Robert Dunnill
Second Unit
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2001
- Messages
- 375
Yes, it's true that one Divx title (Madigan) sold less than 20 copies (nine, to be exact), and Alice sold only 50. In contrast, a number of hot new releases of the day had had five-figure sales on Divx by early June 1999, including The Waterboy (32,125), There's Something About Mary (45,933), and Six Days, Seven Nights (35,673).
If those figures vindicate anything, it's DVD File's primer on home video software pricing (which asserted that some popular titles were unsuitable for the rental market). Seriously, the reason these titles (and a lot of others) were released to the format was because Divx was trying to build up a catalog, even one where most of the titles had modest rental appeal.
My highly-placed inside sources insisted that the reticence of Paramount and Dreamworks was mainly due to a combination of copy protection worries and wait-and-see. Because Divx paid up-front for the rights to license any titles, anything released to them should have been win-win for the studios, but Paramount and Dreamworks did not see it that way.
For those who remember, it would be some time before those two studios fully supported the DVD format, and bitter debates raged among enthusiasts as to why so many Spielberg A-titles were witheld from the premier home video format.
RD
If those figures vindicate anything, it's DVD File's primer on home video software pricing (which asserted that some popular titles were unsuitable for the rental market). Seriously, the reason these titles (and a lot of others) were released to the format was because Divx was trying to build up a catalog, even one where most of the titles had modest rental appeal.
My highly-placed inside sources insisted that the reticence of Paramount and Dreamworks was mainly due to a combination of copy protection worries and wait-and-see. Because Divx paid up-front for the rights to license any titles, anything released to them should have been win-win for the studios, but Paramount and Dreamworks did not see it that way.
For those who remember, it would be some time before those two studios fully supported the DVD format, and bitter debates raged among enthusiasts as to why so many Spielberg A-titles were witheld from the premier home video format.
RD