Dvds are just getting cheaper and cheaper...

[Dar70]

I was in a Traget the other day and they now have DVD two packs of tv shows and 4 packs of movie series. I saw Green Acres season 1 and 2 for $19.99 as well as 2 volumes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.(these are the original box sets in a large 2 pack box) I also saw Four pack films for $10, their was lethal weapon 4 pack.(the films are on double sided discs but at that price who cares) Tons of films that cost $20 a year ago are now also $5-$10 at many stores. I have to ask why some people even buy regular dvds at the higher price anymore. I would just wait a year or so to get them at less than half price.

I know that dvds generally drop in price about a year after initial release but it seems like so many are getting cheaper quicker. I dont have a ton of dvds, 40 at most, and the ones I do have I mostly got at bargain prices. I rarely buy when they first come out and wait up to a year or two to get them cheap. I wonder if Blue-Ray is bringing the price down. Theres not much more I want( (save for a couple series I will most likely get very cheap.IE.Buffy) but I may buy a few things I probably wouldnt get other wise. I dont ever plan on buying Blu-Ray since I have most everything I want on regular dvd and the quality is good enough for me.

 

[Leroy]

I bet it's because of new technology like Blu-Ray making the older stuff cheaper. I'm planning on getting into Blu-Ray when the players are sub $150, hopefully by then they'll have more stuff out I want to collect.

 

[Dar70]

I bet it's because of new technology like Blu-Ray making the older stuff cheaper. I'm planning on getting into Blu-Ray when the players are sub $150, hopefully by then they'll have more stuff out I want to collect.

Yeah thats what I think. Again I dont think I will ever collect B-Ray.(unless they get very cheap like regular dvds) The players upconvert regular dvds a bit and I really dont need crystal clear qaulity. I have most of what I want. Most of the shows I have were made over 40 years ago and i like to watch them in all their "pseudo analog" glory. Besides I doubt all tv series will be released again on B-Ray. Some of the older shows didnt even warrant enough sales to complete their releases.

 

[Aragorn]

Ultimately, there are more movies and tv shows and stuff coming out and shelf space at stores isn't getting any bigger.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

DVD sales went down 22% in 2008. Less demand relative to supply leads to lower prices.

 

[DanTheGrey]

Actually I'm noticing a contradictory trend in that a number of places here, where I am in Canada are charging more for new release movies, within $5 or $10 of the blu-ray. It's not that blu-ray got cheaper, but I swear that there's collusion on the part of the studios and or/retailers to be charging first day out prices that are $5 more than they were last year. Through 2006/2007 big movies would come out at $19.99 or less, now we're lucky to see $22.99 for some of them in the stores on sale. Funnily enough this happened when Toshiba pulled the plug on HD-DVD...

That being said I have such a backlog that I can usually wait the 6 months for movies to go into the deals of 2 for X or getting them used for half price.

 

[bigdaddy]

I have noticed since 2007 at the earliest that the price of a new DVD movie has gone from $15 to $18. That kind of pisses me off.

The only thing lowing in price are the bad movies, like Superman Returns which there was no less than 50-70 copies of at a Walmart for $5. Good movies stay the same price or level around $10.

Also at Walmart were volumes 3-4 of Futurama for $15, that might be the normal price now, but I have seen them on sale for that price before.

 

[nx1701g]

A lot of retailers are doing this to clear out old inventory.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

They're also trying to clear out their inventory of full screen movies. Some of those two packs try to get sneaky and put the dvds back to back so you can't look at the back and see if it's wide or full.

 

[Vance]

Pre-Tax season, retailers are trying to 'offload' inventory before they have to file on it. (For bizzare tax reasons, retailers have to pay for anything on the shelves, even if it hasn't sold... so it makes sense to get rid of stuff SOMEHOW).

Also, BluRay is being pushed for new movies, though stuff like "Green Acres".. who wants that in BluRay? (Hell, I'm trying to figure out who wanted it on DVD...)

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

I've noticed a trend when it comes to boxed t.v. episode sets, they don't say how many episodes are included. You have to look at the run time to get an idea.

For some reason Borders' prices on DVD suck (they want $30 each for those direct to dvd Futurama movies). And i have a gift card for them...damn...I might have to use it buy some of those bound things that have paper with writing and pictures on them. What are those called...

 

[Aragorn]

Borders, Barnes and Noble, FYE, Tower, Suncoast, etc., are not places you want to buy DVDs from. I guess the impulse buyers and stupid buyers are enough to keep them afloat, but I don't see how people can justify buying a $20 movie (Best Buy) for $30 or a $40 TV box set for $80 at these places. Even with their coupons, you usually only get them down to regular price (especially since the Borders coupon takes it off MSRP).

I had a Barnes & Noble gift card that I used on books and bargain-priced CDs because I didn't want to pay $40 for a Blu-ray title I could get for $20.

 

[Amaris]

Borders, Barnes and Noble, FYE, Tower, Suncoast, etc., are not places you want to buy DVDs from. I guess the impulse buyers and stupid buyers are enough to keep them afloat, but I don't see how people can justify buying a $20 movie (Best Buy) for $30 or a $40 TV box set for $80 at these places. Even with their coupons, you usually only get them down to regular price (especially since the Borders coupon takes it off MSRP).

I had a Barnes & Noble gift card that I used on books and bargain-priced CDs because I didn't want to pay $40 for a Blu-ray title I could get for $20.

Oh God, FYE. Yeah, I was in there a few months ago and they had a Simpsons Season 11 DVD set "marked down" for $39.99. I bought it off of Amazon for $17.99 brand new.

As for BluRay, I would love to have a player, so I could buy nice new BDVDs for my 22" HDTV and play my older DVDs in upconverted format, but the price is still too high. I'll be waiting until they reach about $100, which shouldn't be too long, really. They're plummeting.

J.

 

[Caliburn24]

In Iraq entire TV shows are packaged together and sold on dvd, along with movie collections focused around a particular star or theme. Sure, they are bootleg but we soldiers on deployment don't really care too much. Especially when the quality is becoming better and better. You want every season of The West Wing? 30$. Every season of the Simpsons? 40$. The Angelina Jolie Collection, roughly 30 of her movies packaged together, 35$. The Superhero Collection(like every superhero movie from the past 20 years in one set) 40$.

Yeah, sure that is over there in the third world, but the concept is interesting, and it is creeping over to the first world.

 

[Leroy]

Aragorn wrote:
Borders, Barnes and Noble, FYE, Tower, Suncoast, etc., are not places you want to buy DVDs from.

I've noticed that the only place that has decent prices and selection outside of Wal-Mart among brick and morter stores is Best Buy, I was able to pick up the last set of Beast King Go-Lion(Japanese Lion Voltron) for the same price Deep Discount had it for.

Caliburn24 wrote:
In Iraq entire TV shows are packaged together and sold on dvd, along with movie collections focused around a particular star or theme. Sure, they are bootleg but we soldiers on deployment don't really care too much. Especially when the quality is becoming better and better. You want every season of The West Wing? 30$. Every season of the Simpsons? 40$. The Angelina Jolie Collection, roughly 30 of her movies packaged together, 35$. The Superhero Collection(like every superhero movie from the past 20 years in one set) 40$.

Bootlegs are bad because the legitimate industry doesn't see a dime of that money so all you are doing is making it harder for your favorite shows/movies to get made.

 

[mrcoaster]

The trick to buying DVDs at Borders or B&N is to buy them when they have some of their big sales. You'll see 40% off DVD box sets or buy 2 DVDs get a third free. The result of that is that you'll get the price down to something that's competitive with other places. Not to say that you just don't buy something elsewhere, but if you have a gift card or something like that, those sales will be the time to use your gift card.

There are some great deals to be had on some DVDs these days. Especially some of the tv shows that have been out a while. That said, I've cut my DVD purchases back to a bare minimum. I only pick up a couple of odd tv show seasons that I'm still collecting, but I don't buy movies any more. I won't bother with Blu-Ray either. I have so much HD material coming in via satellite, and Instant Viewing stuff from Netflix is growing, I don't watch near as much of my DVDs as I did. The fact that I don't spend endless days in airports and hotels killing time has pretty much killed a lot of my old DVD viewing time.

 

[Nick Ryder]

Oh get off that "buyin' a bootleg will stop shows from being sold" jag. The dude said it was in Iraq. Do you really think any of the movie companies in the US give a rat's hairy ass if some nerf herder in Iraq is selling bootlegs? Like it REALLY affects if a show will be made. Sure it takes a ding, especially when its sold or shared online, but if they 'see' that "Wow 100000 people bought Ahmud Barak Machko's box set of this show we haven't ever put on DVD... hmm maybe there's a market." Same like what happened with Star Trek Animated. It was SOLELY the bootleg market that kept it in the public eye until Paramount finally released the box set a couple years back

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In Iraq entire TV shows are packaged together and sold on dvd, along with movie collections focused around a particular star or theme. Sure, they are bootleg but we soldiers on deployment don't really care too much. Especially when the quality is becoming better and better. You want every season of The West Wing? 30$. Every season of the Simpsons? 40$. The Angelina Jolie Collection, roughly 30 of her movies packaged together, 35$. The Superhero Collection(like every superhero movie from the past 20 years in one set) 40$.

Yeah, sure that is over there in the third world, but the concept is interesting, and it is creeping over to the first world.

Putting together all the movies of a certain actor, or in a certain sub-genre, sounds good to us, but the licensing situation would be a nightmare to sort out. When things are legal, the lawyers get involved. Remember, you are talking multiple studios.

Oh get off that "buyin' a bootleg will stop shows from being sold" jag. The dude said it was in Iraq. Do you really think any of the movie companies in the US give a rat's hairy ass if some nerf herder in Iraq is selling bootlegs?

From what I can deduce, bootleg movies tend to be the same as the movies that make big bucks in the theaters, so the bootlegs don't kill off certain genres that get disporportionately pirated. In TV, I'm not so sure. The bittorrented shows tend to be sf/f genre, the same types that struggle to survive on TV and get cancelled. Can't everyone pirate reality TV instead?

 

[mrcoaster]

Yeah, except that many popular shows are also widely available on torrents, the networks' own websites, and sites like hulu.com. Yet they somehow manage to do ok.

As I'm not a Nielsen family, they wouldn't care if I watched it on tv, downloaded it illegally, watched it legally online, recorded it on the DVR, read a transcript of it, etc.