http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... MXKb0oqb34
Read this story about declining DVD sales, attributed to the recession and Netflix and iTunes type rental services. They also mention that Blu-ray is not the answer because it "isn’t what the consumer wants".
The whole thing is ridiculous. The answer to all their problems is simple: lower the costs of DVD and BD! Imagine the normal price of a DVD being $8.99 and the normal price of a BD being $12.99. That would cut into a lot of the rental business because a lot of people want hard copies of their films. It's not like the actual production of these discs cost a lot of money. And in the face of declining sales it is a no brainer that lowering the cost of the discs will increase sales. Profits are not going to be as high as they used to be. But this would go a long way towards keeping them up. And it would also build a little good will with customers.
Solution to declining disc sales
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I would tend to agree that prices for discs are overinflated -- particularly in the Western world.
As bad as they may seem in the US, in Europe and Japan disc prices are even more outrageous! European disc prices are high because of socialist government policies that tax higher for services and protectionist tariffs on anything "not European". Japan also has similar tax policies but mainly the disc prices are higher because Japanese companies want to break-even RIGHT NOW... they don't take the loss-lead approach American companies do in expecting to break-even/make a profit by selling more than a million copies of any film in Japan. It's extremely rare for most films to sell anything like over 100,000 copies on disc in Japan.
There are a few other things going on that are worse than the price wars.
A lot of player-recorder hardware is being blocked or artificially inflated in price on purpose by the MPAA, the studios, and government entities.
Have you ever wondered WHY Japan and other Asian countries have hi-def Blu-Ray recorders but they still haven't shown up in the US? It's because the studios and their allies (bought-and-paid-for) in our government are blocking the technology!
People aren't being allowed to transfer hi-def files from current recording equipment (Hi-def TiVo and other similar glorified Hard Disc Drive devices with no burn capability) easily because the media companies don't want consumers to be able to make hi-def file copies burned to disc. Blu-Ray blank discs themselves are still on average over $20 at B & M. $8.99 is the cheapest I've seen in store for BD-R. That's still over 4 times what you'd pay for expensive dual-layer burnable DVD and well over 10 times the cost for DVD-R in bulk!
Even standard-def DVD recorders with hard drives are extremely hard to find nowadays and most brands with HD drives are in the $300+ price category which many people will not pay for a DVD player let alone a recorder with an HDD. The storage capacity of a lot of these machines is pathetic at higher-quality recording and there are perhaps only a few (including my Polaroid DRM-2001G) that actually allow you to put in a larger capacity hard drive. (Two days ago I replaced the 80GB unit that shipped with my DVD Recorder with a 500GB drive. I can now record about 110 hours off any input-capable device at highest-quality recording settings! Too bad the recording is only 480i. But then again, NONE of the DVD recorders on the market regardless of HDD option or not record higher than 480i.
)
The media companies just don't want people to be able to back their discs or record (fair-use) off TV digitally, period! Any solution you find to get around the obstacles they place in front of consumers and hobbyists who are AWARE of their rights is constantly blocked or made more expensive and troublesome by lawsuits. Video stabilizers used to be able to be bought in-stores but have retreated to the online grey market because of lawsuits against the B & M stores that did carry these devices. Macrovision, in spite of its demonstrated negative effects on picture quality, is still being forced into DVDs. There's a whole other laundry list of things being done that affect people who aren't pirates!
As bad as they may seem in the US, in Europe and Japan disc prices are even more outrageous! European disc prices are high because of socialist government policies that tax higher for services and protectionist tariffs on anything "not European". Japan also has similar tax policies but mainly the disc prices are higher because Japanese companies want to break-even RIGHT NOW... they don't take the loss-lead approach American companies do in expecting to break-even/make a profit by selling more than a million copies of any film in Japan. It's extremely rare for most films to sell anything like over 100,000 copies on disc in Japan.
There are a few other things going on that are worse than the price wars.
A lot of player-recorder hardware is being blocked or artificially inflated in price on purpose by the MPAA, the studios, and government entities.
Have you ever wondered WHY Japan and other Asian countries have hi-def Blu-Ray recorders but they still haven't shown up in the US? It's because the studios and their allies (bought-and-paid-for) in our government are blocking the technology!
People aren't being allowed to transfer hi-def files from current recording equipment (Hi-def TiVo and other similar glorified Hard Disc Drive devices with no burn capability) easily because the media companies don't want consumers to be able to make hi-def file copies burned to disc. Blu-Ray blank discs themselves are still on average over $20 at B & M. $8.99 is the cheapest I've seen in store for BD-R. That's still over 4 times what you'd pay for expensive dual-layer burnable DVD and well over 10 times the cost for DVD-R in bulk!
Even standard-def DVD recorders with hard drives are extremely hard to find nowadays and most brands with HD drives are in the $300+ price category which many people will not pay for a DVD player let alone a recorder with an HDD. The storage capacity of a lot of these machines is pathetic at higher-quality recording and there are perhaps only a few (including my Polaroid DRM-2001G) that actually allow you to put in a larger capacity hard drive. (Two days ago I replaced the 80GB unit that shipped with my DVD Recorder with a 500GB drive. I can now record about 110 hours off any input-capable device at highest-quality recording settings! Too bad the recording is only 480i. But then again, NONE of the DVD recorders on the market regardless of HDD option or not record higher than 480i.
)The media companies just don't want people to be able to back their discs or record (fair-use) off TV digitally, period! Any solution you find to get around the obstacles they place in front of consumers and hobbyists who are AWARE of their rights is constantly blocked or made more expensive and troublesome by lawsuits. Video stabilizers used to be able to be bought in-stores but have retreated to the online grey market because of lawsuits against the B & M stores that did carry these devices. Macrovision, in spite of its demonstrated negative effects on picture quality, is still being forced into DVDs. There's a whole other laundry list of things being done that affect people who aren't pirates!
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Re: Solution to declining disc sales
Wow, what a collection of third-party bought-stories--James wrote:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... MXKb0oqb34
Read this story about declining DVD sales, attributed to the recession and Netflix and iTunes type rental services. They also mention that Blu-ray is not the answer because it "isn’t what the consumer wants".
"DVD's are dying!" from Jeffrey Katzenberg, "Downloads will take over someday" from Microsoft, and "Blu-ray's just a fad!" from Toshiba...
We usually see them separately, but not all in one place like this...Don't tech columnists EVER use any of this stuff themselves??
Don't listen to Katzenberg. The guy's a doofus, multi-millionaire or not. Just because he's worth a few multi-millions he thinks he can prognosticate the future and knows how to tell a story. The only person who thinks he is the second coming of Walt Disney is Katzenberg and that's in his own head.
As for the tech industry guys, for some reason a bunch of them have it in for the Blu-Ray format and were big Microsoft/HD-DVD boosters. When they mark down the format, it's sheer sour grapes. THEIR SIDE LOST, period. They're just not grown-up enough to get over it in spite of what consumer sales say.
As for the decline in DVD sales, you have to look at the bigger picture. The format peaked several years ago, and everything eventually starts to slide. If there is one great fault with capitalism (and there are several), it's the sheer greed of the manufacturers. They just can't get through their heads that consumers have a saturation point and eventually their infatuation with a product is going to wane. It's the manufacturer's own fault if they produce too much junk to begin with and keep hoping that piling the slough tray will make them more money. The constant recycling of titles (several on their third, fourth, and fifth DVD releases!) doesn't help, either.
The reason why we have so many DVDs on sale for $6 or less is because too many are being manufactured. I never saw such big mark-downs with either VHS or laserdisc regularly -- but then again, those formats were never as overproduced (IMHO) as DVD is, either.
We're in a recession and most everyone's entertainment dollars are going to compress as you spend money on the important essentials of life. The third and fourth releases of Star Wars and Indiana Jones just aren't that important to most people. I think the electronics industry just introduced too much new tech all at once and are mad that it's not making as much money as they would have liked. They shouldn't be blaming consumers and the economy for all their woes -- they just got too greedy and thought the gravy train was going to go on forever! That said, HDTV and Blu-Ray are still doing fine and are viable technologies for at least the next 10-15 years. 3-D projection is another thing. That, I think, IS overrated unless it's significantly better than the same lousy 3-D processes studios have experimented with in theaters for nearly 60 years. Seriously.
Downloads are still going to lag significantly because A) most people who are movie collectors want permanence, not something that can be erased by a hard drive crash; B) you can't download significantly great hi-def without far better bandwidth than what's available; and C) the tech-heads are almost always wrong about technological obsolence and what people are willing to pay for. The consumers still have the final say in this, not a bunch of geeks who don't look out their own windows. Tech-head analysts think they have more influence than they actually do.
People will still buy DVD for years to come and it's become the de facto recording format for people since VHS has died off (for the most part). It'll take a while before hi-def recording takes over and that may not happen for many years yet for the reasons I stated in my previous post.
As for the tech industry guys, for some reason a bunch of them have it in for the Blu-Ray format and were big Microsoft/HD-DVD boosters. When they mark down the format, it's sheer sour grapes. THEIR SIDE LOST, period. They're just not grown-up enough to get over it in spite of what consumer sales say.
As for the decline in DVD sales, you have to look at the bigger picture. The format peaked several years ago, and everything eventually starts to slide. If there is one great fault with capitalism (and there are several), it's the sheer greed of the manufacturers. They just can't get through their heads that consumers have a saturation point and eventually their infatuation with a product is going to wane. It's the manufacturer's own fault if they produce too much junk to begin with and keep hoping that piling the slough tray will make them more money. The constant recycling of titles (several on their third, fourth, and fifth DVD releases!) doesn't help, either.
The reason why we have so many DVDs on sale for $6 or less is because too many are being manufactured. I never saw such big mark-downs with either VHS or laserdisc regularly -- but then again, those formats were never as overproduced (IMHO) as DVD is, either.
We're in a recession and most everyone's entertainment dollars are going to compress as you spend money on the important essentials of life. The third and fourth releases of Star Wars and Indiana Jones just aren't that important to most people. I think the electronics industry just introduced too much new tech all at once and are mad that it's not making as much money as they would have liked. They shouldn't be blaming consumers and the economy for all their woes -- they just got too greedy and thought the gravy train was going to go on forever! That said, HDTV and Blu-Ray are still doing fine and are viable technologies for at least the next 10-15 years. 3-D projection is another thing. That, I think, IS overrated unless it's significantly better than the same lousy 3-D processes studios have experimented with in theaters for nearly 60 years. Seriously.
Downloads are still going to lag significantly because A) most people who are movie collectors want permanence, not something that can be erased by a hard drive crash; B) you can't download significantly great hi-def without far better bandwidth than what's available; and C) the tech-heads are almost always wrong about technological obsolence and what people are willing to pay for. The consumers still have the final say in this, not a bunch of geeks who don't look out their own windows. Tech-head analysts think they have more influence than they actually do.
People will still buy DVD for years to come and it's become the de facto recording format for people since VHS has died off (for the most part). It'll take a while before hi-def recording takes over and that may not happen for many years yet for the reasons I stated in my previous post.
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Actually, Jeff is still sticking to his alibi that the reason we didn't buy as many copies of Shrek 2 & 3 as he thought we would is....The Decline of Home-Theater Sales in America! What other explanation could there be??GeorgeC wrote:Don't listen to Katzenberg. The guy's a doofus, multi-millionaire or not. Just because he's worth a few multi-millions he thinks he can prognosticate the future and knows how to tell a story. The only person who thinks he is the second coming of Walt Disney is Katzenberg and that's in his own head.
(It's his story, and he's sticking to it, through thick and thin security...)
Again, we know that the "Aren't downloads NEAT?" is in large part due to Microsoft trying to hold on to that sweet patent-monopoly they'd have had if HD-DVD had caught on...As for the tech industry guys, for some reason a bunch of them have it in for the Blu-Ray format and were big Microsoft/HD-DVD boosters. When they mark down the format, it's sheer sour grapes. THEIR SIDE LOST, period. They're just not grown-up enough to get over it in spite of what consumer sales say.
But Blu-gripes constantly seem to fall into the two categories of A) "It's a fad!", or B) "Just watch, there'll be something else along next year, and we'll all have to buy our disks again...Not fooling me this time!"
(Nooo, we're not still traumatized about losing our old VHS machines and LP records at this same time ten years ago, are we?
) Also, the reason we're getting $6 DVD's, and what would ruin the story to admit, is...DVD's are the New VHS. Even the studios don't want them anymore.The reason why we have so many DVDs on sale for $6 or less is because too many are being manufactured. I never saw such big mark-downs with either VHS or laserdisc regularly -- but then again, those formats were never as overproduced (IMHO) as DVD is, either.
"Oh, so that means downloads will take over?"--No, it means that Blu is now being taken for mainstream granted.
Not everyone's rushing to buy it--YET--but it's already accepted as the Next Wave (as soon as more interested future-parties can stock away enough for that flatscreen they already know they want), and even Disney is persuading the public that DVD's are for nothing better than computer laptops and kids' spare-room players.
Which experienced home-theater users already believe.
I don't use AppleTV, but I download a few movies off of Playstation Network to watch on weekends between Netflix shipments--Downloads are still going to lag significantly because A) most people who are movie collectors want permanence, not something that can be erased by a hard drive crash; B) you can't download significantly great hi-def without far better bandwidth than what's available; and C) the tech-heads are almost always wrong about technological obsolence and what people are willing to pay for. The consumers still have the final say in this, not a bunch of geeks who don't look out their own windows. Tech-head analysts think they have more influence than they actually do.
The new movies are available only as 24-hr. Hi-Def rentals for $5, 24-hr. Standard rentals for $3, or Standard Purchase for $9.99-$14.99, approximately the same or more as would cost going down to buy a no-restrictions hard-disk at Target.
What isn't available is Hi-Def Purchase, as greedy studios wish to discourage anything that would stand in the way of major store-chain sales...So, I can spend three days downloading a Standard-def print of "The Dark Knight" to play on my PS3 whenever I want for $14.99, or I can go down to Best Buy and buy a 1080p bells-and-whistles-loaded Blu-ray to play on my PS3 whenever I want for the sale price of $24-$29.99...Decisions, decisions.
(The only appeal in downloading has been in renting cheesy impulse movies I wouldn't normally take three day out of my Netflix queue to watch--and DL'ing a Fred Astaire musical was fun, but I don't know what possessed me to DL "Grease II"--which means I'm getting more out of playing around with an unwanted back-catalogue than being enticed by their offers of getting to see Indy IV without going to the rental!)
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People are really short-sighted with their conclusions aren't they? I don't think DVD sales are down and Netflix subscriptions are up because people prefer one over the other. It comes down to economics and the fact that people are cutting back on spending. That makes DVD sales go down. They're also cutting back on going out to movie theaters and restaurants. What they're doing instead is renting movies on Netflix. They'll probably still purchase their favorite movies on DVD, but they're going to be more selective. Of course, you add the fact that DVDs have saturated the market and you get less sales in general. As for Blu-Ray, I don't think significant numbers of people have switched over. We're talking about how Dark Knight moved a million copies. I remember when Shrek moved that in a day on regular DVDs. It's just not the same scale. Unfortunately for BD, I think people are going to put off buying that new player until the economy improves a little. Personally, I don't know ANYONE who owns a standalone BD player (unless they own a Playstation which they use for games) - people on this website excluded, of course. In fact, none of the people I know are planning to switch anytime soon. I think that's true of the majority of people.
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The Digital Bits recently quoted a survey on how various new technologies had been penetrated the customer market three years after their initial introduction:
(...Well, think the public seems to be handling their "phobia" of DVD and Blu nicely.)TV - 3%
Color TV - .5%
VHS - .5%
CD - 1.5%
DVD - 4.5%
HDTV - 1%
Blu-ray - 7.75%
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I think we all know why Shrek The Third didn't sell...
However, I agree that bringing prices down is the way to go. Not so long ago a two-disc set still went for $25 list, lower online, but now many single discs are $30 standard and hardly contain any incentives on that price.
Perhaps James' prices are a little low, realistically, but howsabout a catalog release (2/3+ years old) going for as low as $8.99, new singles going for $12.99-14.99, and two disc sets routinely going for $19.99 again, with really special packages going for $5 more and multi-disc sets pushing $30 but as an absolute premium. If you're looking at TV shows, $40-50 should be a capper, there's way too much out there going for $60-80-100 or more!
If online and store discounts need to be less as a result, at least we're only paying less for product to begin with (so instead of a $50 box set going for $35 online, perhaps a $20-25 box would only go for $18-22, less of a discount but lower to begin with).
I'll always go for packaged media over downloads...I just like holding what I've bought in my hands and knowing I can take it down off the shelf whenever I want without having to switch something on and play it on a smaller screen than I would normally do.
However, I agree that bringing prices down is the way to go. Not so long ago a two-disc set still went for $25 list, lower online, but now many single discs are $30 standard and hardly contain any incentives on that price.
Perhaps James' prices are a little low, realistically, but howsabout a catalog release (2/3+ years old) going for as low as $8.99, new singles going for $12.99-14.99, and two disc sets routinely going for $19.99 again, with really special packages going for $5 more and multi-disc sets pushing $30 but as an absolute premium. If you're looking at TV shows, $40-50 should be a capper, there's way too much out there going for $60-80-100 or more!
If online and store discounts need to be less as a result, at least we're only paying less for product to begin with (so instead of a $50 box set going for $35 online, perhaps a $20-25 box would only go for $18-22, less of a discount but lower to begin with).
I'll always go for packaged media over downloads...I just like holding what I've bought in my hands and knowing I can take it down off the shelf whenever I want without having to switch something on and play it on a smaller screen than I would normally do.
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Looks like Disney may be going the opposite direction:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/02/03/di ... ay-prices/
Disc sales are declining, so let's raise prices! That will fix it!
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/02/03/di ... ay-prices/
Disc sales are declining, so let's raise prices! That will fix it!
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I generally don't use bittorrent unless the thing I'm looking for isn't comercially available (Bucky O'Hare being one example), but if they're gonna raise dvd prices even more than they already have, we're gonna see people pirating en masse and the studios will only have themselves to blame. But of course, the copyright nazis would never see it that way.James wrote:Disc sales are declining, so let's raise prices! That will fix it!
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