Posted by Goro on 01/11/06 14:27

Joseph S. Powell, III wrote:
> Back in the day, when this Newsgroup was still fairly new and Norm Wilner
> was the "DVD Guru", there were some people who "stood up" and argued that
> DVD's need Rental Pricing, that is, the policy that a movie released on a
> format, should be priced very high for the first few months (around
> $60-$70.00) so that the "video rental stores" could make their bucks; if you
> wanted to have the DVD right away, fine, but you would pay the high premium,
> wheras if you waited a few months, it'd be $20-$25.00 or so.
> I argued then that it was a bad idea, and that most DVD afficianados
> preferred their DVD's with the cheap price right from the get-go.
> Is there one single person reading this who think Rental Pricing is the way
> to go for DVD's?

It would prolly help the THEATRE business as well (if only
incrementally). Of course, a rental window would probably hurt the
initial sales of a DVD; at least, that's what I'd expect.

An interesting thing that COULD occur: Studios could shift the SD-DVDs
into a rental only market and then use the HD version (HD-DVD or
BluRay) as the sell-thru media.

-goro-

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