I mean, it must cost less in materials to produce a DVD than a video cassette, right? Than why am I sometimes paying a third of the VHS price again, just to own the movie on disc?
I know that some people will point out that often you get things on the disc which aren’t on the tape (Director’s Commentary, documentaries etc) but these are listed as “Bonus” features. Hello!? Bonus! As in FOR FREE!!
Add to this, the fact that because I live in Region 2, I often miss out on some of the extra features which may be present on the cheaper Region 1 version of the disc and you can see me beef!
NB: Before anyone points it out, yes, I know I can get my DVD player modified to play all regions, but that’s not my point here. I want to enjoy my movies in the superior PAL format anyway, thankyouverymuch!
London , that isn’t the big issue a big issue is DVD regions
and zones , so importing DVDs is difficult (and with newer encrption codecs its going to be harder) all in the name of greed so people will go to the cinema and watch it and buy the DVD possibly.Why don’t these film makers just sync the release dates of the entire planet?
In some places you can find decently priced DVDs, like Best Buy. But at our local Barnes and Noble—geez! Like $30.00 for a standard DVD (one with hardly any Bonus features; maybe just the Trailer, like a lot of the older Warner Brothers DVDs). I saw thet $30.00 price tag there for the movie Clerks.
greenkeys, you have to factor in that the DVD has a lot more material put in than a video cassette. It is said that there is 6 hours of documentary, backstory and other footage in the Stars Wars I DVD package, in addition to the final movie. Documentaries, especially those of specialty, are usually priced at around $100, even for videocassettes. I tend to think that, actually, DVD prices are quite reasonable nowadays considering the amount of extras put in. The movie industry in that respect is combatting piracy with the reasonable pricing of DVD’s. Of course the other means that they use are questionable.
Audio CD’s on the other hand are still priced way too high. At a time in which software (except Windows) and DVDs, after one to three years on the shelf, gets discounted by about 60% or more; there is still no depeciation of audio CD’s after that length of time.
About DVD regions, there are programs that temporarily readjusts the region code. I am not sure if I can talk abou specific programs, this because the moderators might like region codes, despite the fact that it runs totally counter to the concept of worldwide portability of your computer.
All I have to say is that when DVD’s first came out and no one was really buying them because no one really had a DVD player that you could get most DVD’s for $10-15 at a lot of stores. Ah, the good old days.
I don’t know what your whine is, really. Less than $20 for a DVD and about $200 for a DVD player is cheap(there’s even cheaper available).
VCR’s, when they came out cost thousands of dollars…VHS tapes cost at least $20 for the duration of the standard until they began to go down the road of extinction and now cost less than $15 each or so.
Why do I have a beef? Because I resent paying more than something is worth. Just because I understand what happened with VHS/beta/V2000/Holo-tape but never the less, should I be excused from consumer exploitation because I understand the genesis of modern consumer video? Yes, I know that a video recorder cost X ammount of money in year dot, but that is simply not the case anymore. I bought a computer in 1982 for three thousand bucks… Who cares!? Don’t tell me how much a piece of shit cost in the eighties. I am talking about right now. We expect more. If I’m going to spend a large ammount of money, I expect large results.
There’s more to DVD production than burning a movie onto it. Apart from the extras, there’s the high quality image transfer, the topline sound reproduction, there may be adjustments made to older movies to boost the quality, like restoring cut scenes, or removing dust from the print.
On top of that is that it’s not so much that DVDs are expensive (which, in my opinion, they aren’t anyway) as that VHS has gone down in popularity and price. Really, taking inflation into consideration, they cost about the same as videos would be now if DVD hadn’t come along.
And they’re BETTER than laserdisc, and a third of the price.
[li] They cost pennies to duplicate (lower cost of goods)[/li]
[li] They weigh less than cassettes (lower shipping costs)[/li]
[li] They have no moving parts (lower assembly costs)[/li]
[li] They can be duplicated more quickly (lower production costs)[/li]
[li] They are more reliable (lower reject losses)[/li]
[li] They are easier to package (lower production costs)[/li]
[li] They are easier to produce in volume (lower set-up and lot costs)[/li]
Yet for some reason they are vastly more expensive. This is what is called a rip-off. Repeat after me R-I-P-O-F-F, very good, I knew you could.
Of course, Zenster, and the material on a CD/DVD just magically appears out of thin air. And all those commercials that advertise the product - voila! - are made with fairy dust and dancing leprechauns.
Something is only “worth” what a willing buyer will pay for it. If most consumers will pay $20-30 for a DVD, then by definition, a DVD is worth $20-30.
If you are buying DVDs for, let’s say, $20, then obviously you think the DVD is worth twenty of your hard-earned samoleans. You obviously think it’s worth the money, or you would have spent the money on something else. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy them. No one’s holding a gun to your head.
Bonus does not mean free. In this case, it means “In addition to what is normally presented”.
There are a couple of reasons not mentioned yet.
First, VHS is still a larger market than DVD. A smaller unit profit margin is needed to produce a decent profit on a VHS tape release than on a DVD.
Second, DVD’s are not just high storage capacity cd’s. They are more complex and expensive to duplicate than cd’s.
Third, a DVD master is much more expensive to produce than a VHS, which has virtually no pre-production costs (no menus, commentaries, anamorphic and standard compression, documentaries, dolby/DTS encoding, etc.)
Fourth, DVD’s are much, much less expensive than VHS at a comperable time in its history. Consumer level VHS tapes cost in the $20-30 range in 1980, and rental level prices tended to be $100+. Translate that to 2001 dollars and you can double the price.
DVD’s cost a little more than VHS of the same movie, but you’re getting a far superior product in the deal. You get what you pay for.
BTW, you can expect prices to stay roughly the same or go down incrementally. Given the effect of inflation, when prices stay the same over time, the real cost goes down. In electronics prices tend to be stable over time. Computer games cost about the same today as in 1985 when I first started playing. Video game consoles have always been $200-400 when first released, from the Atari VCS in the late 70’s to the X-Box. This means they actually are cheaper in real cost. The same thing is happening with DVD’s, and will probably continue.
I’ve rarely paid full retail for DVDs. By going to http://www.dvdpricesearch.com and using the coupons they have there, not to mention finding other deals, I normally save at least 25% off of the normal price. I can often get free shipping in the same way.
Of course, this means that in the money I save, I spend more at a time and thus where I save per unit, I spend more per order. This is why I have 180 DVDs in a two year period.
If you keep paying for those DVDs then you must think they are worth the price. If you didn’t think they were worth it then you wouldn’t be buying them.
You get better sound and a better picture out of a DVD then you do a standard VHS tape. On top of that a DVD isn’t going to wear out because you’ve watched a movie 1,000 times. It seems to me that 20 bucks is a pretty reasonable price for a DVD.
Sometimes, DVDs are actually CHEAPER than VHS. I give you this example: Three years ago, I made the purchase of A&E’s “Pride & Prejudice” miniseries at what was then an excellent price. Normal retail at the time was $59.95 for the six-tape VHS boxed set. Currently, normal retail for the same set is around $35, which is what I paid for it three years ago. Three weeks ago, I picked up another copy of it. This time, it’s on two DVDs, and cost me $22, $13 less than the current going price of the VHS collection.
This is almost always true of any kind of epic miniseries or documentary. When it takes a dozen tapes but only four DVDs, DVD is considerably cheaper. This seems to reflect the difference you’re looking to see in the production costs.