DVDs: The Real Cost

<rant>

What's wrong with this picture?

Avatar and Sherlock Holmes @ ¥25 each

These are legit DVDs bought at department store and a government owned local bookstore in Shanghai.

Give up? It's not Mr. Mouse. He loves watching movies.

The Price! ¥25 = $3.67

Hey, those same movies are $20-$30 in the US - what's up with that?

All major motion picture DVDs are already manufactured in China and then shipped over here. So the difference isn't the production cost. It must be the shipping, handling, stocking and store overhead. But wait! It's gotta cost something in China for that same process, right? So how much money is the movie industry making, per DVD, in China?

I'd guess about $1.

I cannot imagine they are only making $1 here in the US on the same movie priced at $30.

But what if they were?

What if they could produce, distribute and sell movies in the US with the same overhead as in China and still make $1 per copy?

They can. It's called 'The Internet'

I truly believe that if the Motion Picture Industry of America invested their money in online, downloadable movie sales, like Apple does with iTunes, and Amazon does with MP3 music, they could sell many many more movies, make a killing in profits, and virtually eliminate the black market. After all, if you could buy a legitimate copy of a movie for $4, you would, right? I would. And I'd have little reason to rent anymore as well.

(BTW: The Movie Industry hates movie rental shops and recently restricted rentals on major blockbusters to 30 days after they are released for sale). Avatar is a prime example.

And lets face it, all that plastic packaging, glossy covers, disposable RFI tags are hardly 'green'.

Here's another problem online sales would solve: Spoken Language and Subtitles.

How many of you have someone in your household that natively speaks French or Spanish?
Spanish, sure. French? I don't think so. So why are they putting that on US distributed DVDs?

If the all movies were online and you could choose the Language of the Dialog and Subtitles, they'd sell even more - much more.

Chinese, Hindi, Burmese, Arabic, Russian, German are all languages I personal know people who would love to be able to get on American movies in the US, but can't.

I never went to the theater to watch Avatar, Iron Man, Star Wars 1-3, Spiderman, Batman, etc., because my wife could not follow the dialog. It's a waste of money. Instead I rent them from NetFlix and watch them at home by myself. But if I could buy and download those movies here in the US in Chinese and English @ $4 each, I would!

I'd buy them all!! And we could both enjoy them together!

And just how many is that? According to my stats on NetFlix, I've rented, watched and rated over 900 movies and TV shows.

</rant>