RE: Pricing of DVD vs. Video.

["Pike, George" <PIKE@law.pitt.edu>]

The "why this is" is usually related to whether the initial VHS release is
priced for the rental market or the sales market.  If a movie is projected
to do better as a rental than as a sales product, the initial price is
quite high on the assumption that video rental stores will pay a higher
price to have a couple of copies in stock (also the smaller pool of buyers
generally requires higher prices to make any profit.  I suspect this is
the reason that academic market videos are so high.)  On the other hand,
individual buyers clearly won't pay those prices, so movies expected to do
well in the sales market are priced in the $20 to $30 range.  (Our law
library waited 6 months for the Travolta legal thriller "A Civil Action"
to be re-priced for the sales market.  When that happened the price
dropped from $99.95 to $14.95.)

For those sales-market films, it is my impression that VHS is still
cheaper than DVD by $5 to $10 per film.

For what it's worth.

George H. Pike
Assistant Professor of Law and
Director, Barco Law Library
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
412-648-1330
pike@law.pitt.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rickand@unr.edu]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 10:43 PM
To: Hamaker, Chuck; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Pricing of DVD vs. Video.



> On new releases. looks like DVD is much less expensive than video.

This is sometimes true for new releases.  On the other hand, go to the
"Hot New Releases" section at Amazon and check out the VHS prices: $25 for
Harry Potter, $15 for Bridget Jones, $23 for Ocean's Eleven... not a
single one lists at over $25 (except for the multi-tape box sets).  Those
$100-plus VHS prices are an anomaly, I think.  I'd be interested to know
why those pricing anomalies exist -- look up Moulin Rouge and you'll find
you can buy it on VHS for $110 or $13, and there's no apparent difference
between the two versions.  Anybody know why this is?

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno        "When you think Phil, you
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Reno, NV  89557                       -- Phil Donahue
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