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]

Let the flaming begin

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.

 

[bmz]

Sorry Adwilk, the industry doesn't get to scream thief when customers find ways to avoid their rip-offs.

 

[GlocksRock]

It seems to me that this could also be a double edged sword. If customers start buying movies and stop renting them, then the rental places who are already not doing well will go away completely or will at leat be buying a lot fewer copies of whatever new release and the movie industry will lose a lot of sales since they won't have all the blockbusters and other stores to sell to. A lot of people do blind buy movies, but many people would also prefer to rent a movie first to see if it's worth purchasing.

 

[TRT]

Do you guys remember when DVD's first came out? Years went by before the prices dropped. Years! So to will the prices of blu-ray. The guy who wrote $8.99 for his top-end price......won't happen until there is a newer media with newer CODEC's and higher resolution. Buy or don't buy. Rent or don't rent. $15.00 for a BD to Joe Average still beats a night out at the movies with his wife and four kids. 30 bucks for that guy is a deal! Let's face it: The biggest whinners are the pirates that don't buy disc anyway.

 

[jinjuku]

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.

Thanks for contributing to the problem... Idiot.

 

[jinjuku]

Sorry Adwilk, the industry doesn't get to scream thief when customers find ways to avoid their rip-offs.

That is exactly what the industry gets to do. Ask Jamie Thomas-Rassert.

If someone asks too much $$ for something, I don't consume it. IN ANY FORM.

If the industry dumped the average price of a BR title to $12.99 You would just re-adjust your 'fairness' price point and continue to infringe someone else's rights.

You are part of the problem.

 

[TRT]

I suppose that if one has a HTiB, this might be a big deal. I will not argue with college kids and people with limited incomes. Get what you can get. I get it! But......For those of us with state of the art systems, this is not a issue. I bought the latest Terminator and Star Trek movies to make my SXRD light up and my speakers dance. I didn't know how much the disc cost until the girl at the register rang em' up. And for all you folks with 10K worth of computers in your homes: Shame on you for *****ing about a $15 movie! Just don't buy it and go away. There are enough forum trolls to last us a lifetime.

 

[cwall99]

So, I guess $30 for a movie, while steep, is still less than if I were to take my family to see a movie at a theater. Even if it was just my wife as at least one of my kids needs a sitter. And, the nice thing about that is that if I do buy the disk, then I can watch it and watch it and watch it as many times as I want (until the studios figure out some way to make you pay each time you watch a disk you bought - I gotta believe that the idea has crossed their minds).

Some movies are worth $30. The Lord of the Rings trilogy springs to mind. Others, too, but which ones those are depend on your particular (or peculiar) tastes.

But I'm not excited about rental firms not being allowed to show the full, uncut movie. It just strikes me as greedy.

So, let's see... the studios don't want places like BlockBuster and NetFlix to show the full movie. Will they make up the volume of sold units that they sell to those outlets in terms of raw sales of their "premium" versions?

Unlikely.

Will they be able to stop people from establishing their own re-sale markets? I doubt it, and I don't think that's illegal (though I'm sure their lawyers are working on that).

What about trading disks with friends? Hey, I see you got Iron Man on Blu-Ray. Cool. Can I borrow it? I'll trade you my Master and Commander....

I just see this as a means to even further cut their sales.

By the way, I do love all the extras. Good ones, at least, like the one in The Bourne Identity where they show you how they did the sound for the Mini Cooper car chase scene... and this is just on the standard DVD.

Get smart, Hollywood, just sell one version. It'll help your overall sales numbers a lot more than this strategy.

In fact, I see this as a way to prematurely kill Blu-Ray.

 

[droht]

This move makes near-perfect sense to me. Don't know if it will help or hurt bottom line for movie studios, but I liks the thought process. I look at this as giving the consumer who is willing to buy the movie something extra, not taking away something from renters who are only spending a few dollars, even though the studios are in fact taking away the extras from rental versions. And I say this as a renter. I own very few movies. Maybe this will cause me to buy a few more. Maybe the studios will provide more or better extra features now. That would be nice. I like director's cuts and unrated versions.

And I love how they market the stripped down rental versions as "theatrical versions". Just some previews and the flick. Nice.

 

[darien87]

I think this is complete crap!

I saw Terminator Salvation in the theaters and the movie was weak. But Moon Bloodgood is smokin' hot, so I would definitely rent the R version to see her boobs. But NO WAY would I buy that stinker of a movie. I tend to watch some of the special features on rental discs. Just last night I rented the BD of Splinter and I watched the features that showed how the made the monster and stuff. Not absolutely necessary but cool to be able to see if you want to. But when I rent movies and it gives me the option of watching the regular version or the unrated version, I always select the unrated version.

The movie studios are just greedy and this makes me just want to boycott movies altogether. I already try to avoid seeing movies in the theater because it's a hassle. My equipment at home tends to sound better than my local theater and I don't have to worry about someone sitting next to me eating a stinky hot dog or popcorn.

Hopefully someone will create a website that lists the stripped down rental discs so I can find out which ones to avoid. If that's the game the movie studios and rental companies want to play, then I will avoid renting those versions of the movies. Hopefully other people will do the same thing and we can hurt them financially. That's the only thing they understand anyway.

 

[Omega Supreme]

I noticed this with the "UP" DVD that I got from Netflix this weekend. I tried and tried to get to the menu but could not. I even dug out my old DVD remote because I thought my Denon remote might not be working. One thing that really annoyed me was during all the trailers before the movie they previewed the animated short "Doug" that was supposed to be on the disk. I usually like Pixar’s shorts just as much as there movies but I couldn't get to the menu to watch it. I even fast-forwarded thru the end credits to see if they stuck it there. This now has me wondering what they are going to do on foreign movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Will we be stuck with whatever language version the studios pick with no option (dubbed English w/o sub-titles or not dubbed with English sub-titles)? DTS vs. DD? Not that I really think that writing a letter will change anything but I think the better approach would be to write to the rental companies (Netflix, Blockbuster, ect...) Let them know that we want a lower price for a lower quality rental.