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."

Comments

Can't beat the price/performance ratio...

[moz25]

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?

Re:Can't beat the price/performance ratio...

[tylernt]

I got a bunch of these $1 DVDs at Wal-Mart months ago. The classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead and the excellent and dark 1950 version of DOA were both good picks.

Unfortunately, most of the other ones were crap. Mostly just bad movies and/or bad acting, but on one of them the audio was so distorted that you couldn't understand what people are saying.

Still, it's hard to go wrong for a buck.

Shipping costs

[magarity]

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.

Re:Shipping costs

[rm999]

I don't think it costs much more than 50 cents to ship a dvd (with minimal packing - think netflix) and 25 cents to create a dvd (if done in bulk). I think they could make a profit selling $1.50 dvd's, especially because they don't need to pay for retail space.

I just don't understand the point of buying most of the crap they sell for a dollar. A dollar for a dvd is a dollar too much for something you won't watch. It's sad to see people at walmart going nuts over the dollar DVDs thinking they are getting some sort of bargain.

Re:Shipping costs

[fm6]

If the disk sells for $1 at Safeway, the company that makes them gets maybe 40 cents. They could sell for the full retail online (without the S&H bullshit) and still make at least as much money as they get through regular channels. I think the problem is that they can't make enough sales online to justify the hassle of a web store. Most customers are probably impulse shoppers: "Killer Shrews? Oh well, it's only a buck."

Yes, you can

[77Punker]

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?

Re:They're public domain

[reallocate]

Slashdot is a bastion of cheapness cowering in a cloak of principle.

hold on now...

[Lord Bitman]

Okay, show of hands...
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 /starts/)

Re:hold on now...

[swillden]

I see.. the frozen hand of Walt Disney..

Actually, I'm pretty sure Walt Disney would not raise his hand. It's his successors that want to own everything forever.

Works for me..

[pair-a-noyd]

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..

Re:Works for me..

[Vellmont]

When I was a kid, the ticket at the theater was about $1.50, that was in the 60's...

$1.50 sounds to me like a lot of money in the 60s. Let's hop on over to http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
and adjust that 1.50 into 2005 dollars.

You don't specify which year of the 60s you're talking about, let's do a range of years:

1960: $9.85
1965: $9.26
1969: $7.95

So that $1.50 movie in the 60s is about the same cost as it is now, after adjusting for inflation. People tend to forget the huge inflation that happened in the 1970s. Sure movies are more expensive, but people also make a lot more money to keep up with increased cost of living.

Re:That's not the reason

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> there's not much of a profit to be made

Ok, fair enough, but this does give us a rough idea what the absolute base minimum distribution and manufacturing costs are for a DVD. If you don't have to create the content, pay the talent, or distribute through Mom & Pop retailers, you can make a (albeit small) profit selling for a buck retail.

If you want to pay for special effects, Bruce Willis, and intend sell product at the local IGA, that costs the consumer $19.95.

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. Less than a buck? Two bucks? Dunno. It's going to move somebody's cheese though, that's for sure.

NY Times Discovers USB

[writermike]

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.

What We Pay More Not To...

[Comatose51]

And mostly you don't get any: the vast majority of dollar DVD's start playing the moment they're loaded.

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. ;-)

Re:They're public domain

[Kent Recal]

I don't think I'm cheap. But I'm lazy.
So give me a torrent over any physical media any time.

Torrent also saves me the hassle of ripping the damn thing to my mediabox.

So, is that bad, am I hurting anyone?
You made it sound as if that's a bad thing.

Re:They're public domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait? This is a perfectly legitimate viewpoint, even if the moderator happens to disagree.

Re:They're public domain

[UserChrisCanter4]

Maybe. 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.

It's entirely possible that a studio could argue that the physical process of scanning the film and encoding it would also grant a copyright to that particular version, even though the original film would still be public domain.

Scanning a copy does not produce a new ©

[tepples]

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:

To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and format, for example, are not copyrightable.

Re:They're public domain

[Reziac]

I've seen quite a few classics, from both film and TV, in these one-buck-DVD bargain bins. A few that I recall off the top of my head:

--Jungle Book, starring Sabu
--episodes from the original Superman TV series
--various Sherlock Holmes films (with Basil Rathbone)

Some were in standard DVD cases with nice labels, some in cheap cello and cardboard. But for a buck, who cares?

And I think the guy quoted in the article is wrong about silent movies -- the same audience that is interested in the above are also interested in silents, especially serials.

Even if I had broadband, and even when the file is free and legal, I certainly couldn't be bothered to locate, download, and burn a film that I could buy for a buck. IMO their only mistake is in not making their catalogs cover a sufficiently broad range of titles and eras.

Re:Proof the movie companies are ripping us off!

[Mycroft_VIII]

Mostly you are right. The difference is in recent movies.
A short copyright time, or even median one (say 10-20years like patents) enables the creators to recover things like the odzillion dollars spent on special effects, computer animation, Mr. Muslce's and Miss T.A.'s salary.
However once this money is recouped and a fair amount of time has passed to allow for some proffit, copyright should expire, to drop prices and enrich culture as intended.
So what makes them greedy is thier insistance on keeping thier monopoly long past the time necessary for them to recoup costs and make a fair (admitedly a subject measure) proffit. Especially when they keep something they have no intent of releasing 'just in case' they find a way to get rich off of it or at least to deny potential competitors somethinge they could make $$ off of.
Personally I think copyright should back to it's original (here in the US) time frame or somewhat shorter (especially where computer programs are concerned). I also think if something goese unpublished or the copyright holders cannot be found for ten years (five for software imho) it should be declared an abondoned copyright and moved into the public domain.
I've heard we have movies on old nitrate stock or simular falling apart to be forever lost because the proper holders of the copyright have died and the people who inherit them cannot be found to get permision to copy them into non-degrading formats. At the very least a law could be passed to permit preservative copying of originals that would otherwise be lost.

Mycroft

Re:They're public domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's why the flame bait mod it so flawed. A flamebait, almost by definition, is a veiwpoint on wich some people disagree. If I say Windows is better for me than Linux that's like begging for flames, still it's alegitimate viewpoint.

Re:They're public domain

[Reziac]

Exactly so... besides, that one-buck DVD serves as your best backup medium.

Here's another thought: a buck an hour (thus one or two eps. per DVD) for all the television series that thus far they don't find worth selling -- yeah, there's some market among the fanatics for full-season sets at high prices, but think of how huge the market COULD be, if they were priced at the impulse-buying level??

Also, ISTM that small-market films and series TV is a massive buy-on-demand market just itching to be exploited (much as music ought to be). I can readily imagine an automated burn-on-demand system, where you cherry-pick whatever you want, which is then burned to DVD, stuffed into a case with a matching label slapped on, and mailed to your house ("Buy ten DVDs and shipping is free!") Yeah, it wouldn't be fancy, but it wouldn't require any warehousing or distribution system, and there'd be essentially zero waste (no returned product, no overstocks). Just a website, an automated data/duping facility (could be a good side business for data warehousers), credit card processing, and the Postal Service.

The trick is to make it the easiest possible route for the consumer, at a price that makes it worthwhile to let someone else do the work.