Movie rental stores and prices.

[lokiju]

I used to work for a video rental store in my teens before DVD's came out.

Back then rental stores would get releases on VHS before stores would sell them, this would usually be a few weeks or months before they'd go on sale to the public.

As a result, movie rental stores would have to pay a premium to get them on their shelves early, IIRC they were about $300 each VHS.

Now that DVD's are the norm and movies comes out in stores on the same day they do in rental places, why do they charge more now than they did then?



Thank you for reading lokiju's thought of the day.

 

[Ns1]

because they want to pillage your wallet

 

[DarkManX]

300$ a movie? how will they ever recover the cost of that???

 

[dman]

I am pretty sure that the big chains have to pay a bit more for their copies for the ability to rent them out. Plus there's a fair amount of cost in the infrastructure/labor/etc. Those kiosks in the grocery store for $1/movie/night are reasonable if you are looking for an alternative.

 

[lokiju]

Originally posted by: DarkManX
300$ a movie? how will they ever recover the cost of that???

I have no idea.


This was for a Video Avenue at the time, which have since all shut down or been turned into Hollywood Video.

 

[mugs]

I think it was more like ~$80 for VHS.

They charge what they can charge... and some stores only charge $1-2 for a new release (not the chains).

The chains give you 5 nights on many movies, not 1 night like it used to be (at least at non-chains).

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: dman
I am pretty sure that the big chains have to pay a bit more for their copies for the ability to rent them out.

They don't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Plus there's a fair amount of cost in the infrastructure/labor/etc. Those kiosks in the grocery store for $1/movie/night are reasonable if you are looking for an alternative.

Yeah, those are cool.

 

[xanis]

$300 a movie? That seems a bit high... maybe it was $300 for the whole shipment of a certain movie? That might make a little more sense.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: mugs

Plus there's a fair amount of cost in the infrastructure/labor/etc. Those kiosks in the grocery store for $1/movie/night are reasonable if you are looking for an alternative.

Yeah, those are cool.

Until you try to return it and it's full. And so are the other two boxes that are close to you. My lesson learned, only rent one at a time. And use the on campus one for returns.

 

[shortylickens]

They dont pay 300 bucks a pop. That movie would have to be rented a hundred times before it paid for itself, then another hundred times before it made a halfway decent profit.

That could happen with the latest and greatest hollywood blockbusters, but with those the rental places usually get about 50 or so copies. Some have even more available.
Remember when Terminator 2 came out? It was like 3 whole shelves at most places. And every single one was out.

 

[lokiju]

Originally posted by: Xanis
$300 a movie? That seems a bit high... maybe it was $300 for the whole shipment of a certain movie? That might make a little more sense.

Thats what my manager told me, of course she could have been full of shit.

 

[PingSpike]

Its possible $300 could be the cost for the movie. I worked at a video store and the highest I ever saw was like $180-200, but that was a few years ago and the price of a title was somewhat based on how successful the movie was. That was just some generic price sheet though, I really never got to look at the real nitty gritty of things.

Its actually not that terrible, $300 does seem high though. But the first few weeks the movies rent like crazy and you can't keep them on the shelves and you probably make back at least half the cost right there.

 

[tw1164]

George had to pay $98 to replace that copy of Rochelle, Rochelle.

 

[reeserock]

Don't forget that late fee's were very steep back then and very strict. Stores did pay over $100 each for new releases back in the VHS days.

 

[Jhill]

He said they USED to have to pay that much. And they did have to pay a lot , because they got it earlier. I am talking about mid 80's.

 

[torpid]

I remember it being $80-100. And most movies never went on sale on VHS to the public. You could buy them for the same price only. Once in a while a movie would go on sale for $20 or so, but it was rare.

Blockbuster has got to be raking in crazy amounts of money with DVDs. They are 1/5 the cost. Renting a movie 3-4 times at their rates pays for the movie. 8 times and they surely have made a profit once manpower and overhead is figured. Then they sell a large portion of their stock for about 75% the cost of a new movie. They don't carry many obscure titles, and if it's obscure, there are usually less than 5 copies.

By comparison, my local video store has a huge stock of really hard to find titles and imports. They surely take a loss on most of their stock and have to make up for it with short rental periods and lots of rentals of pop titles.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: tw1164
George had to pay $98 to replace that copy of Rochelle, Rochelle.

A young girl's strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk?

 

[purbeast0]

i remember when mortal kombat came out on video but it wasn't mass produced and sold to the public at stores. so i called up some video store and they told me if i wanted to buy it it would be $90.

 

[Jugernot]

I used to know a guy who owned a local video store... he bought his DVDs at local stores the morning they came out. Certain titles he would buy from distributors and get them for much the same prices at local stores charge.

I can't say if he was doing it the legal way... but that is what he used to do.