Yes, because we should never have the facts and truth get in the way of a perfectly good negative emotion.

It's true that many US businesses have to sell things cheaper overseas for various reasons. Keep in mind that these same companies are also your employers and also part of your investment portfolio. The majority of their profits are made in the U.S., generally because this is a richer country with stricter laws. Let's think about what would happen to your way of life if all of these companies were to lower all of the U.S. prices as well. You'd be biting that hands that feed you. Many industries would collapse and unemployment would skyrocket. Those high budget movies would probably get less money to be made.

Hahaha, yay for politics invading a thread about a greedy corporation. We all knew it'd happen sooner or later. I lost the local pool by about 3 and a half hours. You bastards couldn't have waited, could you?

-JP

A company has every right to charge what the market will bear. In fact, it is an obligation to the stockholders (owners) to maximize profits.

The question is, would the market still bear the same pricing if it was common knowledge that the studios were selling and still making money on essentially the same DVDs by charging others 1/10th of what we pay? My guess: It wouldn't for many consumers.

Music CDs are produced for pennies on the DVD production dollar, and they still charge what, $10 - $15 for a music CD? Utterly absurd. That is why I completely stopped buying music CDs. My personal market would no longer bear it.

And the notion that we pay more because we should pay more is progressive manifesto at it's worst, and utter nonsense. We pay more because we choose to pay more. That is the free market, and is the only system history has proven to not just last, but thrive over time.

But it's not about how much it costs to manufacture the CD or DVD and the packaging is it. You have to factor all costs into account. It costs virtually nothing to actually mass produce the disk, which is why Warner can do this. They would rather take some money from the Chinese market than no money at all, which is the current situation.

Unfortunately, what Warner seem to not be paying attention to is that this pricing will affect their other markets. In today's global economy, it's pretty hard to restrict sales to only one country, which is what is required for this to work. Multi-region DVD players and Internet retailers means that lots of folk will be importing their DVDs from China if they're up to the Warner quality for other regions in terms of picture and sound. Certainly this will be the case in Europe and Australia where multi-region players make up a massively higher proportion of DVD-player ownership than in the US. Warner could see their sales dropping in these countries as a result.

But maybe I'm being naive and they have an ace up their sleeves to counter this ...

That's some great packaging for the price, especially Pearl Harbor.

Those images are taking forever to load ...........

No kidding, I had Vietnam-like flashbacks of dial-up.

-JP

damn, I had sex 8 times while waiting for those pics to load and man is my arm tired.

Only on the Internet do you get people calling a company "greedy" for not selling special edition dvds for $3.

I think you guys need to realize that in a lot of Asian countries, the piracy rate for compact discs and DVDs is somewhere around 99%. That means that the companies aren't seeing ANY revenue, let alone profit. In order to combat the inexpensive bootlegs, Warner Brothers will sell official copies at a ridiculously low price. They might lose money or make a very small profit on each copy sold, but this isn't about making money. It's about maintaining "intellectual property." Regardless of how you feel about the laws of "intellectual property" you have to agree that the official channels should be payed for their product.

Piracy may be a problem in America, but it's not really THAT big of a problem that the companies need to start wildly slashing prices to $3. I can never imagine piracy levels in America reaching 99%.

As for importing the DVDs from China, this is an awful idea. China is currently under a totalitarian regime (albeit a slowly crumbling one) and all media is censored (in the true definition of the word, by the government). Furthermore, the picture may be spotty, not up to region 1 standards, and somewhat lackluster. After all, they only need to be better than a bootleg. But, if you feel like stocking up on a bunch of movies purely because they cost $3 and not based on the quality, MORE POWER TO YOU.

I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.

Yeah, that quote you gave makes me cringe.

LMFAO
I kinda see what both sides are saying. Clearly these low prices are a stab at piracy, and to be honest, it is the absolute best anti-piracy strategy there is. Value added product at low prices make no reason to buy a sub quality pirate roduct. The thing I find hypocritical is that they DON'T DO THE SAME HERE.

"Let's use a connector for our new HD DVD formats that will "block" piracy."
"But sir, that will cut out a good part of the market we're aiming for."
"Who cares, Stop little Johnny from trading XXX with his friends!"
If they just came in and sold DVDs cheaper then they would sell even more. THAT is basic economics, a concept the rich fucks running the universe just don't see.

This information certainly makes me view music rights issues in a new light. I love how studios butcher TV sets and replace music indiscriminately. God forbit they should pay for music rights. We know they can't afford to do that. Well, we wouldn't want them to put a small dent their grotesque profits would we?
"They can't afford the music rights for ..." Yeah, right. So much for that bullshit excuse.

20 bucks isn't that bad...as opposed to 50+ for laserdisc and even more for a P&S vhs....

Actually, I am a Republican. And I voted Bush. And I've looked at the facts. I know, that's probably hard to understand, being a polarizer, but there are misconceptions, and some things are not all fluffy and giddy.

The reason this is happening with cheap DVDs: Learned helplessness of a company who can't compete with an overwhelming alternative and since the companies virtually have no market share in China, they figure they can still make a little profit.

Problem is, knowing China and their adaptive history, they will make DVDs even cheaper.

If the quality is the same, I'm buying Chinese DVDs.