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

Ernest Rister · Mar 13, 2005

Read the thread title. Just about says it all. Seems to me a film like ST: First Contact deserves to be priced at least as high as the piece of crap Alien vs. Predator. Meanwhile, the 1st seasons of 24 and CSI are under $60, while the prices for the Star Trek box sets are over $100.

Wow. Holy dichotomy, Batman. The movie are priced like cheap give aways, while the season sets are priced as if they were all embossed onto DVDs plated in gold.

Dave H · Mar 13, 2005

To answer your thread question: because Paramount can. The market value is there and the fans are willing to pay it.

JohnAP · Mar 14, 2005

Yeah, people are going to buy these no matter what. I think the price scares away casual fans, but I guess they're doing well. It should be noted that most of the seasons have 26 episodes rather than 22 like most tv shows, though I suppose that doesn't justify the price being that much higher than other shows, especially without the same music clearance costs.

Jim_K · Mar 14, 2005

Count me among the casual fans that got turned off to the high price.

Marko Berg · Mar 14, 2005

The former is a re-release Special Edition while the latter is a new-to-DVD release. It makes sense that the re-release of First Contact is priced in such a way that it will entice owners of the original edition to double-dip.

Travis Brashear · Mar 14, 2005

Count me among the uber-psycho-$1,000s-spent-on-STAR-TREK-merchandise-in-the-last-20-years fans that got turned off to the high price.

MikeEckman · Mar 14, 2005

Or how bout this?

Star Trek: First Contact - runtime 108 minutes
Star Trek The Next Generation - runtime 45 minutes x 26 episodes = 1170 minutes

Star Trek: FC - 108 / $15 = 7.2 minutes per dollar
Star Trek: TNG - 1170 / $100 = 11.7 minutes per dollar

If you use this reasoning, you get more for your money buying a boxed set of TNG than a single movie.

Oh, and for the record, I have bought all the $100 boxed sets and think they were worth every penny! Thank you Paramount!!!

Craig S · Mar 14, 2005

Well, you can look at it this way (and yes, I'm ignoring extras):

2-hour movie, $13 price = $6.50 per hour.

18 hours (26 42-minute episode) of TV, $100 price = $5.50 per hour.

So the TV sets actually give you more Trek bang for the buck.

Edit: I see Mike beat me to it, and with more precise numbers to boot.

Eric DiPiazza · Mar 14, 2005

Well for those prices they should give you more!

Jeff_HR · Mar 14, 2005

I quit paying those prices late in the 1st year & started getting them cheaper thru Amazon's marketplace & eBay.

JamesED · Mar 14, 2005

Count me as another big fan that can't pay for the sets.

I just hope in a few years after I'm out of college they won't be hard to find.

Jason_V · Mar 14, 2005

I splurged on the first three shows (TOs, TNG and DS9) but I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend that much money on junk shows like Voyager and Enterprise.

If the price comes down by about 50%, I'll consider it. At $100 a pop (especially the first season of Voyager--18 episodes), I can't justify picking them up when I know Voyager is *less than stellar*.

Jeff_HR · Mar 14, 2005

Not IMHO.

Mike Williams · Mar 14, 2005

I have bought every Star Trek Season Set and will continue to do so through "Enterprise." I have also bought every two-disc collector's edition of the ST movies, and will continue to do so (yes, even Insurrection and Nemesis, which I personally liked -- HATED Generations, but got that one as well).

Scott Kimball · Mar 14, 2005

See? It's Mike's fault.. he'll buy it even if he hates it!

It's all about what the market will bear.

Dave_M · Mar 14, 2005

2-hour movie, $13 price = $6.50 per hour.

18 hours (26 42-minute episode) of TV, $100 price = $5.50 per hour.

Reading 14 messages about how to get the most out of your Star Trek dollar:

Priceless

Jason_V · Mar 14, 2005

^^^^ Jeff, then I guess we can agree to disagree. Voyager did have some fantastic episodes (Remember, Scorpion I, Caretaker, for starters) but on the whole, I was less than impressed with the way the show turned out. And I watched all seven years on their original broadcast night.

Travis Brashear · Mar 14, 2005

Of course these comments about how you get more bang for your buck with the TV episodes versus the movies fail to take into account that an hour of any of the movies has $20-$30 million dollars worth of production value versus about $500,000-$750,000 for the same hour's worth of one of the TV episodes, so there should still be a much bigger price differential than the math currently indicates...

Nick T Robot · Mar 14, 2005

Box sets prices are all over the place. I don't think they even thought to compare the prices of the movies.

Also The Star Trek TV sets seem to be limited edition (I don't see TNG in stores anymore, very few DS9 sets as well) perhaps they are going to be re-released at some point (Star Trek will never really die, even if they don't have a new version on TV for a while)

GlennH · Mar 14, 2005

The flaw in the $$ per minute/hour logic is that every minute of these shows is of equal value.

The quality of each is very subjective, of course, but as Travis points out a lot more production went into the movies. If nothing else, TNG movies sure look better than TNG TV shows with their relatively cheap production values. Not that you could have one without the support of the other.

It all comes down to what the market can bear. Personally, as a more casual ST fan (I have most of the movies), I haven't been able to justify the cost of the TV box sets. If the original series boxes had been about $50 instead of $80 I may have done it.

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