This type of thing really isn't anything new. Wonder how it even made the papers - must've been a slow day. Either way, within 10 years VCRs will be primitive relics, so who really cares anymore??
Yes. I'm surprised they are even Renting video tapes any more. I'm still waiting for memory to become cheap enough so that we can rent all our movies on a memory chip. I think in a few years DVRs will be replaced with solid state player/recorders with no moving parts.