Chacham's Journal: Rant: Question: How much should a series on DVD cost?

DS-9 is ~$98/season.There are 7 seasons. $700 is a bit much to pay for a series.

Slayers ~$117/season. 3 seasons. $350 for the series? That's on Amazon. On ebay, they're closer to $25 a season

X-Files ~$130/season. 10 seasons? Over $1000 for the series??

The Simpsons are about $30 a series. Not bad.

It makes me wonder who actually buys this stuff. I'd love to get DS-9. But they charge for a season what i'd rather pay for the series. Especially with no real reruns, who's going to buy it anyway?

As for Slayers, i've downloaded mostly all the episodes. Though i've watched most of them on i-channel first. When i have some money to spend, i'm thinking of buying the series. Oddly enough, without downloading them i probably never would have been interested. At $30 dollars a season its ok. I'd *never* pay over $100 for them!

X-Files, well the first eight seasons, i'd love to purchase. Again, however, they charge for a season what i'd rather pay for the series. I'll probably just download the series instead.

Who are they trying to target with these outrageous prices? Imagine, if any one season for any tv show cost ten dollars. Would that change your purchasing habits? I'd most certainly go and buy a few seasons of old shows, and possibly purchase the entire series. Instead, with these prices, they are targetting die-hard fans. And are unlikely to attract any new interest in old shows.

How much do you think they should cost?

I'm thinking about $10 an episode.

[bmetzler]

For shows that aren't really popular. Shows that have a really strong following might get up to $20 an episode.

What does that come out to per season? I am not sure, do the math and let me know.

-Brent

Re:I'd halve that

[memfree]

I'm thinking $5/episode as a maximum. We're talking about *tv* afterall -- something that supposedly made its money in the initial run and probably went into re-runs to recap more $$, and that anyone *could* tape for free, and that is only getting DVD treatment because it has that much of an excess of hard-core fans.

More to the point, I have a hard time paying more than $10 per hour of movie-programming on DVD, so I really expect TV shows to cost FAR less for the same time span.

The only DVDs of series I

$10 a Disk

[Pirogoeth]

I think I paid about $150 for the Monty Python series which comes out to about $10 a disk or so.

If a season of X-Files comes on 4 disks, I think $40 is fair, and I'd even pay $50.

10 seasons would br $4-500. For the amount of content you'd be getting, that sounds fair to me.

I would assume that these are not being targeted at Joe Sixpack, but at the heavy fans of the show who would pay for anything. I do agree that $100+ for a season is a bit excessive, though.

Just bought Stargate SG-1 1st season

[bubblegoose]

Paid $52 for it on buy.com. 21 epipsodes...about $2.50 an ep.

SG-1 is my personal Sci-Fi favorite right now.

$10 to $15 per half-hour

[intermodal]

so for a season of a show with hour long shows, $20-30. For half-hour shows, $10 to $15 per season. Duplication is ridiculously cheap, and if they were getting by fine without the DVD sales, they'll get by fine with them being cheap.

It's the same fight with the RIAA...they see their stuff as cash crops, not as a service to the fans.

Beavis and Butthead is cheap!

[GoRK]

My friend said he called into the tv ad to order the Beavis and Butthead first season set and they offered him EVERY season for like $80. That's what I'm talkin about.

If they are going to sell individual seasons for $100, fine. Make it worth it, though. Start selling them immediately after the season's run finishes for the year. If the show is no longer being produced, then offer the COMPLETE SET of seasons for a very very steep discount and be more realistic on your pricing of the others.

The thing that s

Isn't it always too expensive?

[sebi]

The only "real" series I am buying at the moment is Futurama. The first three seasons set me back between about 40 and 50 Euro per box. Season four will be released in two weeks and will be in the same ballpark. I got the complete Blackadder for about 100 euro, but that is for four mini-series, rather than proper seasons. I could have got it cheaper, but I bought it before I discovered play.com. I have wanted to buy X-Files for years, but so far it has always been to expensive for my taste. The price per mi