Slashdot Mirror
Attack of the $1 DVDs
fm6 writes "The NY Times has an interesting piece on DVDs that sell for one or two bucks. Not all of them are crap -- apparently a lot of good movies never got copyrighted properly. But there's no silent movies ('not mass market'), or movies that aren't 'family friendly.' Here's what I find really interesting: none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online -- it's all through discount bins in supermarkets and drug stores."
Yet, I believe you'd find half of Slashdot gripe, and ask for the bittorent...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...but we can't get $1 pr0n DVDs. What is this world we live in?
Well, at $1 per DVD, it beats even free downloading in terms of time and space costs... plus, you get a free DVD to have a backup on. I have been noticing a lot of relatively cheap DVDs ($4-5 range) lately actually. Perhaps part of a parallel-running strategy against ripping?
see a Text Widget
I've seen some of those DVDs at a local Half Price Books for around $9. If I was at all interested in any of them, I would be getting robbed! Oh, the scandal!
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
Someone *could* theoretically get 24 dvd's/month from Netflix http://www.netflix.com/ for $19.99 USD and copy them for free ...and I'm sure they might even find a title or two they've actually heard of. Not that "The Killer Shrews" isn't on my Top 10 list.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online -- it's all though discount bins
There's a simple reason for this. Most people will think, "Gee, I'd like to buy that for $1 online but I won't pay $2 for shipping and handling on something that only costs $1"
To sell online they need to bump the price up to $3 online to subsidize the shipping and nominally charge 50 cents to ship.
Your first fifteen DVDs only 99 cents!*
*By soliciting this offer, you agree to purchase thirty more DVDs at regular price. Cannot be combined with any other offer.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
"Here's what I find really interesting: none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online -- it's all though discount bins in supermarkets and drug stores.""
Translation: One will have to leave one's basement in order to get a good deal.
Yet, I believe you'd find half of Slashdot gripe, and ask for the bittorent...
The only reason these can be sold at a 1.00 USD price point is because the movies in question are public domain. They were first published in the United States on or before 1963, and their copyrights were never renewed. Sending a DVD-Rip to a stranger through BitTorrent in this case would not be an infringement of copyright as long as you don't copy anything introduced in the new edition (primarily the menus and other things that don't make it into a DVD-RIP).
This is nothing new- I have been buying the 4 for $10 movies from the wal mart bargain bin for years- A lot are decent (Well, full disclosure- I think segal is decent, I mean in every movie he is either an ex cia agent or an ex navy seal), I do the same thing with books- I buy a lot of brand new former best sellers at a steep discount (like 2$ for a brand new book) at off price stores.
I don't know of any (family friendly) dvd that I would pay 19$ for.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
The reason you don't see these online is because the wal-marts and the likes order millions at a time and that's why the price is so low. I work at one of the companies that produces these, there's not much of a profit to be made.
For a while there was a Bitpasss-enabled provider:
99 Cent Movies:
http://www.ninety-nine-cent-movies.com/
but the URL doesn't workanymore.
Alex.
But there's no silent movies ("not mass market"), or movies that aren't "family friendly".
Playback of silent movies on a DVD player needs a soundtrack. All sound recordings published from the invention of the phonograph until February 15, 1972, are restricted under state law copyright until December 31, 2067 (second source), and a bargain-basement DVD distributor such as DigiView doesn't have the resources to do its own dub job.
Why aren't these all over P2P then? Oh no one wants them?
Try a flea market. I've been to many a flea market and most of them have 5 porn DVD's for $4. But who needs that when you can download?
It's so True! Bruce Li could kick some serious ass! And Bruce J Lee? He was a MACHINE. Then there's Bruce Lei, that guy knew his way around a pair of nunchucks I tell you.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
what about all those ads for "Revenge of the Sith DVD $1!!" I'm seeing online?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
>> ...none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online...
Because shipping costs would exceed the purchase price. Either the vendor would have to eat shipping cost (meaning no profit and, hence, no $1 DVD's) or the buyers would pay shipping cost (meaning the $1 DVD now costs about $3.)
Easier to buy them by the pound and dump them in the bins.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Rephrased: Some people find digital copies of their favorite movies without digital restrictions management are more convenient. Bittorrenting just cuts out an extra step.
Okay, show of hands...
/starts/)
who thinks movies from 60 years ago should still have copyright protection?
I see.. the frozen hand of Walt Disney..
anyone else?
(please note I would be in favor of laws which change when the term of copyright
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
DVD's in drugstores ?
i picked up a sonny chiba two pack from the dollar store's dvd bin. and since when was the street fighter family friendly?
I picked up a handfull of cartoons for my grandson and a handful of old B movies for myself at the local grocery store for a $1 each.
They sold out quickly. I hope they will get some more in and some new titles.
A $1 is a bargin and really what most of them are really worth.
When I was a kid, the ticket at the theater was about $1.50, that was in the 60's...
I've recently seen mention that the ticket to see a new movie is around $9.00 BS on that!
The only movies that have come out in the past 30+ years that were actually worth the trouble and expense to go and see were the LOTR movies and those didn't come out of Hollyweird, which explains why they were of good quality and good content.
No matter though, all the theaters in this area have gone out of business anyway. The nearest one is a 35 mile drive. With $9 to get in, $5 for a heatlamp special and $4 for a cup of ice with a splash of soda water, I can tell you this, I will never again go to a movie theater. Oh yeah, and of course there's the gas to drive there. At $2.5+ a gallon, I only drive when it's a life and death emergency..
IF, and that's a BIG IF, a decent movie ever comes out, I just wait for it to hit DVD and buy it then. I would rather spend $14-16 on it and have it to do with as I please than to spend $40+ to see it once in a room full of crying babies, kids acting up, people chatting on cell phones, etc...
Hollywood needs to get real. With the raping they keep putting on people at the ticket booth it's little wonder people pirate the movies. If they would cut the salaries of the fat cats at the top of the food chain in half and the self-important actors and actresses, that would be a step in the right direction.
But for now, $1 is more than a fair price..
Lots of great titles too, though mostly they are classics.
I have bought some classic titles from Taiwan and Hong Kong with good results.
Sometimes folks poke fun at the NYTimes because, on technology, they sometimes seem so far behind the times it's snickerable (not quite laughable).
I think this article is such an example. Extremely low-cost movies in grocery stores and bargain bins have been around for YEARS. Perhaps the only difference today -- and I think we can quibble on what 'today' means -- is that instead of Betty Boop on VHS, she's on a DVD.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
And the rest of us geniuses pay about $14 more to NOT have this?! Man, I bet these DVDs don't even have that annoying FBI warning since some of them are in the public domain. These cheap DVDs already have the top 2 out of 3 items on my wish list for DVDs. Now, they just need to have a good movie to go along with the DVD. ;-)
EvilCON - Made Famous by
- Popeye Cartoons (there is a series of four discs, very good qulaity
- Santa Claus vs. the Martians (a true classic!)
- Off the wall and calssic horror movies - Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla and other obvious 60s/70s schlock
- classics like Road to Bali and the Inspector General
- Some Little Rascals Episodes
- Three stooges cartoons (I haven't had the guts to grab those, they are pretty lame)
Everytime I see such a display I find it worth my tme."Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Isn't chiba illegal?
There is a parallel here to long-lost novels and suchlike, mentioned by Anne Rice in Memnoch The Devil. Anne goes to some lengths to mention an old lady, jaded yet happy, who purchases a novel from a drugstore, full of remembered happiness at reading it earlier.
The same is surely true of DVDs. Despite the romantic connotations, who wouldn't spend a couple of quid on a quick nostalgia fix? It's worth it, even if the film itself is rubbish. What's more, if a film is fondly remembered, two quid is hardly a fortune to spend on a little reacquaintance.
Then there's us geeks. Two dollars to own the last Harley Maclaine movie is nothing. We'd pay tons on eBay... each of these little victories in the stores saves us millions. Which we promptly spend on wireless mice... but that's another story.
Some of the cheapest DVDs blatantly copy the titles of current movies. A good time can be had by all so long as you choose the worst of the worst.
If you are lucky enough to find these stupidly cheap DVDs, choose one that has a great knockoff title. I have watched "Young Van Helsing" which had nothing but a title including Van Helsing going for it. The plot was weak, the dialogue was weak, and the acting was... (take a wild guess). Even better, the DVD included a trailer for "Max Magician and the Legend of the Rings," a story of a school-aged magician (hrmmm) and a bunch of monsters after a ring (hrmmm#2.)
If you're going to watch knockoffs, be sure to have several wise-cracking friends (assuming you have friends) and lots of beer for the screening.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I was quite enthusiastic when I first saw the cheap public domain DVDs.Unfortunately the transfer usually sucks bad (especially on a computer or hi def screen but even on good old TV) .Flaws in the original print are OK and expected but the bad transfers are unacceptable even for a buck.Many of these look worse than older VHS copies.If I really want to seea nd own the movie I would rather pay 10 for a good clean transfer.
Contrary to article I see silent and R rated euro horror flicks in the buck range.
you might want to look up the meaning of the above work, a better choice would have been accepting.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
McClintock, and a few other good films. You can find some really decent stuff in the dollar range if you're willing to concede that you're not going to get a anything recent or requiring high royalties.
The packaging was crap, but that's ok, since well, they were a buck each. My bigger concern was that the various titles shared UPC codes, which meant that I wasn't able to enter them into DVD Profiler (not going to link, find it yourself)
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Isn't enriching the public as a whole supposed to be what copyrights are for? Yet, in nearly every case today, the opposite seems to be true. I couldn't provide a better example as to why copyrights should not exist, or, at the very least, should be severely limited in scope.
Oh, and just a side note: Before you go ahead and label me a "commie pinko", or whatever, know that I'm a miniarchist libertarian. I simply believe that copyrights are not a legitimate function of government.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Wal-Mart dumps a bunch of DVD movies into a bin and sells them for about $4 a piece. You need to dig but you do find some gems in there if you look.
Worth it when you find 4 Gary Cooper movies (2 Disc set) for $4 and Return of the Pink Panther for another $4. I guess it all depends on your taste, but there is stuff in there for everyone (Airheads, Freddy Got Fingered, Road to Bali, The Man with Two Brains, etc).
Get your Unix fortune now!
"Slashdotted?"
The New York Times?
On a Saturday?
With 10 comments posted?
I don't think so. Looks like karma whoring to me.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
movies never got copyrighted properly
Uh, copyright is automatic. That is, anything I publish is implicitly copyrighted. So how exactly is it possible that a movie "never got copyrighted properly"?
If you're gonna whore, at least get the formatting right. Bad, bad whore.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Not only that - karma whoring with piss-poor formatting...
If you're going to copy the article text at lease click preview to make sure it doesn't look like total ass if you want to pick up a few extra chunks of karma!
And only the "free" portion. Betcha he's a front for GNAA.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's great that people are looking in the bargain bin for quality entertainment. Steven Segal is considered pretty low-brow by film critics, but his films are well photographed, well-paced, well-edited, and fun to watch. The characters are stereotypes and the plots follow well-worn paths, but that doesn't change the basic quality of the movie. ..er, transformation of the global film industry.
His films end up selling four for ten because so many copies of the title get made. When all the sales are made of an individual film at list price, the disk owners have to choose whether to lower the price to move the product or hold the price high and sell small amounts to people who will expected to become fans of the film in the future. People who are holding an extra hundred thousand Segal DVDs lower the price, while those holding a few thousand copies of the latest film of an European director who wins many festival awards but doesn't get seen outside NY and LA will accept lower sales at full list price. In "da biz" one never knows if the unknown director will get hot next year.
Hopefully the decreasing cost of actually pressing the DVDs will make it possible for obscure foreign titles that win prestigous film festivals overseas to be released in speciality rental shops and mail-order services. This is the long tail of quality that will keep film/movies profitable when people aren't going out to see movies like they do now.
It would be really great (real neat, insanely great) if someone could persuade Netflix to partner with the major European studios to get some great films circulating in North America that wouldn't otherwise because of the print costs, subtitle costs, and distribution costs. It costs a ton of money to bring European, Asian, Indian, and developing world films to the US and present them in a way that will cover the costs.
Distributing them on DVD through the mail would open a vast new market. Unfortunately the movie industry "da biz" is dominated by shell-shocked cement heads, both here and even more so overseas.
I doubt anyone at NetFlix has the finesse and savoir-faire to pull this off. Especially since they chose to have their headquarters in Los Gatos. They're probably spending more time checking out the babes at Great Bear than plotting the overthrow,
I bought a few dvds for $15-23 dollars, guess how often I use em? $1 for a dvd is great, I would be hard pressed not to justify getting a movie I am even vaugely interested in for a price like that, I wonder how they make any money with it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can take your "$1 DVDs" and shove them up your ass! I'm watching Tivo!!!
Is the point that it's okay since they aren't paying the original makers of the film? Why is it okay for the distributors to make money but the film makers should be ashamed of themselves? Trust me it's the distributors that are making the real money on any film. They don't like to take any risk and are often the only ones to make money even on current releases. On these older films they are simply packaging films that they don't have to pay for. It always seems to come back to the orginal creators shouldn't have any rights to their own work.
The real secret to cheap dvds is pawn shops. I've gotten most of the "classic" disney movies on dvd from a local pawn shop slowly over the past year - never paid more than $8 for one of 'em.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
...is the DVD ex-rentals!
You can usually pick these up at your local video-rental pusher. Surplus DVD's that went out of mass-popularity, top notch names, box office hits for measly 1-5 bucks.
They have a huge advantage over ex-rental videotapes. The videotapes used to clog your videoheads with "beer" and other dirt from other people's abuse, but the DVD's remain pretty good with minor scratches.
Now - when that "hot-freebie-tip" has been served to you, we interrupt this message with a public service message:
Internet killed the video-staaaar...
Internet killed the video-staaaaaar...
(come on now...sing along)..
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Seems like family standards are, um, 'evolving' at the Wart.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
I get DVD's from the local dollar stores once in a while, tapes too. Granted, most of the stuff is B movie or old movies, but there are some winners in the mix. You really can't beat a copy of "This is Spinal Tap" for a buck!
What does this button do...
Hello,
I get DVDs at the local library. They circulate for free. The best picks are usually in the metro branch libraries on the border of the city and the suburbs or the branch of the suburban county library system located in the neighborhood with the most college graduates. Check also on-line listings for the local library. You can often have the titles sent to your closest neighborhood branch. Rural patrons can often have titles mailed to them at reduced postal rates.
The library has a fair amount of last years hits and older. They are always in circulation. Some titles, like the fifty or so unknown Mexican titles, never circulate off the shelves of the wealthy suburban libraries.
Some older and foreign gems are simply not well known. If you can stand to watch black/white and subtitles, I recommend:
Beauty and the Beast - the original French live version from 1946.
Jules and Jim - 1962 Beautiful Jeanne Moreau as the original psycho-bitch from hell that no normal man can avoid falling in love with.
Anything Hollywood with Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas, William Powell, Humphrey Bogart.
Any Samurai movie from Japan, especially those with Toshiro Mifune.
Ah, hell, check out the library, the stuff is free. Just be sure to get it back on time.
He has nearly finished a first draft of "Killer Shrews II." The plot is fiendishly simple. "I return to Shrew Island to rescue a bunch of teenagers," he reported. "A new mad scientist has turned herself into a human shrew that not only chews, but swims."
And we're expected to pay a dollar for this masterpiece???
Get your's today!
Please read this.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
"apparently a lot of good movies never got copyrighted properly"
I don't understand what they are on about!
In Australia, copyright is AUTOMATICALLY put in place. There is no need to register, etc like trademarks and patents.
How does it work in the USA?
i been buying dvd's between £1-£2 for about 3 yrs now and i got some absolute classics from resevoir dogs to the big lebowski.
I Predict A Riot
I don't think so. Even at that low price I'd still rather they make the format open and available for anyone to use, take off all the DRM crap. Don't give me a license to use the content, give me the content. No more BS. Then I'll CONSIDER buying a dvd.
Have you no Wal*Mart?
You're a nigger, aren't you?
...but not the way it was *always*. I don't remember exactly when this changed -- somewhere in the 1970s?
They're only 88 cents.
Not here in Canada at least. It's actually easier to find [not particularly good] horror movies in the $1-3 range than the more family friendly dramas and such. (They usually go for about $5.) Of course, this could just be a reflection of the fact that I'll spend more time glancing through a pile of movies if I think I might find a Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing flick at the bottom of it, rather than some sappy '70s made-for-TV special.
And, now that I think of it, I picked up a DVD with the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame silent films for about two bucks...
Since when does McDonald's produce high-quality hamburgers?
That being said, it sounds like a movie aficionados paradise.
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
If you can distribute them this cheap, doesn't that say something about the high prices of "copyrighted" material and all the profit the big greedy corporations get?
Doesn't this also say something for putting stuff in the public domain sooner? Doesn't it benefit more people this way? And the poor people get to see this stuff too!
The majority of these titles are available at http://www.archive.org/details/feature_films . Additionally I've been distributing the MPEG2 format via Bittorrent at http://torrents.pdmdb.org/
"The vast majority of dollar DVD's start playing the moment they're loaded."
No wonder they're successful.
I've been asking for years and years why expensive DVDs can't do this. When you put the disk in the player, and the DEFAULT action should be... PLAY THE MOVIE.
This should at the very least be a user-preference option you can configure in the player.
I hate having to wait through a minute of non-skippable crap in order to be given the opportunity to tell my DVD player that what I want to do is (imagine!) play the movie.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why not lower your standards and hit some torrent trackers? I would think that, unemployed and screwed over by The Man, you could easily justify catching a moderate quality rip for free rather than sticking yet more money in The Man's pockets just after he lubed you up and rode you.
Downloading movies is just like outsourcing. Everyone finds the lowest cost solution they can get away with.
The Three Musketeers starring John Wayne. Thats right, John Wayne. 1$ at WalMart. Even the back of the DVD admits that it holds little resemblence to the original story, but who cares for a dollar.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
I got several Gumby discs from the 99 cent bin.
what is the state doing with these copyrights?
U.S. federal copyright first applied to sound recordings in 1972. Sound recordings first published prior to 1972 are subject to copyrights granted by the several states until the end of 2067 (1972 + Bono Act 95 years).
I'm not really sure if this issue has ever been decided regarding video, but it's quite possible that the MPEG-2 stream could be claimed as copyrighted. When Penguin Books goes through, say, Great Expectations, and does layout, changes punctuation to match the American rules, etc. their version is copyrighted.
Not necessarily. From Copyright Office circular 14, with my emphasis:
I just watched a great restoration of Bergman's "The Seventh Seal". The commentary showed the improvements, and talked about how labor intensive it is. Then there was the recent article about bad renderings of cartoons - and how the automated scratch-removal system also ate lines and made the movie look bad. That made me think about the possibility of a project like Gutenberg, except for restoring movies.
Once you have a good digital image of a print, the hard work is all the digital restoration. I know there aren't many people who can do a great job, but I'll bet there are people who care enough about specfific films to do a good job.
There could even be a check-out and editor system like the one used by one of the book-scanning projects.
If there's a movie you really like, you can download a few seconds of it, and work on fixing scratches, and re-upload them. Then upload the fixes. The editor makes sure you haven't inserted frames of porn, etc.
These DVDs really aren't worth it to anyone who actually cares about film. While you can find some really great films in 1 dollar versions most of the DVDs have horrible and blurry transfers with a ridiculous amount of cropping (sometimes up to 20% of the frame is gone). Check out this IMDB thread for a comparison of the $1 His Girl Friday DVD to the Columbia edition: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032599/board/nest/127 03686#14534040
The FA mentions the babe int the movie was Miss Universe 1957. A bit of resume inflation there. She was only the second runner up. Still, wow.
Download it right here free and legal!
Plan 9 is public domain! I am watching it right now.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Lilo and Stitch did quite well.
Moreover, Disney hardly makes its money off of animated movies at this point in time. It has diverse media holdings, ABC being one of the most obvious. They also make live action movies, as they long have. Pirates of the Caribbean was a major blockbuster.
Animation is so disposable for Disney now that they shut down their main traditional animation studio. It's all CGI or contracted out from here on. Financially they aren't where they were when the Lion King came out, but they're nowhere near bankrupt.
I'd expect that a studio would argue that after the color correction/grain removal/audio clean-up etc.
Disney and the other top-tier DVD distributors tend to use hand-retouched restorations when preparing a "special edition" DVD of a film. Lower-tier distributors tend to use digital noise reduction, a mechanical process. The court in Feist v. Rural held that mechanical processes do not add substantial creativity.
As such, it would certainly be copywritten.
"Copywritten" refers to an advertisement whose text has been written. Use of "copywritten" to mean "subject to copyright restriction" implies unfamiliarity with copyright statutes and case law, which use "copyrighted" throughout.
yes, i bought most of my dvds at walmart. i just didnt want to mention it cause only losers go to walmart
The article sums up nicely why the business model is to sell them in drugstores and mass merchandisers, not online:
"Nobody ever walked into a store looking to buy my product. It's the ultimate impulse buy."
They are designed as an impulse purchase, something you see while waiting to check out. Think of it as a candy bar, but lower in fat.
Target had a bunch of these in their "Dollar Spot" at the entrance of the store. At one point the stuff in the dollar spot went on clearance at 75% off and you could pick them up for a quarter - if you could find anything you actually wanted.
I have blog like everyone else
It's going to be really interesting to see what a high quality, first run movie costs in 2025, when local actors, PC special effects, and online distribution substitute.
Depends on what it costs to make sure that somebody didn't already independently make and copyright your plot or especially your songs so that you don't get sued for subconscious infringement. In the age of ubiquitous commercial radio and TV, independent creation is no defense.
$1 at Wal-mart and other places in the little paper sleves.... worst.. movie.. EVER!
No, forget whatever you were going to offer up as a coutnerexample. This movie is the most rediculously bad peice of crap i've ever seen! Production values that make most student films look awsome by comparison. A rip-off plot that actualy takes "3 Ninjas"' and makes it WORSE, a good, solid 45 minutes of looped training footage, Horrible acting, dialog, action... everything, and a funny as hell "dramtic final battle". yea!
Hopefully the decreasing cost of actually pressing the DVDs will make it possible for obscure foreign titles that win prestigous film festivals overseas to be released in speciality rental shops and mail-order services.
It still costs the North American distributor big bucks to hire competent voice actors to dub them into English and French, and a lot of buyers in region 1 demand a dub or a dub/sub disc rather than a sub-only disc.
"If the original creators hadn't let their copyright expire, would they be publishing these things now?" I think the answer probably has to be yes
The Walt Disney Company doesn't keep all its old films in print so as not to compete with the newer films and the rotating slice of its back catalog that it does put into print. Besides, Disney's Song of the South has never come out on VHS or DVD in the USA, despite being nearly 60 years old and being the source for the song "Zip-a-de-do-dah" (sp?).
I hear that the Cheap DVDs community is a good place to start for release lists and info on the more obscure titles. (cough)
and since when was the street fighter family friendly?
Ever since they replaced Van Damme with Van Darne.
Parent, I wholeheartedly agree.
/. knows the kinds of things I'm talking about (like just queuing up multiple episodes, easy skipping, etc). Generally, I'm actually quite unimpressed with the lack of user-friendlyness of DVDs and whatnot; for CDs, it's just albums, but for DVDs I expect something less arcane. Oh, it's great for the average consumer, yada yada, but I've (yes, often illegally) seen it done in ways so much simpler for my needs (and since I have enough access to computers with s-video out, no advantage to having it on DVD players for me) I therefore can't quite abide by non-ripping ways.
Honestly, it's not like I don't own movies, music, etc . . . actually, I own a LOT. But I always rip the ones I have, if I haven't already downloaded them (and thus bought them because I liked them so much, and wanted to actually own them, for principle or posterity or 'cause they were on some crazy $1.50 sale or etc) simply because it's sooo much more convenient.
Comparing TV series saved on CD to DVD, if I'm watching on my computer, it's much easier to just pop in the disc and double-click on the episode, instead of having to actually navigate menus, wait while there's time delays, and so forth. And proper rips, I can just switch at a moments notice between normal audio and, say, a commentary track, so if I'm listening to the directors talking, and then I go "oh, yeah, I want to just re-watch that scene in normal right now" I can actually do that in seconds instead of the convoluted process in DVDs.
It's the difference that comes with having a format that's the raw media (relatively speaking) instead of it tucked away inside of virtual packaging. These points could go on and on, but I'm sure anyone reading
And so, yeah, for these movies it just makes sense for them, what with being in public domain and all, to be so easily available for download and distribution as rips.
Hey, even if the industry complains "free movies cut into our profit!", well them, you'll just have to make things that are new and interesting enough that people will want to buy the new ones even while they can get the classics for free. Hah, now that might make you get off your asses and do something worthwhile, now you have to compete with your own past!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
i know my dad sold very cheap dvds of cartoons and old tv shows and movies im sure they went for about a buck
Went to walmart the other day, Saw these 1 dollor DVD's, got Bugs bunny, 3 stooges, and night of the living dead, The bugs bunny one was a GOOD transfer and had menu's. It would cost me more to make a copy of the dvd then to buy anouther one....
You're just going to keep beating that one data point into the ground, aren't you? Ignoring the 99 that disprove it.
Even cheaper is movies in cereal boxes I've seen the past few year. As opposed to toys, those crazy gewy things in captain crunk, and whatnot cheerios and others seem to include DVDs of Disney movies that are still great for kids.
Not quite what the article is talking about, but sure is cheaper than $1.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
of the reasonable copyright laws.
hmm, reasonable and copyright is an oxymoron.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
With my reputation?
What were they thinking?
I've seen dynamite ad copy before, but this is ridiculous!
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
A while back I bought a pack of 10 movies for $10 Australian -- what's that, US$7.50? And three of them are in the IMDb top 250. There's some amazingly good stuff out there.
So I bought ten egregiously bad ones from a display at Wal-Mart and six shotglasses.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
As soon as I saw the headline for the article...the FIRST thing that popped into my mind was that stupid phrase from the First Robocop movie that I could'nt get out of my head....
Damn IT slashdot!
"I'll buy THAT for a dollar!"
"Basic ecconomic reality, People will not let go of hard earned cash when it isn't nessisary."
In the context of the OP. It's not the letting go that's the problem. It's the not letting go AND procuring without compensation that's the problem.
"Unfortunatly a lot of people create stuff thinking people will buy anything. It dosen't work that way."
Unfortunately a lot of people try to secure professions expecting to be paid what they feel they're worth. It doesn't work that way.
"On discovering this some will chouse to blame the consummers for being cheap instead of realising that $200 for a program that dose basicly the same as a $10 disk is not valuable."
Unfortunately some of the cheap in a fit of justification for their illegal activities, gloss over the differences between a $10 program, and a $200. Thinking no one else will notice the difference.
When I was a kid (1987) it cost $1 to see a movie in the theater.