Is this the end of the High Street DVD rental shops?

[GoggleboxUK]

You might just feel differently when the studios push up the price of retail DVD to compensate for the massive loss of revenue due to Blockbuster's demise.



Over 600 stores in the UK alone, each taking between 100 & 200 copies of each (non-B list) title at £18 per copy and a minimum of 5-10 copies of even the direst claptrap. Blockbuster, on average, took around 12-15 new titles per week which adds up to an enormous amount of cash missing from the studios pockets.



You may also think twice about praising the price of supermarket DVDs when they realise the 'ex-rental for a fiver' market has vanished.



No retailer competition means less options for the buyer, like it or not.

[Kitty Whiskers]

name='GoggleboxUK' timestamp='1285540384' post='477858']

You might just feel differently when the studios push up the price of retail DVD to compensate for the massive loss of revenue due to Blockbuster's demise.



Over 600 stores in the UK alone, each taking between 100 & 200 copies of each (non-B list) title at £18 per copy and a minimum of 5-10 copies of even the direst claptrap. Blockbuster, on average, took around 12-15 new titles per week which adds up to an enormous amount of cash missing from the studios pockets.



You may also think twice about praising the price of supermarket DVDs when they realise the 'ex-rental for a fiver' market has vanished.



No retailer competition means less options for the buyer, like it or not.

I would imagine the spectre of the pirate download would keep the prices low, wouldn't you Goggle? High prices will just push more people towards illegal sites.

[zettel45]

name='GoggleboxUK' timestamp='1285428311' post='477299']one of the reasons they have brought out Blu-Ray and HD is to massively increase the file size of a film in an effort to halt the illegal filesharers. It's a blinkered view and, as always, the pirateeers have come up with a new system, H.264, which does for Blu-Ray what DivX did for DVD.

And let's not forget 3-D, of course, a technological "improvement" entirely driven by the needs of the manufacturer rather than the needs of the consumer.



The DVD Rental store is going and I doubt the DVD itself has much more than a decade left to run. Surely it's only a matter of time before all our films/music/games and most of our TV is stored in huge server-hangers in Iceland and streamed when and as we want to watch them?

[Mr Pastry Time]

name='stevedr' timestamp='1285379131' post='477177']

Neither have I and i wont miss Blockbuster thats for sure, but i do in a way miss the old days when when VHS first appeared. My old newsagent would always have a few oddities for hire, not many but there would always be something interesting in there..and I remember a shop selling parts for hoovers had a little shelf in the corner of 'nasties'for hire,curious places and small time just trying to make a couple of bob.

Me as well.

I used to wander into good old Barry Wiles Films at Sittingbourne and hire a Super 8mm sound film for the weekend and can remember some of the first video tapes arriving for rental. It was all very exciting and Barry was a great chap and nice to be around. When the tapes became available in the 70's we used to have a video night at a friends house, and we all took it in turns to choose a tape to rent each week. Boy those were great days.. In the 80's our local hire shop was a split between VHS/Betamax and massive. You could spend half a day looking at boxes and chatting to locals which was a great interative event. The question today is will the public still interact with each other sat at home streaming films?? Nope.



My wife and I still pop into the local Blockbusters (we have 2 in our town) rent a film and have a chat to the staff. If the shops do go under I will miss the face to face experience of a local rental shop...

[didi-5]

I buy everything I want to watch now, so haven't done a video rental for years. I'm amazed really that the likes of Blockbuster are still in business. In the old days the only affordable way of seeing films on VHS was through renting them (and there were few enough for Radio Rentals to carry a small printed catalogue of titles available).

[GoggleboxUK]

name='Kitty Whiskers' timestamp='1285659130' post='478173']

I would imagine the spectre of the pirate download would keep the prices low, wouldn't you Goggle? High prices will just push more people towards illegal sites.

Let's hope so but if the trend continues up the food chain of film making then the studios can hardly start selling booze in order to survive.



Years ago I was on good terms with the manager of my local UCI cinema who told me that studios charge cinemas a percentage of their box office takings to show a movie. He said on average it was around 40% but when Toy Story 2 was released they chaged 90% instead. I have no idea if the current average is still 40% or if it has increased but if the studios begin to heavily milk cinemas then perhaps some of the few existing cinema chains will also have to look at their takings and PL sheets like Blockbuster have been forced to do.



I'm afraid that my prediction of the collapse of fim making as purely a money making enterprise is looking more and more likely as time passes. Zettel's point about new technology not being customer driven is a great example of the clear and present danger the current business model is in.



The world is facing a technological evolution that is being driven by the evolution of the internet and let's keep in mind that the basic concept of the internet was never driven by cash.

[Kitty Whiskers]

name='GoggleboxUK' timestamp='1285707988' post='478386']

Let's hope so but if the trend continues up the food chain of film making then the studios can hardly start selling booze in order to survive.

I don't know if the studios don't need a gigantic boot in the botty to make them think about the way they choose to make films. TV stations like HBO and Showtime run rings around the majors creatively. As I have said many times, the big studios are lazy and greedy.



I can see a time when film makers (of all types) will go straight to the internet to sell films via download rather than go through the nonsense of the studio system.

[MikeB]

The studios might be big, wasteful, and continually spending money on marketing rather than scripts (Knight & Day being exhibit A), but studios will still be the main force in movies (despite the MGM debacle).



They have the financial muscle to get films made, and the distribution network to get that product out to the market place. Practically all the indie production companies were bought up by the majors, or created their own companies (although few now remain). A small company could release a film directly onto a streaming site or a distributor like Lovefilm, but would you bother with a film which was 'straight to stream'?



The cinema part of the chain is actually a loser (overall) to the studios, but the capacity to show a film in cinemas adds enormously to possible future revenue from DVD, TV (pay and free) and other rentals. At present, the initial cinema release makes up about 17% of total reviews, which has fallen hugely from even 30 years ago. On the other hand, you can't get an Oscar if you don't get shown in a cinema...and an Oscar means serious money.



I wouldn't worry about the studios having a problem with Netflix, HBO, Showtime and the rest - they either own them or have close ties with them. The channels need product, and the studios have it. In fact its bigger than that. The studios are owned by multinationals who have also have own distribution, cinema chains, pay TV and free TV companies, and all of which have deep pockets (hence the capacity to pay such huge sums for production).



In the case of Sony, they also own the hardware part of the market. Sony want you to watch a Sony (Columbia) film or TV programme, recorded on Sony HD cameras, (and after cinema release, etc)ultimately streamed to you onto a Sony TV, or viewed on a Sony Blu -ray, or via a Sony PS3 - and perhaps you can play the game based on the movie - and in 3D on a Sony 3D TV (or even your own 3D video, via a Sony 3D camera). The soundtrack? Sony owns the rights, sells the track via the web (or on CD), and you listen to it on your Sony MP3 Walkman or via your Sony Gigabox, etc. They had this in mind when they overpaid for Columbia years ago, but now its perfectly possible.



Elenor Glyn (I think) was asked after the Fatty Arbuckle trial what will happen next. She is supposed to have said 'whatever will make the most money'. Hollywood hasn't changed. In fact, with Blockbuster out of the way, its one less middleman. People will still need to studios to get films made and shown. You can do it outside the system (like Roger Corman), but the system gets most of them in the end.

[GoggleboxUK]

name='MikeB' timestamp='1285967821' post='479174']would you bother with a film which was 'straight to stream'?

I spend way more time watching Youtube than I do in the cinema.



I enjoy watching people's homemade short films and can definitely foresee Youtube evolving to house a myriad of full length homemade movies. All it needs is for the rest of the world's bandwidth to catch up with Hong Kong's 100meg network.



What you say is all true but, as they say in showbusiness: Here today, gone.....later today.

[MikeB]

YouTube and the like will be part of the distribution strategy for the those small independent producers. If you can make a decent or at least interesting film for a relatively low budget (and thanks to the new digital cameras, etc, you can make it for a lot less than you used to), you can distribute it in cinemas and then DVD, etc, and make decent/serious money.



Blair Witch project showed how a 'small' movie can make a big impact via the web, and now every film (certainly 'cult' films) makes use of the web and viral marketing. But Blair Witch also shows something else. It cost about $35,000 to make. Artisan (now part of Lionsgate) paid $1.1m for the rights, and took $248m worldwide. They also spent $25m on marketing, which is an excellent return, but also points up the fact that studios with resources will tend to beat small film-makers without any resources when it comes to making money. The studios tend to make an appearance somewhere.



However, if film makers can produce a film for a lowish cost, use innovative marketing, and can get a good level of distribution, then they can take on the majors (Corman did it, and today's technology means you can do it even more easily).

The cost of physical distribution for a small arthouse film is exactly the same digitally as it is for a blockbuster. And if the cinema gets a better cut, then they can show the arthouse film to a relatively small audience and still make more money than with the blockbuster. 90% of the takings for Toy Story 3 makes sense (even with 3D), because its a banker (for everyone). But the latest bit of big budget fluff? Its got the lifespan of a gnat, and profitability will be thin. Perhaps the arthouse/niche is a better bet? I just wish there were some decent cinemas in my area that would think this way, and not just cater to the average 14 year old.



100m bandwidth in the UK? I wish, but I suspect we are still going to the cinema (if not to the rental shop) for a while longer yet...