The DVD / Blu-ray RentalGate Scandal

[admin]

You rent the latest summer blockbuster on Blu-ray to watch in the comforts of your home theater only to find when you pop in the disc, critical features such as deleted scenes, special R rated version and BD Live access have gone amiss. All the anticipation of seeing Moon Bloodgood's boobs in Terminator Salvation has just been crushed. Who do you have to thank for? The Movie studios and their relentless pursuit of making more profits at the expense of restricting your access. Read on to find out why.


Discuss "The DVD / Blu-ray RentalGate Scandal" here. Read the article.

[adwilk]

Thats interesting...

I don't think that the rental products should have a censored version, but business is business and the watered down DVD is something I don't really have a problem with. Perhaps if profits go up a bit for the studios then prices will come down across the board.

[westcott]

You can write the studios all you want but the only real vote they seem understand is the vote not to buy their products.

Just don't use the BR services of the rental houses. Refuse the higher premium they charge for a less than average service compared to standard DVD rentals offerings.

[Adam]

Huh. I just watched that movie today from Netflix. I sure saw the bra stay off for a while. Maybe there was more? Seemed like the scene jumped to the next one pretty abruptly, but I didn't think too much of it.

Now I feel like seeing if I can get into the set-up menu. You have me all curious.

[FirstReflection]

LOL!

This is awesome. Just awesome.

See, here's reality: I am never going to pay the retail asking price for Blu-ray movies - they are WAY too high. I'm pretty happy to rent/rip/return using Zip.ca (Canadian version of Netflix). As it is, I'm paying $2.50 per rental disc and basically $4.50 in hard drive space; so I am basically willing to pay $7 to have a copy of any Blu-ray movie. I've said it time and time again: if I could walk into any retailer and see that every single Blu-ray movie on the shelf had a sticker price of somewhere between $6.99 and $8.99, I would just buy every Blu-ray movie I have any interest in keeping. But when the stickers all say $29.99? No thanks.

So what makes the studios more money? Me buying 3 movies a week for $7 each, or me rent/rip/returning 3 movies a week?

Now, with this move, the studios obviously think that I will stop rent/rip/returning Blu-ray movies. And they are partially correct - I do not want gimped rental versions taking up valuable and costly space on my hard drives. I would gladly, GLADLY go out to the stores and buy the legitimate "for sale" versions if they cost $6.99-$8.99. But that ain't happening either.

No sir, the reality is that if I can't buy the "full" version for - what I consider to be - a fair price, and I also cannot rent/rip/return because the rental versions are all gimped, I am left with the only viable option, which is to download .ISO rips off of the internet!

THAT is what the studios can't seem to wrap their greedy, stupid minds around. Taking stuff away from consumers doesn't make us go out and pay more; it pushes us even harder and faster towards piracy!

The rental stores are already hurting - BAD. Having gimped versions for rental and "previously viewed" sales is only going to hasten the demise of the rental store business. If Netflix (Zip) and RedBox also wind up being hamstrung by these "less than" versions, all it really means is that more and more people will flock to bittorrent, not the stores.

Get it through your heads, Hollywood: movies just aren't worth $30 a piece! Instead of trying to squeeze consumers so hard; instead of jacking up ticket and disc prices; instead of making the streaming versions cost $7 and only last for a 24 hour window; instead of being so damn greedy; why don't you just learn a little humility and maybe start bringing your budgets under control?

Piracy is the greatest thing to ever happen to the "free market" because it actually forces fair prices and supply-and-demand to function as it should. Piracy is a wonderful tool on the side of consumers. It allows us to truly dictate what we are willing to pay for a product. It allows us to tell the studios what we believe is a fair price.

Just look at the music industry. It's not as though we don't have the option to easily download songs for free. But a huge number of us CHOOSE to pay about $1 per song because we actually WANT to pay the artists and the producers and the engineers for their work. It's just that we didn't want to pay $16 for a CD that only had 1 or 2 good songs on it!

Movies are the same way. We are willing to pay SOMETHING. For me, it's $7-$9 for Blu-ray quality with its FULL feature set. Put every Blu-ray movie on the shelf for $7-$9 and I WILL buy every disc that I have any interest in owning. I already pay $7, but all of that is going to Zip for a rental and some company that makes hard drives. Wouldn't you rather have my $7, Studios?

[adwilk]

No sir, the reality is that if I can't buy the "full" version for - what I consider to be - a fair price, and I also cannot rent/rip/return because the rental versions are all gimped, I am left with the only viable option, which is to download .ISO rips off of the internet!

I would like to personally thank you for attributing to the high prices of media. Sorry, but you don't get a say because you steal. You know thats no different than just taking the movie from the rental place, right thief?

[davidtwotrees]

I agree, ADWilk. There is no justification for stealing content. There are a lot of things I can't afford, so I should just take them? My one at a time for $9.99 from Netflix plus streaming is an amazing value, imho. I'm very happy with the service. I don't really care about special menus and Blu ray live. I've never watched the extras and don't care too. I hardly have time or energy to watch the movie, much less extra content....

[AcuDefTechGuy]

All the anticipation of seeing Moon Bloodgood's boobs in Terminator Salvation...

What? They showed Moon Bloodgoods' boobs in the speacial features?

I'm definitely checking it out tonight then.

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I only paid $15 for Terminator Salvation BD 3-disc set. That's not bad.

The feature-LESS BD doesn't bother me, but I don't see the harm of including the special features since a lot of people love the special features.

Gotta check out the special features on T-Salvation now.

[JerryLove]

Firstly, it's not clear to me that we are blaming the right people. I'm pretty sure (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the rental industry has established the right to rent whatever it can get it's hands on (otherwise, I'd think Disney wouldn't be rentable).

Given that: doesn't this strategy only work because rental companies buy the altered versions of the DVDs?

Their intent aside: it's hard to fault an industry for offering more choices.

And honestly, slippery-slope argument aside: the vast majority of the renting audience doesn't do anything with the special features disks but loose them. Certainly including the "digital edition" in rentals would be a mistake.

It just seem that the makers haven't actually stopped the rental companies from buying the full versions: and the rental companies are free to rent out what they like.

That said: I'm sick of mandatory trailers.