Cutbacks at Xtravision ?

dfbemt

Was just looking at the Xtravision Top 20 DVD Chart.

Why do they only have 19 DVD's listed when they advertise a Top 20.

Is there cutbacks at Xtravision? Is there a shortage of rental silms at this time of the year? Is the Top 20 now the Top 19?

http://www.xtravision.ie/PanelGroup_MoviesPage_DetailedList.aspx?CnID=23&Page=1

phasers

That's how bad last year's films were.

Tea_Bag

do people still actually rent DVDs?

the keen edge

Top 20 my arse it's just another marketing tool to sell yet more bull$hit to people.

Biggins

If they last another year in Ireland, they will be lucky.
Between them and HMV - their music sales of CD's is bound to go sooner or later alone.

Mike 1972

Tea_Bag wrote: »

do people still actually rent DVDs?

Errrr yeah

Not everyone has the inclination/computer skills/unrestricted broadband to download them.

Its still reasonably cheap -particularly if one lives near one of those few remaining independent video stores.

the keen edge wrote: »

it's just another marketing tool to sell yet more bull$hit to people.

Thank you captain obvious.

the keen edge

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Thank you captain obvious.

Ha ha good one!.

My comment may have been somewhat obvious to some people, so then you quoted my post and then hilariously called me captain obvious and sarcastically thanked me for my stupidly obvious input. Brilliant, really brilliant.

Reading your post, others may think of me as some cartoon type character in military dress, or maybe as a type of comic book superhero who goes around pointing out the obvious to the general public, excellent.

Please do another funny.
How about quoting this post and then calling me General Sarcasmo and then refer to some wacky situation I could find myself in.

44leto

They are about to get a massive boost to their business. It seems the days of pirating films online maybe coming to an end in Ireland.

Alan Shatter is introducing legislation this month that will compel the ISPs to ban you from their service if you pirate.

Biggins

44leto wrote: »

They are about to get a massive boost to their business. It seems the days of pirating films online maybe coming to an end in Ireland.

Alan Shatter is introducing legislation this month that will compel the ISPs to ban you from their service if you pirate.

...The European courts though announced that its illegal to block ISP's didn't they though.
I seen a recent report (which I will try to find again) that mentioned the Irish possible government direction - as it flys in the face or current European law which was clarified recently.

Correction to the above: It appears they cannot blanket ban a site from everyone.
Thats must be why they are now going after individuals.
I personally thing they are wasting their time. Even Londons government abandoned plans to do similar as they saw it was unworkable for some reason but then again our government likes to make more laws that they either don't have the time, people or further resources to enforce!

Typical usual fanatical manoeuvre by an inept Irish government.

Robdude

I went to Xtravision once to buy a movie. I grabbed the one I wanted off the shelf and brought it up to the register. Store we empty. Nobody behind the counter.

I stuck my head over and looked around - found a guy sitting typing away on a phone. 'Ahem....*cough* **cough**'. Finally he gets up, walks over takes the case I brought and says, 'Okay, I'll go get this for you' then he walks into the back. Literally, 10 minutes later he comes back and says, 'It's not where it's supposed to be. Hang on and I'll go look for it'.

He disappeared into the back again. I waited another 10 minutes before I left.

Never shopping there again.

superstoner90

the keen edge wrote: »

Ha ha good one!.

My comment may have been somewhat obvious to some people, so then you quoted my post and then hilariously called me captain obvious and sarcastically thanked me for my stupidly obvious input. Brilliant, really brilliant.

Reading your post, others may think of me as some cartoon type character in military dress, or maybe as a type of comic book superhero who goes around pointing out the obvious to the general public, excellent.

Please do another funny.
How about quoting this post and then calling me General Sarcasmo and then refer to some wacky situation I could find myself in.

Thats good im gonna have to steal that, yoink!

Robdude

44leto wrote: »

They are about to get a massive boost to their business. It seems the days of pirating films online maybe coming to an end in Ireland.

Alan Shatter is introducing legislation this month that will compel the ISPs to ban you from their service if you pirate.

Before:
You'd download 'AWESOME MOVIE.MP4'

After:
You'll download 'ENCRYPTEDFILE.RAR'

Very little difference.

Biggins

First of all, they will have to prove that the service provider is fully aware of the exact downloading of a user - then they will have to be able to prove what material exactly is being downloaded in order to cut a user off!

If - and its a big IF - they are going to trying actually using this law, the courts of Ireland alone are going to be possibly snowed under in many, many court cases, possibly delaying everything else.
The lawyers are going to have a field day in charging costs and fees too!

44leto

I have no idea what the legislation will be, or how it will operate, I just heard a snit bit on radio.

I would imagine there would be a lot f ways around it. But the ISPs do know what sites you visit and what you download, they need that info for billing, even google knows it.

So I don't think its as impossible as suggested in above posts. Its in the governments interest to go after it, I imagine there is a serious lost in vat receipts and it is costing jobs.

Going by my pirating lately its a huge loss.

Fukuyama

44leto wrote: »

I have no idea what the legislation will be, or how it will operate, I just heard a snit bit on radio.

I would imagine there would be a lot f ways around it. But the ISPs do know what sites you visit and what you download, they need that info for billing, even google knows it.

So I don't think its as impossible as suggested in above posts. Its in the governments interest to go after it, I imagine there is a serious lost in vat receipts and it is costing jobs.

Going by my pirating lately its a huge loss.

And you seriously think there isn't a simple way around it?

Hide MAC address.

Proxy servers.

Hide IP address.

The list goes on and non.

Piracy will only end when I can stream a movie in high definition for 25c or download a book for 10c - with all of the proceeds going to the content creators. Not to greedy 'executives', 'publishers' and 'producers'.

44leto

Dean0088 wrote: »

And you seriously think there isn't a simple way around it?

Hide MAC address.

Proxy servers.

Hide IP address.

The list goes on and non.

Piracy will only end when I can stream a movie in high definition for 25c or download a book for 10c - with all of the proceeds going to the content creators. Not to greedy 'executives', 'publishers' and 'producers'.

Just curious
If I got a proxy server and I hid my IP address would I be able to download more the my current limit on my phone, or on one of the cheap internet deals that only allow a certain amount of data a month????????

Biggins

44leto wrote: »

I have no idea what the legislation will be, or how it will operate, I just heard a snit bit on radio.

I would imagine there would be a lot f ways around it. But the ISPs do know what sites you visit and what you download, they need that info for billing, even google knows it.

So I don't think its as impossible as suggested in above posts. Its in the governments interest to go after it, I imagine there is a serious lost in vat receipts and it is costing jobs.

Going by my pirating lately its a huge loss.

Possibly but for ISP to go after and find out/prove whats inside every possible password protected rar file alone, they will have to use a lot of resources for that alone - and thats besides then the government being able to prove then that they have that knowledge about an exact downloader.

Nice idea in theory - in reality, I can see this one turning into a complete mess.

Zen65

Dean0088 wrote: »

Piracy will only end when I can stream a movie in high definition for 25c or download a book for 10c - with all of the proceeds going to the content creators. Not to greedy 'executives', 'publishers' and 'producers'.

Without the executives, publishers and producers the movie could not have been made, and you would never have known of the existence of the idea it was based on.

Why should those people not get a return? They took the business risk.


Z

BunShopVoyeur

Zen65 wrote: »

Without the executives, publishers and producers the movie could not have been made, and you would never have known of the existence of the idea it was based on.

Why should those people not get a return? They took the business risk.


Z

Signing posts makes my point more valid.


B

cloud493

Xtravision is ****. So, end of.

Turtyturd

BunShopVoyeur wrote: »

Signing posts makes my point more valid.


B

I thought he was starting to doze off at the end of the post.

44leto

Originally Posted by Dean0088
Piracy will only end when I can stream a movie in high definition for 25c or download a book for 10c - with all of the proceeds going to the content creators. Not to greedy 'executives', 'publishers' and 'producers'.

Greedy producers and executives are the ones to take the risk. Without them we would have no decent media. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cost 100million dollars to make, would the artist have that money. (The author is dead, but its a bad example because if alive he probably would).

I don't know why people try to justify piracy. I pirate, today I pirated, Boardwalk empire seasons 1 and 2 and Game of thrones season 1 in HD.

That is about 200Euro worth of content, so I wont break it all down but I have just denied the gov 46 euro in vat.

I KNOW ITS WRONG fullstop.

Turtyturd

44leto wrote: »

Greedy producers and executives are the ones to take the risk. Without them we would have no decent media. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cost 100million dollars to make, would the artist have that money. (The author is dead, but its a bad example because if alive he probably would).

I don't know why people try to justify piracy. I pirate, today I pirated, Boardwalk empire seasons 1 and 2 and Game of thrones season 1 in HD.

That is about 200Euro worth of content, so I wont break it all down but I have just denied the gov 46 euro in vat.

I KNOW ITS WRONG fullstop.

Why is that bit wrong?

Bruthal

44leto wrote: »

I don't know why people try to justify piracy. I pirate, today I pirated, Boardwalk empire seasons 1 and 2 and Game of thrones season 1 in HD.

That is about 200Euro worth of content, so I wont break it all down but I have just denied the gov 46 euro in vat.

Have you? If you certainly would have spent the €200 on the above, if downloading was not possible, then yes. But I`d say there is a fair chance you would not have went and bought them, but did download them because you could.

Robdude

44leto wrote: »

Just curious
If I got a proxy server and I hid my IP address would I be able to download more the my current limit on my phone, or on one of the cheap internet deals that only allow a certain amount of data a month????????

Nah - the data is still going through your ISP - they'll know how much you've using.

Stompbox

It's not necessarily wrong by it is the law.

Robdude

robbie7730 wrote: »

Have you? If you certainly would have spent the €200 on the above, if downloading was not possible, then yes. But I`d say there is a fair chance you would not have went and bought them, but did download them because you could.

I can't find a link - but a game company published an article about piracy and their DRM. They concluded that, roughly, for every 1000 people that pirated their game - if they couldn't pirate it - only 1 would purchase it.

So, for the vast majority of people pirating stuff, the vast majority of the time, would not be willing to purchase the item if they were unable to pirate it.

44leto

robbie7730 wrote: »

Have you? If you certainly would have spent the €200 on the above, if downloading was not possible, then yes. But I`d say there is a fair chance you would not have went and bought them, but did download them because you could.

Indeed I have,

I probably would have bought game of thrones, I heard it was the series to watch last year.

But not the point, sales are down because piracy, so it is not a victimless crime. In a way its tax avoidance to. Now the gov does have certain powers tackling that.

44leto

Robdude wrote: »

I can't find a link - but a game company published an article about piracy and their DRM. They concluded that, roughly, for every 1000 people that pirated their game - if they couldn't pirate it - only 1 would purchase it.

So, for the vast majority of people pirating stuff, the vast majority of the time, would not be willing to purchase the item if they were unable to pirate it.

Good grief. Do have to list the amount of media groups gone out of business. Do also have to show the trend in their share price.

Robdude

44leto wrote: »

Good grief. Do have to list the amount of media groups gone out of business. Do also have to show the trend in their share price.

Please don't get the wrong idea - I'm not in favour of piracy. I'm simply repeating what I've read. And it was written by people who are in the industry dealing with piracy.

I took the time to find the link I was referring to:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. Put another way, for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale.

Not everyone who downloads something would have purchased it if it weren't free. According to the information collected by one gaming company - they estimate that 1 in 1000 downloaders of their game would buy it if they couldn't pirate it.

If you have other sources of information that contradict this, I'd be happy to read about it.

Dotrel

#20 was Mrs. Browne's Bollix.

Hence it was omitted.

Biggins

Domo230 wrote: »

I had to do research into video game piracy and was given access to some hush hush statistics and the affect it has on the market is shocking.
In the video game market at least piracy is hugely crippling.
Taking a traditionally retailed game (including digital distribution sales but not genres that make money through additional payments such as most MMOs)

In North America it contributes to a 70 percent reduction in average sales
Europe the figure is 90 percent
In China it was around 99 percent (there's a real culture of piracy there)

I can only imagine it is having a similar affect in the music and film industries.

One side effect of copying/downloading can be very seen in computer/HMV style shops.
Actual rows of available games for the PC have reduced dramatically.
As Playstation/X-Box/etc games are harder (but still can be done by a few) to crack and copy, PC games on CD/DVD have reduced big time in stock and variety range of games available.

Biggins

Dotrel wrote: »

#20 was Mrs. Browne's Bollix.

Hence it was omitted.

THAT I could understand and agree with!

44leto

Domo230 wrote: »

I had to do research into video game piracy and was given access to some hush hush statistics and the affect it has on the market is shocking.
In the video game market at least piracy is hugely crippling.
Taking a traditionally retailed game (including digital distribution sales but not genres that make money through additional payments such as most MMOs)

In North America it contributes to a 70 percent reduction in average sales
Europe the figure is 90 percent
In China it was around 99 percent (there's a real culture of piracy there)

I can only imagine it is having a similar affect in the music and film industries.

That's incredible and shocking. I think they have to somehow stop it. Rumour has it there is new tech coming that will. Also the CD/DVD is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. So in the future how we get our media will all be streaming, but streaming with a lock and key system. Just like the security measures use when making online purchases.

But I am sure someone will get around this. Or perhaps we are living/enjoying the golden age of piracy.

Biggins

Domo230 wrote: »

I can't comment on films and music but buying pc games in retail stores has been dead as the dodo for about half a decade. Digital distribution accounts for more sales and will continue to expand.

It's better for business too. More money goes to the people actually involved in making the games and you can get massive savings on older games.

I read an article on the matter some time back and what games you will get now, have to come with better DRM and/or Steam registration equivalent in order just to play them.
Other games, the more older ones have greatly reduced on stock shelves, not just due to people and time moving on but as piracy having an effect also. What you will find now in "Game" is either a limited range of expensive PC games with their inbuilt rights restrictions and cheap 'tenner' Euro type games.

Brendan97

Top 20 (least sold/rented) DVDs

Biggins

Domo230 wrote: »

DRM doesn't work. It punishes those who legitimately purchase the game while providing little in the way of delay for crackers (The cracking groups are so well organised most popular titles have been cracked before they have even reached the store)

The current system does not work. How games are sold in Asian markets is drastically different to the west, mainly due to the even higher piracy rates. Most of the big games over there make their money through subscriptions or are free to play on-line games with micro-transactions for extra costs.

Even if piracy wasn't a problem you would still see most stores having a very small selection of pc games. Most pc gamers have the internet and the savings for developers/customers and ease of downloading would always make it such that digital distribution would have the lions share of the market.

I agree about DRM. The companies have FINALLY started to kop on that its not working.
...And I agree with your views on the way things are going internet for games.

In my day (some time ago trust me ) you could walk into a PC game shop and it would be wall to wall just PC games boxes.
Now thats changed - big time because of other now available consoles and their games, etc but also as it now been shown, its just too easy to copy/download pc items in particular.
As such for one reason or another, the availability of PC games in variety numbers has dramatically reduced in the last 10/15 years.

(I tried for example to get the "Tintin" game for the PC (Christmas present for someone). Tried every shop in my town and none had it or was getting it. Ended up having to get it through the internet with a search!)

Doc Ruby

Downloading movies and music is the modern bread and circuses. Take that away and you're going to see a big backlash from young people, politically.

So I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

PseudoFamous

Biggins wrote: »

Actual rows of available games for the PC have reduced dramatically.
As Playstation/X-Box/etc games are harder (but still can be done by a few) to crack and copy, PC games on CD/DVD have reduced big time in stock and variety range of games available.

And the vicious circle continues. It becomes harder to buy physical copies of PC games, so piracy increases. As it stands, neither my local gamestop nor Tesco sell PC games, and my xtravision sells a tiny amount of games, that all came out half a decade ago.

Biggins

PseudoFamous wrote: »

And the vicious circle continues. It becomes harder to buy physical copies of PC games, so piracy increases. As it stands, neither my local gamestop nor Tesco sell PC games, and my xtravision sells a tiny amount of games, that all came out half a decade ago.

Aye, sad to see.