OAR ACTION SQUAD: Your mission, if you choose to accept it... (1 Viewer)

[Damin J Toell]

Go to a store that seems to be leaning towards full-screen releases...

just because we prefer a film to be shown in its OAR, we shouldn't suddenly forget common decency towards people. doing that simply harms the workers at the retail level. the only message received is that the person doing it can't behave properly in public.

i'm all for having ideas that help promote knowledge and supply of OAR. but let's keep it both realistic and decent.

DJ

 

[Tony Stark]

This whole fact finding thing seems a bit silly. The bottom line is that the studios know have many copies PS vs WS are being sold. They are in it to make money. If PS sells more copies, then you are going to find more of those discs on the shelves. I do not believe there is this giant conspiracy of stores trying to crush WS. If even there was this secret agreement it does not matter. It's about money and number of sales. If I were a storeowner, why would I waste precious shelf space on slow moving merchandise to make a philosophical point about OAR? I sure wouldn't. It's about the cash man. It's all about cash.

Mission refused.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

You don't understand

Wal-Mart et al are DEMANDING P&S copies because they THINK that's all their customers want

They ONLY order P&S for the majority of their stores

HOW is this fair? HOW is this a real sample? The studios produce what is ordered, so we MUST start the fight on a retail level. If they're not ordering P&S, the studios won't make it

 

[Jay Villero]

Tony -

While I'm not sure how valuable this mission is, I think you're missing the point. You said...

The bottom line is that the studios know have many copies PS vs WS are being sold.

That may be true, but the stats are misleading. If each store had the same number of PS and WS copies, then the number of copies sold might indicate a preference. If only PS copies are available, and they sell, does that indicate that they would sell better than WS? No. If stores started out by having equal numbers, and then changed their policy based on a clear preference for PS, than that's another story.

I agree with you that the bottom line is sales and cash. I just think, and I apologize to Jeff if I'm misinterpreting his objective, that more objective and accurate stats would be interesting to see.

 

[Tony Stark]

Yeah, I was a little sleepy when I typed my comment, so I do apologize for the proof reading slip up.

:b

 

[Patrick Scott]

Since this title is being released in both formats tomorrow and there seems to be a great interest in this title as well as Harry Potter in three weeks I thought I would take the time to compare numbers on how the two formats stack up against each other in my small little slice of the retail world. I recieved around 500 copies of Oceans 11 and I have 20 more copies of PS than WS, overall pretty even numbers to make a comparison with. I have this priced really cheap, and expect to have a good sale through. I will keep ya posted.
By the way the last two titles that were dual format, Spy Game and A.I. wound up like this.
Spy Game in WS sold twice as much as the PS version and the widescreen version of A.I. sold about 20% more.
Stay tuned
Scott
Edited by me for poor grammar and poor thought process, I apologize if I offended anyone, it was not my intention to do so.

 

[Gavin_L]

interesting info there, i was on amazon earlier the widescreen edition was out selling the full screen.

cool info about ai and spy game, glad the widescreen editions out sold the full screens, maybe there is a little hope then.

I'll be picking up the widescreen edition sometime in the next few days.

 

[Justin Lane]

J

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Please report your figures to the OAR task force thread

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Mr. Scott,
Your comments regarding people on welfare
were highly inappropriate.
We don't wish those kind of comments to
be posted on this board.

 

[Brian LaRose]

Interestingly enough, when I went to Best But to pick up O-11 this morning, I noticed the store had about 2.5 times more shelf/cardboard holder space dedicated to the widescreen version. Hopefully Best Buy is trying to push the WS version more! Guess we'll have to wait and see what the weeks figures look like.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

We need to know how many they started out with, and how many were sold

That way we can prove unequal, skewed numbers, as well as the observed WS preference

 

[Keith E]

I just went to Best Buy on my lunch break and picked up my copy of this movie and one of the sales people was standing around the store display advising people to pick up the widescreen version, I was very surprised to see this.

Most people were asking what the difference was and he was telling them that the full frame version has been cropped to fill the screen and the widescreen version is how it was intended to be seen in the theater. I saw him convert three people over to the widescreen version while I was there, hopefully this will keep up.

 

[David Lambert]

Best Buy, without giving specific numbers to get anyone in trouble, got about 300 FS and almost 550 WS copies. Few if any FS copies had sold when I was there at 11:30 AM today.

The main display of O11 was in a cardboard "mega-dump" that is hard to miss when you walk in the door. Every other column vertically was alternating between the two AR's.

The media section was noticably WS-heavy. Dents were seen in the WS areas but nothing much in the FS areas.

I will report on other retailers when I visit them.

 

[David Lambert]

Target had apparently gotten in 40 copies FS and only 20 copies WS.
Of those, 2 WS had sold and 1 FS had sold by about 4:15 PM tonight.
The arrangement was on an endcap, at the front of the DVD aisle, in pockets of wire racks. The versions were arranged in the pockets (8 pockets per row, utilizing the top two rows) like this:
{WS} {WS} {WS} {WS} {FS} {FS} {FS} {FS}
{FS} {FS} {FS} {FS} {__} {__} {__} {__}
The pockets held 5 copies each. The 4 empty pockets on the right of the 2nd row were supposed to be full of Ali according to the shelf tag, but that title was only seen in the media aisle. There were no copies of O11 in the media aisle. There might have been some in an overstock area somewhere, or in the back. Employees played dumb when I tried to talk to them about it. I say "played", but I am sure they weren't playing.
Target gets a
Costco, surprisingly, gets a HUGE
I saw ONLY WS copies at my local Costco!

And HUGE amounts of them!

There were a DOZEN of the cardboard sorters that they normally use in the club stores, and all of them were full of WS editions. I looked and looked and didn't see a single non-OAR copy in any of the sorters! Each sorter held up to 48 copies of the title! That's 576 copies, if they were all chock-full when they arrived!!! And it sure looked like at least a dozen of them were gone, amongst all the different boxes.
On my way out with a huge stack of DVDs to purchase, I made sure my path crossed that of the manager, and thanked her for the WS copies of O11. I then dropped a note into the suggestion box saying the same thing, and punctuating it with a !
Mission objectives completed, sir!
P.S. - on a down side for Costco, it is bad to note that among the Vault Disney titles, the other three were plainly visible, but Parent Trap was hidden behind a sorter full of Iron Will and - ugh - White Fang (the first, MAR one). I switched their places, though!

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Good job Agent Lambert
At our local Best Buy, they also had huge cubes out
On one side (toward the DVD racks) was almost exclusively widescreen. The other side was almost exclusively P&S.
I computed approx 300 copies on each side, not too many had been taken, or they had been restocking it. The Full Screen side seemed pretty full, but I witnessed 3 people buying at the same time I was, and only one of those bought widescreen
Going to Circuit City and KMart tomorrow to observe. I should be able to actually get numbers off of CC

 

[Eddie W.]

So I went to my local Blockbuster tonight & they have a poster of the Oceans Eleven DVD case with the stomach churning phrase "Full Screen Edition" in the window. I went in anyway & discovered that every copy is in widescreen! Both for rental and for sale! So after they collected $4.00 from me that they otherwise wouldn't have, I traipsed off to the grocery store for some snacks & a six pack (ironic ain't it). Now this particular grocery store does not have a video department & only sells the biggest sell-through titles. And there stands an OE display with VHS tapes on the bottom and DVD's on the top. Once again, every copy is in widescreen!

Just thought I'd share an encouraging story that maybe some retailers are finally getting it. I hope this is a good sign that the WS version will outsell it's full screen counterpart & send a clear message as to what the public wants - not what the vocal minority is trying to force.

 

[Patrick Scott]

So far for the day PS had sold one more copy than WS. I have these titles arranged in the following order. WS first from top to bottom followed by PS to the right of the WS. I really have not sold much and expect most of the sales will come after 5PM (I left around 3PM)

I'll keep ya posted.

Scott

 

[David Lambert]

Good news...thank you for sharing!
May I suggest that this thread can be merged with this thread? It's definately along the same lines.
Maybe this similar thread should also be merged with that one. It's all about O11 WS and PS versions at various retailers.

 

[MaxY]

Well I was in Best Buy today picking up DVDs (Yeah I know I always seem to be there ) and they had a huge cardboard 4 sided display for Oceans 11.
3 sides had nothing but Full Screen and were willed to the brim. The backside (Side that faced the back of the store away from the DVD section) had Full screen versions in the top half, again full to the brim but the bottom half had the Widescreen version and that seemed to be the only section on the whole display that was not filled to the edge.
Then as I was going up and down the DVD Aisles I kept an eye on the display. It seems many walked up to it and looked kind of confussed for a second and slowly did a walk around staring at the DVDs and did not actually pick one up until the hit the back side. So even though 7/8th of the display was full screen titles and the 1/8th that was widescreen was in the lower backside of the display, no one seemed to take any of the full screen versions while I was there in the store.
So I guess that maybe there is some hope.
Max