhere in town to rent a movie without driving to the mall. The first year we barely made the rent. The second year the town figured out we were here. We've never had to advertise beyond the sign and the church bulletin, and now, this.

Fourteen years, three counter kids of our own (all grown, all moved out, all still have their membership cards), about 6,000 tapes on the shelves, one dog (Otis, who sleeps behind the counter and is not for rent), and about a hundred thousand rentals, give or take. We've seen the clamshell boxes come and go, the "Be Kind, Rewind" sticker come and go, the big chain open out by the highway, and now DVD. We're still here, and it's because of you. Thank you.

Tom's picks are on the shelf by the window with the yellow tags. Gail's picks have the pink tags. Tom's are mostly westerns and Gail's are mostly not, so between us we've got you covered.

See you Tuesday.
- Tom and Gail