Iron_Giant

It burns me that WB (any Studio) is going to wait 56 days until movies can be rented.

Reason: "Disappointing Q4 DVD/BR Sales" (and the past few years sales have been slowing)

Funny thing is, WB had the best selling DVD/BR in the Q4: HP7 P2

HP7 P2 is just the 3rd BR to ever past the $100 Million dollar mark (Avatar and Star Wars The Complete Saga are the other 2).

If the studios put out something we want, we will buy it.

It seems like the Studios expect us to hand over our hard earned $$$ to them, no matter what they are trying to sell us (or how they are trying to sell it to us).

WB wants us to buy instead of rent (and they do not want us to buy the used rental disks either) or they want us to start using this "Cloud/UltraViolet" garbage. This way they get to keep a higher percent of the money we spend.

I (and I think most movie collectors) do not want to use the Cloud, we want the highest quality possible - which is Blu-Ray.

So, WB stop trying to force something down our throats. Give us options and we will decide what we want to do with our money.

I will NOT buy anything from WB now until the Rental window comes available. After the 56 day Rental Window is over, the BR should be at least 1/3 of the 1st day sale price.

When studios do not give choices, it seems to come back and bite them in their own bottom line/profit.


http://www.homemediamagazine.com/war...-56-days-26042

JayDerek

wonderful. :/

...and now the number of people pirating will keep going up and up and up...

E Unit

Quite honestly, I'm indifferent to this since my backlog of purchased/DVR'd stuff would easily take longer than 56 days to get through.

RocShemp

Yup. This will not have the effect they want.

I rent a movie I didn't catch in theaters (or am unsure about) to see if it's a movie I wanna buy. Not making it available to rent wont push me to buy it blind. It'll likely make me forget about the movie altogether.

Timber

So they're basically flipping the old rental model where you couldn't purchase VHS/Beta tapes for a certain period of time while they were renal exclusives.

critterdvd

That is just too long of a window. People cannot afford to blind-buy every DVD they release like they could more easily back 4-6 years ago, and they arn't going to just because they can't rent it. By expanding the renting window its going to lower the interest in the title and people will just stop watching Warner Brothers films.

Rexxriot

56 days is nothing. I borrow DVDs/blu-rays from the library and you can't get new releases from other libraries for 6 months. I suppose you could get it earlier if you wanted to pick it up from the library that owns it, but it's not as convenient as having it shipped to the library closest to you.

Thankfully, I have two different library networks to borrow from, and the other one doesn't have such a wait. I think people from the owner library have priority, so it can take a while before a new release gets to you, but I don't mind waiting.

crazychris88

Fuck this shit. Maybe Warner needs to start putting some special Features on their damn Blu-rays to entice me to actually puchase their Blu's/ Why in the hell are the new installments of FInal Destination and Harold and Kumar getting paltry extras when their counterpart originals and prior installments got a crap load of good features. They dont even try . Why should consumers for over 25 bucks on a new release for a 90 minute movie and 20 minutes of LAME extras!!!!!!!!!!!!
ALso they need to stop pricing their shit so damn high.

Oh and yep I will not any of their shitty new releases with the worst special features since the dawn of DVD. They can go to hell.
Also (and I swear i really will do this) If a WB release comes to theaters I will pay to see a competing studios film (Sony tends to treat me right) and sneak into the WB film if I need to see it (might not work for midnite Dark knight showing ) but all other films apply.

applesandrice

Aside from the issue of content (ie, studios should make films people WANT to buy) I don't suppose it's occured to them that the existing 28-day rental embargo might already be a contributing factor to the decline in sales?

In my experience, if I don't see a given movie in the theater -- and it's pretty likely that I won't, because 1) ticket prices are too high; 3D is a stupid marketing gimmick that gets overused and grossly contributes to reason #1; and audiences are (for the most part) annoying and/or obnoxious -- I intend to rent it before adding it to my collection. If a film I want to see comes out for sale and no rental is available, I'll wait -- 28 days, 56 days ... whatever -- and maybe by the time it's available I'll still be interested enough to rent it (leading to the possibility of a later purchase), but maybe -- no, probably -- I won't.

PopcornTreeCt

Kidney only releases!

I think this will encourage pirating even more. One person buys it, rips it, uploads it... no one has to rent it anyway!

critterdvd

Sadly I think your right on the money...

crazychris88

I have never supported pirated DVD's once in my life. I suspect this might be changing now.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I don't. The people that already pirate will continue to do so. The people that are renting will instead rent other things or the WB movies that have made it past the 56 day window.

Crackheads and people that buy games/movies/etc right when they come out and then sell them the next week because they don't have money anymore will continue to do so and a few of them will buy the WB movies because we've already seen they aren't good with money but it won't be enough that WB is hoping to get.

orangerunner

Well, the rental store business has effectively been killed off anyway. My city has no more standalone video stores left. This 56-Day window will (intentionally, I suppose) put the final nail in the coffin for the disc rental business.

I think the studios are probably trying to push the (legal) downloading/streaming model for the rental crowd, which is much cheaper as there is no middle-men, production, warehousing and transportation costs associated with the discs.

Is there a window between the download date and the Blu-ray/DVD sales date?

If there is, as everyone else pointed out, the downloading of pirated copies will run rampant.

The smart thing to do is just have it available for download on the same day as the Blu-ray/DVD sales street date. Buyers will buy and renters will download. They're not going to sway the renters into spending $25 for title they have no interest in owning.

Alan Smithee

I like this idea a lot better than what they COULD have done, which would have been to price discs like VHS tapes in the $100 range so they'd make more money from the copies sold to rental outlets! They threatened to do that a few times in the first years of DVD, and illegal copying WOULD have become more rampant had that happened! (I used to copy TONS of rented VHS movies since they were too expensive to buy!)

Vudu seems to get most new releases the day they're issued on disc. Kind of troubling is that Moneyball and Abduction have been "digital exclusives" for a couple weeks before they're issued on discs, and they're at premium prices on top of that.

Gizmo

Retailers would simply buy stock from Wal-Mart

Which is what will likely happen now.

Texan26

Except Netflix, Blockbuster, and Redbox have made deals with Warner and other studios so they can't just go and buy movies from Wal-mart and rent those copies.

rw2516

To a lot of people DVD is a disposable product. "Picking up a movie to watch tonight" means grabbing a new release for $15 at Wal-Mart while grocery shopping. People will buy them just to watch once if they can't rent them. Not a lot of people, but they are out there.

maxfisher

Not sure about Netflix & Redbox, but it's pretty clear Blockbuster doesn't. In recent months, they've mass bought and rented Harry Potter 7.2, Green Lantern, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and Crazy, Stupid Love. They buy combo packs, put all the DVDs out to rent, pitch the digital copies and split the blu-rays between offering them for rent and PVD.

JimRochester

Exactly. It's not that I rent because I don't want to own. I rent because I will no longer blind buy. After I rent, if it's a film that has repeat play or ownership value I will most certainly buy it. I have just given up on the buy everything, trade away what I don't like mentality.

Iron_Giant

Maybe this is what they really want, making more money from the rental companies when they go buy from Wall-Mart.

SterlingBen

Don't Rent Don't Care

joltman

But don't Blockbuster stores still get them on release date? I thought it was just the kiosks and online rental places that get them late, which means it wouldn't effect B&M rental stores.

DJariya

My local Mom and Pop store gets their Warner Brothers BDs and DVDs from Canada. It's all legit, only with French writing on the artwork. They also save money by buying mass quantities of the DVD/BD combos and renting the DVDs out as well.

Iron_Giant

Love Mom and Pop shops, they are the best. You can find movies you can not find other places.

Hope they make a ton of $$$ off WB.