Why are the Star Trek season sets $100, and the movies $12.99? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Graham]

A price of around $60 is as high as I'm willing to go for a TV boxset. Both Millennium and 24 are priced this way and deliver stellar A/V quality, and decent extras for a reasonable price. Asking $110 + tax for the Trek sets in this age when TV sets are so common place is crazy.

 

[TravisR]

I agree that the Trek sets are priced high but I bet they sold as well as most TV sets. Obviously, they aren't selling like The Simpsons, Chappelle's Show, or The Sopranos but Paramount has little trouble selling them at $100.

 

[Rian]

Well my brother and I (mainly him) bought TOS when it first came out costing upwards of $800, then bought the box set of movies which had the Collector's Edition of The Motion Picture but the bare bones of the others and that cost about $230 or so, then we bought TNG and that as about $1,000 and we decided to get Khan's SE which was about $20.

There's no way I'd buy Voyager and even DS9 right now cause they're way too expensive right now considering all the money we've given Paramount.

I'd proabably buy First Contact and maybe The Voyage Home or The Undiscovered Country since they seem dirt cheap.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I paid Paramount's asking price for TNG, DS9, and the box sets of TOS (and felt as though I received a good return on my entertainment dollar on those series); but I couldn't justify the $100/season for Voyager. (actually, my local Suncoast wants $139.95/Season for Voyager!!)

Fortunately, I was easily able to find all the Voyager Season boxes I wanted via the "Used DVD" section of my local GameStop store. (They were selling for $39.95/Season for Seasons 1-3, and $49.95/Season for Seasons 4-7). At those prices "Resistance is Futile"!

And, just for the record, I've stated all along that Paramount was asking too much for Voyager. At $49.95 for the 16 episode first season, and $69.95 for the subsequent seasons, they would have better catered to the casual Voyager fan (which far outnumbered the hard core fan for this series.) At those prices they could possibly have even created new fans for the series.

Voyager only had, IMO, about a dozen really outstanding episodes in its entire 7 year run. And, on top of that, they had about two dozen episodes that were just too horrible to sit through twice. The rest of the episodes can be considered "average Trek" (which is still better than 80% of the stuff out there from a Star Trek fan's perspective, but not particularly satisfying to anybody else.) The thing is ... the series actually comes off better on DVD than it did during its broadcast run just due to the fact that you can easily skip over the "dreadful" eps. But if you're paying over $100/season then you're just not getting a good return on your entertainment dollar. So that's the conundrum that Paramount needs to address with this series.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I feel this way about a number of episodes with the "Original Series", which is why I did not buy all of the 2 episode DVDs. This was also the main reason I didn't double dip & buy the "Original Series" season sets when the came out. I could have been persuaded to buy the "Original Series" season sets IF they had commentaries on every episode & more extras than what they came out with. Alas, Paramount did not meet my needs. I bought the last three season sets of "Voyager" off of an Amazon.com Marketplace merchant for an average cost of $65.00 per set including the shipping cost.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Jeff:

You're obviously a hard core Voyager fan, and it's actually good to know that the series had some fans like that. And, when you think about it, the 24 *abysmal* eps that I'm claiming the series had isn't really all that bad when you consider that over 170 were produced.

But ... When I see what the series was capable of with outstanding episodes like "Scorpion", "One Small Step", "Drone", "Mission in a Bottle", "Living Witness","Pathfinder" and so on; it's really hard to accept that the same series produced really horrid episodes like "Demon Planet","Course:Oblivion", "Fair Haven", "Spirit Folk", "Rise", "Favorite Son", and so on.

The fact is, Voyager is a nice little series with good production values that will, for the majority of its episodes, somewhat entertain the casual Star Trek fan base. But not, IMO, at the $139.95/Season price point that Paramount has established for the series. Only the hard core Voyager fans will ever consider paying that price (or anywhere near that price), and there just isn't enough of them around. Heck ... *Even you* didn't pay that price.

And that's really all we're arguing here: The relative merit of Paramount's asking price for these TV series boxes.

 

[TheBat]

I also have the movie dvd, but never bought any of the tv box sets. they are priced too high.. I would consider getting the original series at 50 bucks even used for that matter, but not at 100 bucks each.
so far I have collected season 1 and 2 of both garfield and 21 jumpstreet, and the first season of batman. also the garfield tv specials.
JACOB

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Probably so with TOS and TNG and maybe even DS9 but are people buying up Voyager and you think they will run out and get Enterprise.
I think Paramount priced themselves out of the market on these. How many more would have sould at $50.00-60.00 a season?
Paramount. The ol'greedy Paramount. When they stopped caring about the franchise and started caring more about money, this is when our Trek went down hill.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I DID pay over $100 per set at B&Ms for most of the Next Generation sets until I discovered that I could buy them for a lot less elsewhere. Why pay more when I could buy for less. It just took a little research to find lower prices.

 

[nolesrule]

Why should film production costs be taken into account when doing the cost/time comparisons? The DVDs aren't paying for the productions.

 

[Chris Atkins]

I'll never forget how my jaw hit the floor the first time they showed the exterior/interior of the Enterprise-D in Generations. It's amazing what movie=grade lighting and cinematography will do to the look of a ship and the sets!

 

[Ernest Rister]

My point perhaps was unclear. It seems strange that the two-disc special editions (which are quite wonderful, by the way) are priced like drink coasters at $12.99, while the TV seasons are priced rather exorbitantly. It's not that the season sets are priced way too high, I don't understand why the movies are priced so low.

 

[Will_B]

Does Paramount have any other television programs on DVD, which are normally priced? Maybe they're just unfamiliar with the concept.

 

[Paul Sandhu]

I'm one of the casual fans that hasn't picked up any of the season sets.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Ernest:

I see your point. The fact is, as everybody knows, this is the second release of "Star Trek: First Contact" to DVD. The first release of this title, in "bare bones" fashion, was in the Fall of 1998; and the MSRP at that time was ... $29.95. This pricing structure and "feature set" was pretty much the norm for all of the first Star Trek movie releases to DVD, with the exception of "The Motion Picture". While it's hard to believe, it's possible that Paramount is actually awarding all those fans that purchased the first, basic, overpriced, iterations of these movies to DVD by giving them a break on these Collector Edition re-releases.

I also think that Paramount knows the Star Trek franchise is on very shaky ground at the moment and pricing these movie sets economically may be a way to generate some renewed interest. (Perhaps a newcomer to the Trek universe, after viewing "First Contact", may be enticed to seek out the TNG TV Season boxes.)

It also should be noted that these two-disc special editions will be continuously available from now on, and will trend back up to the MSRP of $24.95 a year or so from now.

So ... It's probably a combination of those factors.

As for the TV releases: There are enough hard-core fans of TOS, TNG, and DS9 to justify the current asking price. It would be nice to someday see a re-issue of these titles in a less expensive configuration for the more casual fans, as is now being done with Farscape in the new "Starburst" editions. (7-8 episodes/release with extras on two double-sided discs for $19.95.)

(And I still think they're charging too much for Voyager )

 

[Joshua_W]

They're not limited editions.

Stores don't carry them because they don't sell after the initial releases. They'd just take up shelf space from things that have a better chance of selling.

While everyone is breaking down the cost-per-minute of the movies vs. the DVDs, it's also worth noting that the Star Trek TV sets are priced considerably higher than other comparable programs. $60-$70 MSRP per season seems to be ideal price for television programming. That seems to be the magical price point for most TV-on-DVD product, whether it's from Fox (24, BTVS), CTS (Dawson's Creek, Seinfeld), or Disney/BV (Alias).

Look at something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first seasons of both TNG and BTVS were released around the same time. But you can still find BTVS S1 (and all of the other seasons) in stores. People are still buying them.

The Star Trek sets are over-priced; and not only were they over-priced, but they were rushed out to the market too quickly, at a rate of one set about every six weeks. Paramount, in effect, flooded the market with over-priced merchandise for three years. I don't see how that couldn't have hurt sales. Consider that over the course of three years, they released 24 Star Trek seasons sets at a cost of $100+ each. That's a hell of a lot of expensive product in a short amount of time.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

This is true; but it should be remembered that Paramount is just use to overcharging for Star Trek TV product on Home Video (mostly due to the fanaticism of the fans that have staunchly supported the franchise for almost 40 years): Consider that both TOS and TNG were first released to VHS at the rate of one episode per box for $19.95! This means it would cost close to $1450 just to own the three seasons of TOS on VHS! When TOS was first released to DVD a grand total of two episodes were provided per DVD for the same $19.95 price point. In all of these incarnations, Star Trek continued to perform in the marketplace for Paramount. Compared to those releases, the $100/Season price point for TOS and TNG is an incredible bargain!

Now ... The *new reality* is that Voyager and Enterprise have diluted the product, and Paramount really needs to recognize this fact. Releasing Voyager's 16 episode first season to DVD with an initial street price of close to $100.00 is an indication that Paramount has lost touch with the changing marketplace both for the Star Trek franchise in particular, and TV on DVD in general.

They better wake up and price Enterprise accordingly!

 

[George See]

That's what I always thought, I thought the advertising was paying for the production. maybee this whole thread belongs in the tv show area, but i've never understood TV show pricing. Some shows are extremly cheap and some extremly exspensive. It seems to me that most of them are priced high simply because they can get away with it. They know that fans of shows like Star Trek and X-Files and Band of Brothers will pay a lot more then fans of the Simpsons or South Park.

But i'm only a casual fan and I could never see myself spending 100+ on TNG sets. Though if they were in the 30-50 range i'd seriously consider it. Personally I don't like paying more then 50.00 per season on any tv show.

 

[Scott Kimball]

Paramount is generally very aggressively priced. The only real exception is the Star Trek TV product.

Their TV on DVD is either average priced, with some extras, but generally from a different division (CBS, MTV, etc. - ex.: CSI) - or it is priced low, with no extras (Cheers, Frasier, MacGyver, The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan's Heroes).

-Scott

 

[Jason_V]

Exactly. I think it's appalling that a 16 episode season (or even 18, in the case of DS9) has the same price attached as a 26 episode season does.

I will be double dipping on First Contact this afternoon because it's my favorite TNG movie and I have all the others. With two to go after FC (Insurrection and Nemesis), I can stop giving Paramount money. I've got the TV shows I want and the movies.