The Prices of New 4k/UHD Releases... (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

A recent prominent case of this for me, is that I decided it wasn't worthwhile to buy the Oppenheimer bluray.

Instead, I ended up re-reading the Oppenheimer biography book that the movie was based on.

As my 4k Oppenheimer disc looks back at me with a mocking tone on my yet-to-watch pile....

 

[Lord Dalek]

At this point (at least as far as WaldeMart goes) 4k appears to be just a way to shill steelbooks.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

As my 4k Oppenheimer disc looks back at me with a mocking tone on my yet-to-watch pile....

Same here.

 

[Keith Cobby]

I liked Oppenheimer but will watch it again before deciding whether to buy the 4k (I have all Nolan's other films on 4k). Given that it has been a popular title on disc, picking it up in the future shouldn't be an issue. Unlike the transition from DVD to blu ray, I haven't automatically upgraded to 4k. Favourites I buy but for lesser watched films I wait for a lower price. As others have said, with the number of pressings reducing, prices have remained high as the market circles back to when home video began. In any event, there aren't many titles being released for the period that interests me the most (1939-1965). Hoping for North by Northwest, The Searchers, and White Christmas this year, and To Catch a Thief next year.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

...seem like they've gotten mighty high.

I've heard a lot of discussion about inflation in recent weeks/months. But as I compile the prices in each week's Weekly RoundUp for the HTF, I have started to realize in recent weeks that 4k disc prices have taken a rather dramatic jump.

For example, today I put together Amazon's prices for the new releases coming out on the week of April 30:

4k/UHD	Amazon
Andor: Season 1 LE (Steelbook) (4K/UHD) (Disney)	$55.99
Barbarella (4K/UHD Standard) (Arrow)	$49.99
Basket Case (4K/UHD) (Arrow)	$49.99
The Church (4K/UHD) (Severin)	$44.99
Conan the Barbarian (4K/UHD 2-Disc Standard) (Arrow)	$49.99
Conan the Destroyer (4K/UHD Standard) (Arrow)	$49.99
Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (4K/UHD) (Vinegar Syndrome)	$25.99
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: First Season (4K/UHD) (Disney)	$47.99
Madame Web (4K/UHD) (Sony)	$49.99
Madame Web (4K/UHD LE Steelbook) (Sony)	$34.96
Mean Girls (2004) (4K/UHD) (Paramount)	$21.98
Mean Girls (2024) (4K/UHD) (Paramount)	$27.96
Moon Knight: First Season (4K/UHD) (Disney)	$47.99
Obi-Wan Kenoobi: Season 1 CE (Steelbook) (4K/UHD) (Disney)	$47.99
Ocean’s Eleven (4K/UHD) (SDS)	$40.95
Ocean’s Twelve (4K/UHD) (SDS)	$40.94
Ocean’s Thirteen (4K/UHD) (SDS)	$40.94
Ocean’s Trilogy (4K/UHD) (SDS)	$55.99
The Sect (4K/UHD) (Severin)	$44.99

I realize some of these are episodic series and such. And I certainly recognize that Amazon is not the only seller of discs in the marketplace. And I am well aware of the prices that were paid for premium laserdisc releases back in the day. But titles like Barbarella and Conan priced at $49.99 really makes me wonder if the 4k disc niche will be able to succeed/survive.

Personally, I want to buy 4k discs whenever I go to buy a title and it's available in that format. But there are times now when the Blu release seems like a price with which I'm much more comfortable.

Maybe I'm just having a "cranky old man" day.

Arrow releases are normally priced higher than most domestic releases. The same with Severin.

I agree with all of the above but will continue to buy Arrow and Severin releases if the price is right. The Warriors LE from Arrow is well worth the money. I also note that the Disney releases are multi-disc titles, as are some of the Arrows and Severins. You'll find that if you buy local, you may save a buck or two, especially in Canada. Don't get me started on SDS inconsistencies in release practices. Universal titles released by SDS will frequently include both Blu-ray and 4K, but Warner titles? Fuhgeddaboudit, unless it's a Steelbook, and you can completely forget about digital codes. SDS stopped those around the release of The Lost Boys and Poltergeist in Canada on 4K. Age has also taught me to be patient. Prices are already starting to drop on Oppenheimer, which I'm going to watch on Amazon Prime first. Remember, Canada.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

“Loss leader” pricing seems to be gone now with Best Buy out of the picture. I kept waiting for Top Gun Maverick to be under $20 but that hasn’t happened, you can hardly find the 4k disc at all in many stores. Back in the day that would’ve been practically given away. Since I haven’t been in a hurry to see it and it’s available on streaming, I’ll watch it that way first then order the disc only if I really like it.

I guess you didn't do much shopping during the last BF season... as that did briefly drop down to ~$10 (at Best Buy... and pretty sure Amazon matched it) -- that's when/how I bought my copy.

But yeah, it's quite possible we won't ever get such deals again even during BF season going forward...

_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I find that I’m making purchasing decisions a lot quicker than I used to and making fewer overall buys - I’m trying to avoid purchases when it’s merely something I’d like to see once. I can’t justify the expense or the shelf/storage space when I can just as easily rent the same title for $5, or even better, see it on a service I’ve already paid for.

On the other hand, if it’s something I actually want that has real value to me, now I won’t hesitate to order it immediately rather than playing chicken with online pricing.

I have that same Amazon wishlist and I’m seeing things I put on there years ago occasionally drop down below $20 or even $10 and most of the time I’m not pulling the trigger on them. I keep thinking that if it’s been on that list for five or ten years and I haven’t felt an urgent desire to watch it in all of that time, it’ll just wind up in my unwatched pile if I did buy it.

I'm still working out my own transition, but yeah, I've been gradually moving towards something along those lines as well... plus now adding AMC A-List to my plate (to go to theaters waaaay more than I ever did) so I can just watch some of those likely-once-and-done films on top of those I'd rather not wait and/or would want biggest screen, biggest sound (to spare my neighbors as much as possible), heh -- I've even watched all the Oscar BP noms (plus a few foreign film noms) ahead of the awards show for my very 1st time as result...

And yeah, w/ some ~3K BD-or-better discs already in my collection plus another 1K-plus digitals (some of which not in my disc collection), I have waaay more than I ever "need" anyway, so definitely should be much more judicious w/ my disc collecting going forward...

_Man_

 

[TravisR]

I agree with all of the above but will continue to buy Arrow and Severin releases if the price is right. The Warriors LE from Arrow is well worth the money.

I don't understand how few complaints I see about Arrow's pricing and re-releasing. If a major studio released titles in the same space-taking, price-increasing package and then had a sane priced version minus the junk a few months later, people would go absolutely berserk.

Arrow definitely does a great job with their discs but I don't want or need tiny versions of posters & lobby cards and a book and a box if I can save $20.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I don't understand how few complaints I see about Arrow's pricing and re-releasing. If a major studio released titles in the same space-taking, price-increasing package and then had a sane priced version minus the junk a few months later, people would go absolutely berserk.

Arrow definitely does a great job with their discs but I don't want or need tiny versions of posters & lobby cards and a book and a box if I can save $20.

Personally, I buy extremely few Arrow releases (other than their digitals on Apple/iTunes that, interestingly, tend to frequently go on sale for less than most digitals). I definitely have waaaay more Criterion (or Kino or Powerhouse/Indicator import... or probably even Eureka import) discs than Arrow.

I might buy a little more of their BDs in near future since they're now releasing some Hong Kong classics I want enough...

_Man_

 

[jcroy]

At this point (at least as far as WaldeMart goes) 4k appears to be just a way to shill steelbooks.

This would make complete sense, if most of the hardcore OCD compulsive completionist collectors are the primary customers of 4Kbluray discs releases.

 

[jcroy]

Unlike the transition from DVD to blu ray, I haven't automatically upgraded to 4k.

(A long rambling monologue).

My primary impediment to buying a 4Kbluray player (ie. not a computer drive), is that there has so far been zero "must buy" 4Kbluray movies for me.

As a recent example of this for me, I had a preorder for the complete series set of the amazon produced streaming show of Jack Ryan, where initially I placed preorders for both the dvd and bluray versions back when the listings first appeared (sometime in January). Since the dvd and bluray preorder listings first appeared, there have been rumors about a complete series 4Kbluray version but no amazon listing until very recently for the latter.

In recent times, I'm more inclined to buy dvd complete tv series sets largely for the reason that it only takes around 12 minutes to rip each dvd disc to the computer, and most tv shows are never released on bluray in region 1/A. (I don't bother with ordering dvds/blurays from overseas). For bluray discs which are almost filled to the brim of 50 gigabytes, it takes around 30-35 minutes to rip each disc. So the time it takes to rip two bluray discs, one can rip around four or five dvd discs to the computer over this same time span. This is a huge factor in whether I will buy large bluray discs sets. (ie. This is the primary reason why I didn't buy the complete series bluray set of Smallville, which had 42 bluray discs).

As soon as the amazon listings quoted that the Jack Ryan complete series dvd set had 12 discs, and the bluray set had 8 discs, I decided to cancel the preorder for the dvd set. Besides the bluray set only being $5 more than the dvd set, I also figured it would take around 4-and-a-half hours to rip all 8 bluray discs to the computer. (The 12 disc dvd variant, would have taken about 2-and-a-half hours to rip all 12 dvd discs to the computer). So these two factors made it worthwhile to get the bluray version.

This past weekend, I thought about canceling this Jack Ryan complete series bluray set preorder, after reading the episode summaries and online reviews. Prior to this, my main motivation for this preorder was that I wanted to see how Amazon/Paramount turned Jack Ryan into a silly "Jason Bourne" type of character. (Back in the day, I liked the older Jack Ryan films back in the 1990s). So this was a "blind buy" for me. I also noticed that the 4Kbluray version started popping up in amazon's search listings, but it listed the company/studio as "Allied Vaughn" which I understood is the place where some movie studios outsource their MOD releases to. The 4Kbluray price was quite a bit more than the bluray set. (I don't entirely trust MOD releases by Allied Vaughn).

This wasn't enough of a "deal maker" for me to buy the 4Kbluray version, along with a new standalone 4Kbluray player. (I don't currently own a standalone 4Kbluray player). Also simultaneously, the price of the Jack Ryan bluray complete series spiked up another 8 dollars, and my amazon preorder was already in the "preparing for shipping" phase. (I still got it for the lower preorder guaranteed price). I ended up receiving this Jack Ryan bluray complete series set on the release date of April 16. (In practice, I rarely ever receive preorders of dvds or blurays on the release day. They usually arrived several days later).

 

[Dennis Gallagher]

Apropos of probably nothing, but I expect there are a number here of a "certain age" who paid over $100 for select Criterion titles such as "2001" on laserdisc... (and these were in 1980's dollars). I purchased a number of bare bones titles that I paid what's now considered a high price for 4K - and many of these have ended up in the landfill.

 

[jcroy]

Apropos of probably nothing, but I expect there are a number here of a "certain age" who paid over $100 for select Criterion titles such as "2001" on laserdisc... (and these were in 1980's dollars). I purchased a number of bare bones titles that I paid what's now considered a high price for 4K - and many of these have ended up in the landfill.

Not quite $100, but I did purchase the Criterion laserdic variant of Blade Runner for around $60 to $70 back in the early-mid 1990s. In those days, that was actually considered a decent discount for that title.

In those days, all the domestic VHS versions of Blade Runner I had come across, had really crappy video quality where the image was just "too dark" looking. My then-SO had purchased a laserdisc player for karaoke, where I picked up a few laserdiscs to see how much of an improvement the video quality was. $70 was steep at the time, when brand new copies of the prerecorded Blade Runner VHS variants were easily $15 a pop by then.

 

[Osato]

Great conversation about discs. I have really slowed down too. But I am motivated by price too. Having a family with kids and how things have changed with streaming has changed my buying habits. I still buy discs but it’s not as often and I am looking for sales to purchase them. I have other interests and obligations which leads more to at times be more selective.

I have an LG OLED 65” screen.

I’m not recalling buying a film at Black Friday last year which is strange.

The Apple 4K free upgrades has also created less motivation for me to buy a disc too. The oceans trilogy is a great example of a title I just deleted off my wish list.

Exceptions for me were the TOS Star Trek films and Star Wars films. Bought those right away.

The last mission impossible and Indiana jones films were usually day one purchases for me but I have Indy on Disney+ and both films I’m currently waiting for a price break. I may just buy them in iTunes digital too.

I did recently buy the Mad Max anthology 4k disc set but I found it new on eBay the seller accepted my offer.

4K films that are not offered in 4k digital stand out to me as well. Some like it hot 4k was a title that I bought. The Italian Job original. the Dollars trilogy.

So all that being said I’m a lot more choosy about what I buy now. Price is motivating but even price can not be the end all decision for me to buy.

One set of films that I will buy immediately is the classic James Bond films. I come back to those films so often and I enjoy watching them on a regular basis. It has to be a film that’s in that kind of category for me. I guess there’s not an absolute but 007 may be the closest for me.

North by northwest is another film that I am very interested in picking up in 4k. The other 4ks sitting in my wish list are: Dune 2, Once Upon A Time in the West, Major League, Wonka, and Clue.