DVDs should cost $4; Blu-rays should cost $8 - My rationale

[FirstReflection]

Copying DVDs and Blu-rays is easy. We know it. The Studios know it. Everybody knows it.

Pop a disc into your PC's drive, rip an ISO with AnyDVD HD and you can have a perfect 1:1 copy on a blank DL disc or you can mount the ISO on a virtual drive and watch it straight off of the hard drive.

Run that ISO through a compression program and you can remove warnings, trailers and extra features, shrink the whole thing down to fit on a single layer disc or just take up less hard drive space.

Personally, I like the idea of keeping all of the extra features and retaining 100% of the original quality. I'd be perfectly fine with the straight ISO versions as they are fast to rip, super easy to burn and 100% identical to the original. They'd take up a little more space, but I'd save processing time.

So here's my point:

I actually WANT to pay for the movies. I think the people making the content deserve to be paid for their work. But the retail prices for discs are absurd and I would feel like an absolute sucker if I ever paid full retail.

Rent/Rip/Return costs money - but it costs a whole lot less than buying a retail disc. And the studios make a whole lot less money if people Rent/Rip/Return.

So I propose a middle ground:

Work it out and to Rent/Rip/Return a DVD winds up costing you around $3 when you total up the rental price, hard drive cost, maybe a blank DVD-R, etc. Blu-ray costs around $6.50. So I say, just make the retail prices $4-$5 for DVDs and $8 for Blu-rays. I can guarantee that at those prices, I would just buy any movies (or TV shows) that I wanted rather than Rent/Rip/Return.

I already avoid downloads because they almost always have all the extra features stripped out and they are almost always re-compressed. I don't enjoy searching for movies on bittorrent sites, I don't enjoy the odd mislabelled file, and I don't enjoy the reduced quality.

So that's my take - what's yours?

 

[Davemcc]

The real issue is that the studios, the directors and the actors all want to live on royalties for the rest of their lives. They do not want to make a profit for a couple of years then have to make another movie if they want more income. Didn't you know, one hit song or one hit movie is supposed to keep you in comfort for life?

 

[rnatalli]

The real issue is that the studios, the directors and the actors all want to live on royalties for the rest of their lives. They do not want to make a profit for a couple of years then have to make another movie if they want more income. Didn't you know, one hit song or one hit movie is supposed to keep you in comfort for life?

I say good for anyone who's lucky enough or has the marketing machine to do it.

 

[adwilk]

No offense OP, but while it seems like a viable argument on the surface, thats a ridiculous solution, for both music and movies.

The majority of people that "pirate" do so in MASSIVE quantities and aren't likely to begin paying for anything regardless of pricing.

I agree that some downloaders or renter/burners would begin purchasing but not nearly enough to offset the major margin killer of DRASTICALLY reducing the prices by the degree your talking.

Look at all the people that have to make money on this stuff. Retailers wouldn't touch it. Whats in it for them?


You can never try to determine a reasonable retail price based on what it costs DIY. Thats asinine.

 

[basspig]

A large part of the cost of Blu-ray at the present time is the license for AACS encryption. It's over six figures for any one production manufacturing run. So in the final analysis, the profits are not as great as the average person is led to believe.