Not for rental DVD's being rented

Our man in Havana

I rented out a few DVD's from the local shop. I noticed that there was a warning advising that these were not for rental copies but retail copies.
Is this widespread?

Any opinions would be appreciated.

smiaras

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Our man in Havana

Originally posted by smiaras
Happens a bit cause rental copies are more expensive, I know of one place that when you try to rent a new release they give you the movie and an old video. Technically you rent the video and they give your the non rental dvd with it.

I paid for all the DVD's @€;5 each. Seems like a scam.

Makaveli

If the distributors find out they'll be in a lot of trouble.
Chartbusters had Training Day available for rent and they were all retail. There was a dispute with Warner over something so it was never available to rent here at all. I don't know what happened in the end but I'm sure they got in a fair bit of trouble.

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

Have you or anyone you know ever reported it? Every dvd I have ever rented in the three video stores in my town has that on them. Yet Ive never felt the need to ring and tell. Maybe if they were offering some sort of incentive, say 20 euro each time you reported a store renting them out.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

my local stores uses them too. i didn't care, it's a small town newsagents that started their own video store a few years back.. I don't care so long as I get a decent quality dvd.

krattapopov

as far as i know that is illegal, they cannot rent retail copies, they should be reported, but personally i wouldnt care haha

who cares once you get to see the film right?

dam the man

vibe666

the big problem is, if you live somewhere that only has one video shop and they get shut down because you called and reported them, then you have no video shop to get more video's.

isn't that the 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' thing? (or something like it!).

afaik the xtravision (blockbuster) thing with warner was over a big (3x) price hike of their rental releases, and blockbuster told them to whislte for it and that they wouldn't be buying any more movies off them. not such a big deal you'd think, but blockbuster is the single biggest video rental chain in the world. it meant that we couldn't get AOL Time Warner releases through Xtravision, but fair fvcks to them for standing up to them. would have resulted in us being charged more anyway if they'd let them do it.

Lump

Originally posted by krattapopov
as far as i know that is illegal, they cannot rent retail copies, they should be reported, but personally i wouldnt care haha

who cares once you get to see the film right?

dam the man

Of course it's bloody illegal. I have no problem with them supplying for sale dvd's for rental, once their prices are low.


John

Caliden

its illegal as rental copies cost 10 times what a retail copy does, this is where distributors make their money, and so the shop is conducting illegal activity:mad:

seamus

Originally posted by Lump
Of course it's bloody illegal. I have no problem with them supplying for sale dvd's for rental, once their prices are low.


John

I'd agree. Paying €15 for a DVD and then charging €4 a night, when it's going to be rented at least 6 nights a week is a bit cheeky.

Andrew Duffy

My local store is a small private one, always seems empty, but all the DVDs are rental copies. I don't think they're actually that much dearer; I think they're about €100 for a new release and €40 for an older movie. Seeing as the new release would be €35 retail, this isn't too bad.

krattapopov

dam the man

Andrew Duffy

Tried to check this out, but could only find the situation in the US. Damn Internet. Basically, in the US a rental store can rent out any video or DVD they own. In order to make money out of this, the movie industry tried suing and lost, then came up with the idea of "priced to rent" - early in the release schedule, movies are priced high, up to $100, and reduced after a few months.

However, DVDs were never priced-to-rent, and it's only just creeping in on some movies.

Anyone know the law in Europe? Rental DVDs are very obviously different; many of them have trailers, most have no special features and are pan-and-scan (yuk). Is this just a special format for rental, or is it the only format that is allowed be rented?

Andrew Duffy

Found the answer:

http://www.blackstar.co.uk/help/help_avail

Looks like the laws are the same, and there are some priced-to-rent DVDs (http://www.blackstar.co.uk/video/item/7000000083350). The old ones are probably never released at high prices.

oneweb

Report it to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (site) They had an Irish number as far as I know but it escapes me.

Venom

Originally posted by krattapopov
as far as i know that is illegal, they cannot rent retail copies, they should be reported, but personally i wouldnt care haha

who cares once you get to see the film right?

dam the man

I care for the simple reasion that shops renting out non retail dvd means I have to sit through the "if you rented this dvd out from..." poxy messages on retail dvds I buy

krattapopov

oh boo hoo

if there is such a big deal with this down the bog, tell the retailer/renter that you are onto them... demand that you either rent it for 1 euro a night or less..... that simple

if not report them because the are breaking the law!!!

personally i don't care, if you wanna rent a film, you're gonna rent it
as i said

dam the man

if there is such a big deal with this down the bog, tell the retailer/renter that you are onto them... demand that you either rent it for 1 euro a night or less..... that simple

Must go blackmail my local video stores now.

krattapopov

thats the spirit

imp

Er... the whole Blockbuster/Time Warner thing ended a long, long time ago.

}:>

Makaveli

What's your point?

Fysh

I know I'm a late joiner on this thread, but...

As far as I understand the disparity between rental and retail prices is in part designed as a license scheme of sorts, so that the MPAA (as a representative of the movie studios) gets part of the profit made by the store from renting the films.

It's not so much "we have extra costs in producing rental copies" as "there's some more profit to be made, let's go grab our share". Given the fact that DVDs are routinely over-priced, I don't sympathise much with this mentality, and I certainly wouldn't help the MPAA to enforce what amounts to a protection racket. Let them do their own dirty work. It's already annoying enough that they build in region encoding so that they can maintain differential pricing, without then being asked to play Big Brother on people.