YTYTYTYTYTY's Journal: DVD's

The DVD Report

Just a few general words about DVD's.

I started buying DVD's in 1999. By 200 I had perhaps 10. In May of 2000 I moved to the country outside Austin, Texas. I had perhaps 20 DVD's.

Shortly after moving I made the decision not to sign a term agreement with a satellite service Satellite and local services required to receive both national and local channels. The cost was over $100 per month.

Instead, I started buying DVD's. Within a month I had over 50 DVD's. I was in the country and had a lot of time on my hands and was fairly addicted to TV to while away the hours.

I Collected first run releases and started collecting several series.

For first release on DVD movies often the best time to get the best price is the first week of release, so every Tuesday I made a pilgrimage to Best Buy where I would buy the latest releases I was interested in. By the end of the year I had over 150 titles including the beginnings of the X-Files collection.

I soon discovered that buying all the first run movies I wanted could be very expensive. The X=Files alone were nearly a hundred dollars a season at first release and nearly a hundred-twenty after that. So I started buying older, less expensive movies. Nevertheless, I also found myself at times with forty or fifty movies in my overflowing baskets. I could drop four or five hundred dollars a trip to Best buy. Then I discovered WalMart and the $5.88 bin. Suddenly, (the name of an early Frank Sinatra movie BTW) I was able to buy ten or fifteen movies at a time ant still stay under a hundred bucks. But, I was never able to stay away completely from the first releases. By the time I hit over five hundred discs I had been married and divorced and now in mid 2004 I must have over 600 discs. I am happy to say that my buying binge has subsided somewhat, but still I find things too good not the add. While in Phoenix this June I discovered the "Everything 99 cents" store and there I discovered a couple of shelves with DVD's of old movies and TV series. Bought forty or fifty and sent a bunch to the boys in Iraq. Not the best quality but worth buying for the price. Hell, I paid $6.99 for several of the movies available there for 99 cents only a couple of months earlier.

So I mention all this simply to off some credentials for my further comments.

Things that Piss me off in DVD land--

I really have feeling ripped off. DVD's are less expensive to produce that VHS tapes and yet remain more expensive than video tapes. When I pay $19.99 for a DVD whose matching VHS tape costs $12.99 I feel ripped off. OK, It's new tech and the truth is I feel the same way about CD music discs.

What really pisses me off however are TV series that want exorbitant prices for products which have already reaped profits for their producers. Prime among the sinners in this category are the producers of the Star Trek properties, all of which are priced at a hundred dollars a season or more. And have you priced the original Star Trek series? $24.99 for each and every two episode disc. With over seventy episodes that adds up to a lot of moola. As a result, I own only one original series disc, that being the disc containing Star Seed, the first time we meet Kahn and that simply because I own the Wrath of Kahn and felt incomplete without it.

There are other series that are way too expensive and they include but are not limited to:

X-Files at over $100 per season

CSI at $70-$90 per season

Every single Star Trek series, all at near or over $100 per season. Maybe I mentiond that already but it is a big burr under my saddle.

Most of the successful Cop shows

Almost every Science Fiction Series available. Good Grief, Nearly a hundred bucks for Battlestar Galactica. Puh-leeze!

And the same goes for The Saint, Monty Python, Space 1999, the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits and way too many other old, syndicated series.

More later on Spacewasters and the best of the best in series DVD's available today.

One thing to remember

[rdewald]

Until very recently, the 'industry' considered syndication and DVD release to be separate products. The contracts were negotiated separately. Suddenly, the actors figured out that they could pretty much ask for what they wanted, since, as you say in the JE, the money everyone planned to make had already been made. This is why we don't have a Seinfeld DVD release yet.

About 15 years ago, when the industry began to realize that you had to get the entire distribution deal done as one package, they negotiate

Yeah, that post syndication DVD comentary

[YTYTYTYTYTY]

Some comentaries are interesting but I agree, however, generally speaking I prefer less talk and earlier releases. But they will probably soon be doing the comentaries while in original post production thereby saving a step and several years. Right M&J?? Come-on boys. Get over yourselves. It's the programing we want.

With love to Matt and Jim from YesThankYouThankYouThankYou... Awh, you get the idea. Stay safe and hurry up with the rest of the Simpon's on DVD.