danwiz

I know that there is another thread about the "EZ-D" disposable DVDs, but I wanted to start a new one to report on "UNOFFICIAL" sales of them! As we all predicted - it doesn't sound like it's going well. The following comes from "Video Business" but seeing as you have to register to view it, I'll just copy & paste it in, okay?

OCT. 2 | AUSTIN, Texas--Metal helmets with wires snaking out of them encase the craniums of two men staring blankly into an audience. A huge tape titled "Video Rental" is shoved into an ancient machine. Horrors! But, wait, a mysterious man--a guru? A sumo wrestler?--produces a shiny box and opens it to reveal: EZ-D. The announcer intones the mantra: "No late fees. No returns."

Thus goes the TV spot airing nightly during evening news programs here in Austin, one of four cities in which Buena Vista Home Entertainment is participating in a test of Flexplay Technologies' limited-play EZ-D discs.

With the education process in its early stages, retailers visited in the second week of EZ-D's availability said consumers appeared interested in the disposable discs but not ready to buy.

A Buena Vista spokesman declined to discuss the test except to say that the studio is "compiling and closely analyzing store data" and that it has always expected the test to be lengthy and thorough.

Although deep discounts on standard DVDs are common at a wide range of retail outlets, most of the EZ-D merchants surveyed in Austin were initially pricing the disposable DVDs at the $6.99 suggested retail price, rather than discounting to get closer to the price of a movie rental. Meanwhile, in-store positioning and merchandising varied widely.

One Papa John's Pizza outlet in Austin had the most unique offer, selling a large two-topping pizza with breadsticks and one EZ-D for $17.99. The discs also were available individually for $5.99 with any order at the Papa John's store. The "pizza and a movie" offer was cheerfully promoted both on the recording heard by customers calling the store and by the staff member that came online.

At a 7-Eleven convenience store in middle-class North Austin, a petite clerk was busy stocking the candy aisle. A rack of EZ-Ds near the cash register needed no refilling; only one had sold in the first week.

"Most of them look at it, say 'that's cool' and put it back," she said of customers. "My personal opinion and that of a lot of customers is that it's twice as expensive as renting and it doesn't last long."

At a Walgreen's drug store near the University of Texas, signs on the door promoted "Non-drowsy allergy relief" and "The 48-hour, no need to return DVD." Inside, however, the small rack of EZ-Ds was hidden in a low-traffic area between bottled water and unopened cases of T-shirts.

"It's a convenience thing, but you're paying for the convenience," said a store clerk. "For that price, I'd rather go to Blockbuster, because it's on my way home."

A staff member at Suncoast in Barton Creek Mall said he sees promise in the EZ-Ds. The discs rested on top of a soda cooler near where the clerk, sporting black earrings and spiked hair, fielded DVD questions from knowledgeable customers.

"It's a pretty cool concept," he said. "They mostly want to find out how it works. They're in awe of it."

Few customers are buying, however, in part, he believes, because of the limited EZ-D selection. Along with such recognizable titles as Frida, Signs and The Hot Chick are lesser-known films including Heaven and Equilibrium. According to sources, however, Buena Vista will release several new titles in a few weeks.

The Suncoast clerk said he's hopeful heavy TV advertising will drive more people to actually buy the EZ-Ds. "If it were $3.99, it would sell like crazy," he said.

Guess that's what lots of us been hoping for!

Kakkarat

surprise, surprise. hopefully this will quickly go the way of divx

the narrator

who wouda thunk it?

Rice Sniffer

Can't wait until I never see another disposable DVD post again. Some blame Enron "types" for the undermining of the US economy. Unfortunately, the execs at ... where is it, Disney? ... that think up this stuff forget concept and impementation are two entirely and distincly different things ...... we'll see how long this lasts.

VincentVega

Sorry for asking this here but do these disc's have any extras on them? Are they in anamorphic widescreen with 5.1?

chucks888

GOOD!

discostu1337

Anyone know again what the other test markets are? we are driving cross-country to move to San Diego in a few weeks and I wanna pick 1 up for novelty purposes? I recall CHicago area being a test area?

edit...looks like peoria/bloomington IL....and i'm going right through Bloomington....EZ-D here I come...I won't sleep at night until you are mine!

hmurchison

We Americans may not be the brightest but we realize a sham when we see it.

Personally if the Papa Johns starts advertising these discs I will alert them that I will boycott there pizza. EZ-CD = undue harm to the environment for the sake of profits. We all know it happens but there's not reason to cram this discs in the landfill.

"This" is the ingenuity of today Media Exec. First Divx now this. Is there any wonder there is a severe disconnect within the consumer population?

kilcher

$5.99? Geez, no wonder. Even $3.99 is a lot. I can go to Hollywood Video and rent a new release for 99 cents and only pay 99 cents for every week that it's late. That means I could keep it for 6 weeks for the price of one 48 hour DVD.

I've heard our city is one of the test markets but I haven't seen these anywhere. I haven't really been looking for them though. And besides, I don't get out much. If they were $1.99 then I think they'd do pretty well.

Jackskeleton

And I put money on this stock!

ChrisHicks

or if you are really lazy you could just stay at home and order a pay per view or use VOD for less money.

danwiz

discostu1337
The test market cities are:

1) Austin, TX
2) Peoria & 3) Bloomington, IL
4) Charleston, SC
5) Kansas City, KS and 6) MO

found this info
[here]
click on the "Where You Can Find EZ-Ds"

RyoHazuki

How about edible dvds? Watch the movie, then have a snack!

whynotsmile

Ryo that is the greatest thing I have ever heard.

But you gotta eat it in 3 days or it will spoil.


And the dvds could have different flavors that match the personality of the movie!...oh so cute

man the possabilities are endless.

speedy1961

No extras at all.... Just like DIVX.

atari2600

wow, im soooooo surprised.

jekbrown

"It's a pretty cool concept....They're in awe of it."



good lord.

j

scottp120

I'm a manager of Papa Johns in MD and if they did that I would throw them in the dumpster. Well maybe not, I might get fired but I wouldn't try and sell them. Who would want to pay $5.99 or $6.99 for a DVD that's only good for a short time when you can buy most DVDs that have been out for a while for $15 or under.

Jah-Wren Ryel

At least they will be able to answer the age-old question, "Will it play in Peoria?" - NO! Stinky little town.

mzupeman2

Exactly, even though regular dvd's cost on an average 3 times more than that (b/w 15-20 dollar), those also last a lifetime, unlike these disposable glass coasters. If any market were to use these it would have to be rental stores anyway. This way customers dont have to worry about late fees. But will the rental companies want this? Hell no! They'll want to rake in that extra cash from late fees and so on and so forth. This abomination needs to die off right now.

gcribbs

I wonder how many millions Disney will lose on this stupid idea

I would fire someone now and kill this if I was them. $6.99 MSRP for a 48 hour rental.

what are they thinking?

mzupeman2

6.99 for a 48 hour rental is absolutely stupid. If this idea would ever take off the ground at ALL, it would have to be a rental store, as I said, and they wouldn't really make any money becuase you would have to really only charge the price for a blank DVD disc, hell, less than that, in order for anybody to be interested. And it's not like your making money on multiple rentals, you lose out as a company because your supplying 1 disc per customer for keeps. That's how rental stores do business. VHS tapes way back when: VHS tapes would often hit rental stores before they were available to buy from the public. And each video tape would cost roughly about 90-100 dollars if that was the case. They would rent the shit out of that video and make tons of money. And for the new releases that had multiple copies, they'd simply just sell a copy off after they made a little profit on it. Nothings really changed to this day, except that DVD's are cheaper for stores to buy and thus letting them make MUCH more money in profit on a 20 dollar DVD than they did with a 100 dollar VHS tape. These disposable dvd's are going to have to be cheap and each dvd is going to be rented out only once. So I don't know who is a bigger moron, the guy who thought of the idea, or the company that approved it. I take that back, i do know, the company who approved it. I mean you do have to admit that the IDEA of being able to rent a DVD out that will last 48 hours, is pretty cool as far as the idea as not being able to worry about late rental fees and etc, but as I said, companies WANT late rental fees. So although the disposable disc could be a good idea in GENERAL, it's not a good idea AT ALL from a business standpoint. Not for distributors, not for rental stores, not for anybody.

Wazootyman

I don't know if this is a mind numbing jolt of the obvious, but I just had this idea. The big story this week out of Hollywood was Valenti cancelling the use of Screeners in order to prevent piracy (which doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me). Well, we've got these disposable discs that nobody in their right mind should want to buy (IMO), so it seems like these discs could be put to use with screeners. That way the smaller independant films still get their viewing, the piracy is cut down, and everyone should be happy.

Now I know that some movies might require two viewings to fully grasp them, and a 48 hour period might hinder that. Although, I do remember reading that they can make the discs take up to 7 days to stop working

Flave

I think this is a great idea, I don't understand the hostility towards the concept.

The only problem is they're getting greedy (big surprise) and pricing it way too high. They need to price it at the same level as rental and the content has to be identical to the full release. If they do that, they'll have a major winner on their hands -- I know I'll never rent again. If they don't, this will go the way of the dodo. It's not that big an inconvenience for most people to return a rental so a pricing premium will not fly.

Hopefully, this test run will make this obvious even to the thick skulls in Hollywood.

mzupeman2

If they only charged price of rental, youve already used up that cost to buy the disc, to pay for the packaging of the dvd, and also for the shipping of it. They wouldn't make ANY money off of this idea. That's why it's really dumb. As I said it's a bad idea for these companies as it would be really nothing more than a charity operation, as for just a mere rental cost for these, it would only cover the charges to make and ship the dvd. And a rental store would HAVE to charge more than just a rental fee to make any money on these at all. And if they have to charge 5 bux for a rental on a 48 hour DVD, then nobody is going to want it. And if they DID charge rental price for the DVD, they wouldn't make any money because they would have that price for the DVD to the distributers anyway. Not to mention rental stores also love to have late rentals being returned, as that's MORE money coming in. That's why it's so incredibly stupid. Nobody makes any money...and if the rental stores were to convert to these 48 hour discs to eliminate 'late dvds' being returned, they wouldn't make any profit and would have to close down.

As far as the idea for using these things only for screeners to companies, that's just brilliant, i never even thought of that.