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?

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: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.

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.

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.