My wife and I regularly rent movies on Blu-Ray from Blockbuster. I appreciate the audio/video quality being better than you get from streaming, and I also enjoy the “extras” that are commonly included when you have the physical Blu-Ray disc, things like interviews with the cast/crew, behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the movie, outtakes, etc.
In the past month we’ve rented several movies that tease you with the complete menu for the extras - but as soon as you click on a particular item, a message pops up informing you that this is a rental version of the Blu-Ray disc, on which the extras have been blocked; in order to watch those extras, they tell you that you need to actually go and purchase the retail version of the Blu-Ray disc.
I can’t speak for other folks, but as far as I’m concerned this will not result in an increase in movie purchases by me.
So up yours, movie studios. You’ve made my movie-watching experience just that much less fulfilling, and you won’t be making any more money from me; if anything, I’m just slightly less inclined to rent movies. It’s a lose-lose deal.
That is just the tip of the iceberg, the greedy studios expect congress to passSOPA so they know that the **sites **posting even clips of those features will be removed from internet searches.
Their greed knows no bounds, and pretty soon they **will **have no bounds, if studios think that then we will purchase more of their movies they have another thing coming.
The worst of this was when I rented pixar’s “Up”. After a number of pre-views it just went straight into the movie. There was no menu accessible at all. No chapter selection and worst of all no subtitles. My wife is hearing impaired and so was basically not able to enjoy the movie. I can understand restricting some bonus features to get people to buy the DVD, but dropping closed captioning for the hearing impaired? That’s just low.
Remember when there were no ads in movies in movie theatres or on movies that you had bought? Yeah, I do too. Changing the options for rental dvds is pretty low.
I thought this rant was going to be about movie studios putting out the most lowest-common-denomitor shit for movies because they cost less than making an actually decent movie.
To be fair, if you’re going to get stuck without subtitles - that’s a good one to be watching. The visuals in that movie tell such a strong story that the audio isn’t even necessary.
Ditto. If it’s an “Oh My God I Love This!” movie I’ll probably buy it anyway, if it’s an “alabaster bathing vessel” movie (i.e. “Nice…nice… not thrilling, but nice”) movie I’m not going to pay $20+ to see 6 extra minutes that I may or may not ever watch again.
Not on this one. They were totally disabled as a “special feature”.
That’s true, the first 10 minutes or so were the best part of the movie and that was dialogue free. Still it was pretty frustrating for the rest of the movie.
A single movie that gets rented out over and over again for (estimating) $3 a pop is a lower price point? We pick most of our dvds up when they go down in price - we usually pay between $5 and $10 for a movie. Yes, it’s lower for each individual consumer, but not for the movie studios.
The worst part is that a lot of piece-of-shit movies don’t cost less. They cost a great deal more. The reason studios don’t have ten million dollars to make a decent movie is because they spent two hundred million dollars making some Michael Bay movie about explosions.
Does your TV not have a closed-captioning setting? I’ve got a TV I obtained second-hand, that I can’t turn CC off. It automatically shows subtitles when I play a DVD.
And if I tell the player to display subtitles, I get to see them twice. :dubious:
How much do you think a movie studio makes from each incidence of rental? If you’re renting through Netflix or Blockbuster or Redbox or some such third-party service, then they’re not getting paid for each rental, only the initial purchase of the disc by the rental company. I don’t know if Amazon or Itunes pay royalties for each rental, but if they do, it’s a pretty small amount compared to an actual sale.
And I still don’t get the objection. If you want more features, more content, then why shouldn’t you have to pay more? That exactly how all other goods and services work.
To quote the bard Joni Mitchell, " You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. "
If those special features were only offered for an additional 1.00 per rental or 5.99 per purchase, then people would be able to stand in the aisle and say, " yeah fine, I love Michael Bay and all that he stands for and must must must see the behind the scenes making of footage of ’ Testosteronix 4: Rise Of The Phallus ’ ".
But they’ve been on DVD’s as part of what you get for a long time.
Would you expect the car you pick up at Enterprise to be without a working heater because it’s just the rental model?
Do you want the chainsaw you rent at Home Depot to not have a rotating motor because that only comes on the items for purchase?
Would you expect the escort you hired…hmm…ok, scratch that one.
Rentals aren’t about paying less for a lower quality product. The point of them is to get the same product but maintain possession of them for a finite period of time.
But even if you disagree with that assumption, there’s a larger issue to contend with. If the rental is placed in a box indistinguishable from a full DVD that you can purchase, a very strong case can be made for false advertising. I would strongly urge a complaint be made to the FTC regarding this issue.
They are supposed to be the same content you’d get if you bought the disc, the only difference is you are *renting *it for a short period of time instead of buying it outright. Pricing for rentals has never had anything to do with the actual content of the disc.