Page 1 of Sell-through price of DVDs

I noticed on blackstar.co.uk under `help` that they talk about the `sell-through` price of a DVD:

Why are some titles much more expensive than others?

Some of the items on the site appear to have vastly inflated prices. Believe it or not, this is not an error. These items are so expensive because they`re aimed at the rental market, encouraging you to go to your local video rental store so they too can have a piece of the action. Usually three to six months after an item has been released it drops down to the regular "sell-through" price. The time span depends on various factors including, the success of the movie as a rental version, the distributors involved and the stars.

What is the sell-through price of a DVD? For example when will I be able to pick up things like Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive (Region 2) for under a tenner?

`Sell-through` DVDs are simply retail DVDs, i.e. DVDs intended to be sold to home users rather than to rental shops. The DVDs you normally buy from Play, HMV etc. are all sell-through DVDs.

Mulholland Drive and Donnie Darko are already available as sell-through in Region 2. The standard price of a sell-through DVD is £16-£20, or around £12-£15 after discounts; `under a tenner` would be classed as budget or mid-price.

Rental DVDs are much more expensive - £50 to £80 if I remember rightly. These are the `vastly inflated` prices that Blackstar refer to.

Mike

This item was edited on Thursday, 10th July 2003, 19:06

Hi,

When you buy these sell though DVD`s, you are buying the rights to rent them aswell. (If your a rental outlet).

This is the version that rental shops would have to buy, in order to rent them out. These discs recently have become rental versions, stripped of extra features, just the basic film.

You`ve got that arse-over-teat, Thundercat. Just to be clear on this: sell-through DVDs are the versions that you buy, not the versions that rental shops buy.

Originally, there was no distinction between sell-through and rental versions for DVD; it`s only relatively recently that the distributors have started producing rental-specific versions. This was, I believe, the source of the recent spat between Blockbuster and Warner.

Mike

The differences between rental and sell-through DVDs can matter a lot. While the movie is usually the same, you en up with none of the extras on a rental version, and it`s possible, though still uncommon, to have a lot of advertising that you can`t skip.

The rental DVDs are very much the equivalent of rental VHS, except for wide-screen and better sound. Over the last year, I`ve seen Blockbuster making a habit of trying to sell ex-rental DVDs at inflated prices. I reckon they`ve been over-estimating the demand for some movies.

At least there are some marked as "rental copy". In other cases, buying second hand, the clue is the lack of extras. "Gosford Park" is an example of that.

I tend to rent a VHS tape from my local shop, rather than bother with an ex-rental DVD.

<satire>Rental discs are what Buena Vista always release loads of, Sell Throughs are the discs from everybody else</satire>

Editor
DVD REVIEWER

Interesting stuff. I don`t make a habit of renting DVDs because they are always scratched to buggery. I had always assumed though that they were exactly the same as you bought everywhere else. The `sell through` price I took to mean the price that a film drops to after 6 months to a year (or sooner if there`s no demand for it, i.e. it`s rubbish). So I guess that would mean mid-price or budget.

Haven`t rental items always been more expensive than retail though? I remember my brother losing a VHS of Dracula when it first came out, and being charged £80 for a replacement.

This space for sale





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Quote:
Haven`t rental items always been more expensive than retail though?

This has always been the case for VHS (since the early `80s, at least). The rental release comes first, and is followed a few months later by a sell-through (retail) release. The delay between rental and sell-through releases is known as the `rental window`.

However, when DVDs were first introduced, there were no rental releases, and no window - everything was sell-through. If firms like Blockbuster wanted to rent out DVDs, they could simply buy the sell-through versions.

It wasn`t until a few years later that the likes of Buena Vista started to introduce rental windows for DVD releases. Warner`s current strategy is to have separate rental and retail releases, but with no rental window - hence Blockbuster`s annoyance. They still have to fork out 80-odd quid for the rental versions, but without the cachet of having a `rental exclusive` title.

Mike