I have heard references to the high pricing of the various Star Trek season sets in the past every now and then and and was wondering if someone could tell me how much they were. Thanks.
Question about DVD pricing.
- Thread starter Silver Roc
- Start date
I'm a "purchase first week of release" type guy; and I'm fully aware I've probably paid substantially over the odds for that privilege! You can pick the various sets up for a song nowadays if you look around, but no doubt about it, there's certainly some level of blatant profiteering with the Star Trek brand on home video.
If you have a Big Lots in your area, check them out. All seven seasons of both Voyager and Deep Space 9 have been there starting in December, for $10 per season. They go fast, so you'll just have to check.
Edited to add - I also saw the animated series with the mix.
Edited to add - I also saw the animated series with the mix.
It's worse than that... I've purchased and re-purchased all iterations of Trek on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, DVD (again), and now... Blu-ray!
Ditto, that and I'll gladly do it again if the subsequent series get released on BD one day.
As far as pricing is concerned, the season sets had an MSRP of $179.99 - $199.99 but the only place I had ever seen them sell for that was Star Trek:The Experience here in Las Vegas and yes, amazingly enough, I did see people buy sets for the MSRP.
I paid $100 for the individual season sets of TNG and DS9. My season sets for VOY and ENT were all around $80 at Sam's Cub and Costco. My first release TOS sets were $55 for the first release, The Remaster HD DVD set of season one was I think $125 and the subsequent DVD releases were around $55.
I have no regrets about it because I've been able to enjoy the sets since they were released and I didn't have to wait 8 years for the prices to drop.
Oh, and I was able to sell my TOS original releases for what I paid for them on eBay.
-The 'Tastic
Online, yes. Big Lots, not so much. Paramount unloaded a ton of tv on dvd including a buttload of CSI, Star Trek, and others. Even picked up Police Squad for 6 bucks. It has Trek guest stars, so it's still on topic.
I have two DVD players, one of which is a Samsung DVD player. When I play Enterprise or Voyager DVDs on the Samsung, it often (about a third of the time, I’d guesstimate) it gets stuck on the FBI warning. It will pass the warning if I wait several minutes, and power cycling the player is another solution. Anyone else experience this kind of thing?
May want to check and see if it needs a firmware update depending on its age.
Good thought, but it’s up to date. It’s net-connected and checks for updates automatically.
I don’t know its age exactly, but it’s considerably younger than the VOY and ENT DVDs. These are the only discs that have manifested this behavior.
On a rare trip to downtown Chicago (I had a job interview), I visited the FYE: the only Star Trek used set was season 2 of Voyager for $69! The same set was new for $89, as were seasons 4, 5 & 6 new. Apparently hard economic times are driving the prices back up for the brick and morter stores. I remember getting seasons 1, 2, 4 and 6 for $20 each 4-5 years ago from the same store used. DS9 season 2 was $15 used at that time as well.
I think the only thing keeping the store alive is it's pretty much (I don't count Borders given the selection) the only CD/DVD store left in downtown Chicago south of the Wacker Drive bridge. I think the only store north of bridge is Jazz Record Mart with an insanely great selection of jazz albums and unfortunately insane prices (usually $16.98 - $18.98 for a SINGLE CD)!
Since I have all of Star Trek, I picked up a 5 disc boxed set of the group Chicago used for $29. The cheapest I've seen it online used is $38 plus shipping.
I think the only thing keeping the store alive is it's pretty much (I don't count Borders given the selection) the only CD/DVD store left in downtown Chicago south of the Wacker Drive bridge. I think the only store north of bridge is Jazz Record Mart with an insanely great selection of jazz albums and unfortunately insane prices (usually $16.98 - $18.98 for a SINGLE CD)!
Since I have all of Star Trek, I picked up a 5 disc boxed set of the group Chicago used for $29. The cheapest I've seen it online used is $38 plus shipping.
I was happy to pay over $200 per season in Australia for TNG. It's still pretty cool when you divide $200 by 26 episodes and know you have a pristine copy of the episode for under $8 each, where the tape won't ever stretch. People were saying I was mad, because whole seasons of "Cheers" and "Lost in Space" could be had for just a fraction of the price, but I didn't want "Cheers" or "Lost in Space", I wanted TNG (and then DS9, VOY, TOS and TAS) in their funky, cool, plastic canisters. (I understand the US didn't get the canisters until TOS!)
DVD boxed sets are released in "tiers". If they all came out with the final price point we see a five to ten years down the track, the retailers simply wouldn't be able to meet customer demand. You'd have stores keeping "waiting lists" and angry customers racing from shop to shop, or queuing at doorways before opening hours. (Remember the "Mini Beanie Babies" fervor at McDonalds stores? Full delivery trucks were being stolen!)
A higher price point for boxed sets means that only the early adopters will bite. Then a few months later, the price drops to the next tier. About a year later it drops again. Finally, the boxes go onto clearance.
Then the sets are re-released and the price is higher once again. Double dipping? Not necessarily. The stores do not want boxed sets (with ten-year old design features) collecting dust on their shelves. They want all product to look fresh and interesting. But the DVD publishers realise that they will once again be pitching to the early adopters, so the boxes are revamped, new "bonus features" are sourced and errors are corrected, responding to customer feedback. Then a few months later, the price on the new sets will drop to the next tier. About a year later it will drop again. Finally, those boxes will go onto clearance. And so on.
Exactly they were never absurdly expensive, it was just everything else was ridiculously cheap. Anyone who collected the videos or other formats paid less buying them again on DVD, even at full RRP.
That an episode now costs the same as a bar of chocolate is just silly.
They certainly were ludicrously expensive.
Every Trek series is loaded with tons of bad episodes in every season. Many episodes are not worth 2 cents, nor ever worth watching, yet the customer must pay for them anyway in order to get the good episodes too.
Other earlier formats also being ludicrously-expensive and to an even larger extent does not provide justification that the DVDs should be too. All that speaks to is that Paramount has a long history of ripping people off by charging ludicrous prices for Trek products.
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