DVDs now account for the biggest piece of the movie industry

Movies
1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31386-2002Dec23.html

I never saw this mentioned anywhere, but in this article detailing the firing of the guy who created the DVD, it has this factoid:

DVDs now account for the biggest piece of the movie industry’s revenue pie, outpacing box office and VHS revenue for the first time this year.

Never knew that, would not have guessed it.

Chet

2

No kidding, but it makes sense. When you factor in how many are available for rent, it’s not unlikely they get something close to 1-1 with numbers of copies sold and number that pay to see the movie in a theather. People would have to see a movie 2-3 times to equal the cost of a single DVD, so it’s ch-ching for DVD sales.

The smartest thing they did was always making them “priced to sell.”

3

Heh… yeah. Remember when VHS was a new format, and tapes of movies typically sold in the $70-100 range? The industry was afraid that home movies would steal sales from the box office, and they probably have, but it’s still just another cash cow for the movie industry.

4

Remember when VHS was a new format, and tapes of movies typically sold in the $70-100 range?

Remember? It’s still like that. VHS new releases that are not sold at retail day and date with their release are still premium priced. You can thank the folks at Warner Home Video for demanding the sell-through pricing on DVD and having the guts to stick by it when the rest of the industry was saying “you’re nuts”.

I was working in video retail when DVD was brand new and there was a lot of pressure to sell DVD at the same price they were using for VHS to maintain the rental side of things. What happened was that the studios realized they could sell more movies both to video stores AND to consumers at the low price to offset the lost revenue on rental-only titles. It still hasn’t changed VHS, and it probably won’t until the format finally disappears.

There is a remote possibilty that rental pricing will return though. Some studios never liked that Warner forced the issue with sell-through and some would like to go back. It’s unlikely as it’s a genie out of the bottle situation now. But who knows? There’s always a chance.

–Dave

5

I seriously doubt that rental pricing will hit DVD sales. There’s simply too much money being made from DVDs these days, and the only ones that are complaining are the rental chains.