DVDs are priced....

[puertorican138]

DVD's are too overpriced. I tend to buy DVD's that are around the $15 mark. :P

[txpharoah]

All the ones I buy are $5 to $15. Quit supporting your local stores. They rip you off. Buy online. I never pay more than 2/3rds of what Best Buy or some other store wants. Walmart is great too. They cut prices on the classics.

[EddyH]

Well seeing the work that sometimes has to be put into a fairly simple VCD that I and maybe five or six other people tops will see (maybe more through intranet sharing , it's not hard to see that someone or a team of someones being employed to put the DVD together, sort the video and audio out properly and get the encoding good, find a good place to make the layer-jump, make menus that look the business and flow properly (DVD menus that dont work 'right' are INCREDIBLY ANNOYING), organise and put together worthwhile extras, subtitles, so on and so forth, is going to put the price up, so I'm happy to support that (as well as the making of the feature itself of course). The BBC has the right idea.. currently they're progressively releasing Red Dwarf on DVD, a series every few months. The video quality is excellent, a DVD9 devoted solely to the 6 half-hour episodes and a second DVD5 for a shedload of extras (possibly they're getting the extras in now before the later switch to 12-episode series, with a DVD9 twinpack). And the price for four or five hours of classic entertainment? £19.99, or £16.99 in the right places. Which really is a bargain compared to the old VHS releases or pretty much any newly released DVD film
On the other hand when it comes to VHS, all you really need to do is make sure the source video and audio aren't any nastier or noisier than you'd expect the average videotape to be, set it up in the dubbing machine, and let it fly until it's time to change the heads. So most of my VHSs are cheap rereleases (£4.99, £8.99, 3 for £10) of films that broken even and got their main money for the studios years ago, rather than recent 'strugglers'.

The anime point though... true... in a couple weeks time the american nation, and in a few months time us lot in the UK, will finally be able to legitimately, without importing or bootlegging, be able to get hands on the back catalogue of Studio Ghibli's films. Now having got the better proportion of these on VCD and liking them immensely, you'd better believe that I'll be down the shops or on the net scouring these out, to get both the best quality copies (mm... DVD), to support a company that makes good films but is often on the verge of bankrupcy, and to lend some tiny weight of truth to my "it's not piracy - it's 'try before you buy'" argument.

Problem is, even though it's no longer subject to inherently high japanese DVD prices ($50 for a movie.. and they just accept it.. like us with UK fuel prices..), shipping, import tax and the like, I just know they're going to end up a good £10 or more dearer than the Disney films they'll (hopefully!!) end up obscured by, and getting more than one or two before they fade from the shelves again will be a bank-account raping purchase

And people wonder why bootleggers do such a roaring trade over in hong kong and the phillipines



PS I don't support any cinema that charges more than £4 per ticket, unless someone else is paying... there's no fantastic difference in the experience between the Odeon in my hometown with a maybe 150 seat, 50-ft main screen, and the out of town cineplex with 300+ seats and some humongous imax thing... both have surround sound and you can happily get close enough to fill your field of vision.
But the odeon chain isnt quite so mental for taking a huge amount of money off you and trying to overplay the whole cinema experience (perhaps they've realised home viewing ISNT going to kill it), so youre able to get seats and a drink for two people out of one note... theres the same audience buzz, same half hour commercial roll thats best skipped, but not so much of a crush or car-scramble coming out.
Hmph.
Boycott the multiplexes, for destroying the idea of bulk = discount. Unless of course, some obliging elder relative is doing the honours, then take them for all you can... biggest, plushest place, gold class (odd idea) tickets, nachos popcorn drink candy AND ice cream, and the film itself be damned

[flaninacupboard]

i certainly agree about red dwarf, and managed to find a fantastic website, www1.cd-wow.com.hk the prices are all in Hong Kong dollars, but titles are about £13.50, and they're R2 discs, with free postage! how good is that?
i didn't think any red dwarf series was 12eps? i know series7 had 8eps, but i didn;t pay attention to series8 (what with it being a bit cack) so was that 12?

[SLICK RICK]

Just right if you get them when they first come out but after that first week then they are a little high

[EddyH]

I think RD switched to 12 eps/series (or 13?) in numbers 4-6... they certianly seem longer in my mind and i dunno why i'd be thinking of anything like that otherwise.. then things started to hang by a thread and so the numbers dropped again.

Might even have been as far back as S3 but not sure (that might be a 3-discer if so!)... one and two are excellent early works, but its gotta be said that 3 thru 6 are where the real classic material's at.

If I wasn't a lazy so & so I'd go check on the bbc website, but hey, cant deny my nature

[shelf_life19]

I myself have been able to goto a store and buy new releases for 12 bucks. and i'v been able to get old movies for low as 4 dollars..and these are brand new

[little Mick]

I think Dvd's are priced okay. I have discovered they joys of shopping for dvd's at J.B. hi-fi....they tend to have these totally random specials that come and go all the time....so i go there a couple of time a week.....HMV... in the city (Brisbane) is a total rip...you will always pay top dollar.....K-mart is also a good place to buy dvd's...on their sale days.......so.like anything else....you just gotta shop around...........

[spiderman2k1]

The reason I picked "perfect to add to my tgPORN collection and not go broke" Some store's DVD price's are very good Best Buy. But other store's like FYE are way over priced. That's all FYE sell's DVD music that's how they make money. Best Buy on the other hand's selling TV kitchen. To them DVD and music is some they the stock just to get people in there store. And they sell it at cost most of the time the first week the movie come's out

[Tommyknocker]

I think they are priced too high. Especially if Mr. Valenti wants you to buy two if you want a backup. Three if the kids trash the backup.

[andyp1]

No-one has yet touched on Special Editions . Whilst 20UKP might be a reasonable price for a new release , is 25UKP fair a few months later for the special edition , or the 30UKP a couple of months after that for the 2 Disc collectiors edition.

{I can't get my pound sign to work)

[FulciLives]

A lot of MGM DVD discs are MSRP $15.00 and can be bought on-line or in certain retail stores for around $9.99

That sounds good to me.

No need for anything to ever have a MSRP of more than $20

And if the MSRP is $20 then I expect to pay no more than $15

I would say charge $5.00 more for a double disc release.

If it is more than 3 then my guess is it is something special like a TV series or very long mini-series etc.

In that case base should be $15.00 plus $5.00 per extra disc so a 6 disc set should be $40

I'm tired of being raped by Corporations who make mad money that only goes to a few while the trickle down effect is your average Joe making $25,000

Capitalism does not work in the long run.

At least not for the benefit of all.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[offline]

A series of studies have shown that consumers are no longer
happy to pay premium prices for their DVD's like they were
up to less than six months ago.

Habitual collectors and new release
buyers are the two consumer segments that have changed the most.
Whereas the average purchase was around 5 titles a month (US, EURO & AUS market) this has fallen to less than 2 in these groups. These groups
are now renting more (mode 6 titles a month) and buying less.

Of the hundreds of thousands of DVD's available, less than ten thousand
are considered premium product (by the producers) in each market. It is
this premium range than has seen the heaviest sales loss. The other DVD's are impulse buys and are selling as normal.

Expect to see a general price drop on those must have DVD's soon

Stargate SG-1 series 1 was £35, Farscape Series 1 is £80 online! what's going on there?

Producers are not stupid and do know basic economics (except Disney)
and that high prices lower demand. Unfortunately it is licensing problems that are behind many of these crazy prices. Often the music on TV shows, for example, was provided on a limited license. This causes
problems when you want to produce a DVD - you have to re-negotiate music rights while bent over a barrel. In some cases this has meant that
TV shows have been released to DVD without the original music and re-dubbed voice tracks.

[Capmaster]

my copy of sex and the city has no less than eleven sets of subs!

wow! i wish u.s. dvds had that many. us here are lucky if we get three: english, french, and spanish. most of the time its only english.

No coincidence that those three cover the US, Mexico and Canada. Europe has many more languages squeezed into a much smaller land area (unless you are in Los Angeles or New York, that is )

[indolikaa]

The Midget Clown Porn segment of the industry is grossly overpriced, IMHO...

[Capmaster]

The Midget Clown Porn segment of the industry is grossly overpriced, IMHO...

Overpriced unless it's worth every penny .....

[888888]

Entertainment media is overpriced, PERIOD.

[venomva]

I picked just right but that is for places like Walmart, Best Buy and Circuit City. Places like Suncoast should be ashamed of themselves for their high @$$ prices!