I was looking at some DVDs today thinking to replace my VHS copy of a movie I loaned out and never got back (Last of the Mohicans) and I was struck once again by the absurd prices on them. The stores seem to be basing their prices for recent pictures on ‘whatever the market will bear’. That’s infuriating but at least I can understand some of the idea behind it. What I can’t understand is why they charge $19.99 for a picture that was released 15 or so years agao and pretty much hasn’t been heard of since then. Or how about $20 or more for a few episodes of a TV series that’s been off the air for 30 years?
Seriously though, can anybody clue me in to the economics of DVD production and sale?
I think it basically has to do with the fact that people will pay that price for them, so they can charge that much for them…
But maybe there is more to it thatn that… Perhaps they needed to do a lot of extra work on older films to resore them properly, and that costs extra, or perhaps due to added features?
But I think it’s just because DVD is still just starting to become more popular, so they are gouging us until the novelty wears off…
At least DVD prices are going down. I got a DVD player a few years ago and all the movies were $30-$40. Now you can get them at Best Buy for $10-20.
Mastering a DVD is a complicated process too. The actual discs are cheap to mass-produce, but you have to design the menus and assemble special features, then spend days compressing the video. Ever seen the menus on a cheaply made DVD?
On the other hand, CD prices have gone nowhere but up.
Oil crisis of the 70’s raised prices for LPs (which are petroleum based).
Crisis went away, we were used to the new prices, prices stayed high.
CDs came…and were manufactured in Germany. Prices were to drop once factories opened in the US
US opened factories, we were used to the prices (and even though they are much cheaper to make than records, there is a perceived higher value to CDs), so prices stayed high.
I suspect DVDs are that price because they look like CDs, and that’s about what CDs cost in most stores nowadays.
DVDs are NOT expensive for what they are made up of - extremely high quality digital images, sometimes as much as 4 or 5 hours (or more) of extra features, some of which is extremely hard to find or get the rights to, plus it’s often made with amazingly cool graphical menus and stuff.
You cannot compare them with Video Tapes or CDs as they are so much more than that. And therefore should cost more than them. Which they do, at about the right balance, IMHO.
There are cheap DVDs to be had. I shop at Target, Shopko, Circuit City and Best Buy. I never pay more than $15 (except for collections like The Simpsons Complete First Season. I pay $9.99 for most of them. A few weeks ago I got Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis for $4.99.
handy, video tapes are priced that way because when VHS comes on the market, rental stores will make hundreds off a tape. They can therefore afford that $89…that price isn’t meant for consumers.
Are you suggesting that video stores pay a higher price for VHS tapes than consumers? I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. They pay royalties (on DVDs and VHS tapes both) on their rental fees, not extra for the tape.
My understanding is it costs more to buy a tape before the “official” video release. A tape you can rent in January might not be available at Target for $15 until March; you could get it before then from a video store supplier, but you’ll have to pay the markup.
I agree that DVD prices are actually about where they should be. The extra content you get on 75% of DVDs is worth a lot, and the quality of the video and sound is worth the money. I have no problems dropping $15-20 on a new DVD, which has a 2 hour movie, plus 1-6 hours of special features (depending on the movie). However, I think that $20 for a 40 minute CD, of which only half the songs are good, is rediculously overpriced.
IMO, DVD prices are spot on, CDs are about twice what they should be.
Yojimboguy: Sometimes a VHS tape of a new release comes out in ‘staggered’ release. First, a release is made for a high price like $89, intended for video stores. The movie won’t be available at a lower price for several months after that. Then the general release happens, and the DVD is released at the same time, and now the VHS tape costs a lot less.
This is actually a pretty economically efficient way to sell video tapes. Video stores who rent tapes are willing to pay a much higher price for a release than a consumer is. So if they leave the price low, they lose revenue from the video stores. If they leave it high, they lose revenue from the general public sales. A ‘staggered’ release is a way to solve that problem.
That practice is going away, because the time to release to video has shortened so much. In the early days of video, it was common for a movie to not show up on video for at least a year or two after theatrical release, and sometimes even longer. In such cases, having a video-store-only release several months early worked out well.
Today, movies generally show up on DVD within a few months of release. This short release cycle has made it harder to get away with staggered releases. Plus, consumer video purchases have turned out to be a pretty big profit center, so the focus has moved a bit away from the video store customer.
I use consumer shopping tools like DVDPriceSearch.com to find folks selling the DVDs I want for a low price. I seldom pay more than $12-$15 for a DVD of a single movie, and that’s usually with the director’s commentary and other extras thrown in.
I have to agree with some of the other posters here. I think most DVD’s are priced right where they should be. As long as you shop at Dept. stores, BBuy, CCity, Wal-Mart etc…
If you make the mistake of buying your DVD’s at Suncoast video or Sam Goody or anyplace in the mall for that matter, you deserver to pay the $25-30 that they charge. These are the same places that put CD’s “On Sale” at 16 bucks a pop.
On ebay.com you can get dvds for $2-3 ea in lots of 50 or 100. The auctions look a little
suspicious to me, but ebay hasn’t closed the auctions & there is feedback on them, which
really surprised me about ebay.
But the price of dvds seem to be dropping. A new storage media should be coming soon that
can hold more data & so dvds are going to go the way of vhs eventually.