Blockbuster again bullying the DVD industry-this time about menus (1 Viewer)

[Dave Mack]

Tangent... I rented "Zelda" and had it out for 3 weeks. I returned it via the outdoors slot and intended to pay the balance... $14.00 next time I rented something. Well 2 weeks later I got a letter from a collection agency!!! For $14.00!!!!

Evil bastards...

 

[Larry Talbot]

Yeah, Blockbuster is evil. So is Hollywood Video for that matter, but I think Blockbuster is even worse. They were hit with a class action lawsuit over their absurd late fee policies. They used to charge customers a full weeks rental for every day a video was late. They were forced to drop this policy because of the lawsuit. I've had them try to charge me late fees for a DVD I returned on time. I watched the mom and pop stores in two different towns go out of business after Blockbuster and Hollywood moved in on them. The big chains started out with really low rental fees and the small mom and pops couldn't compete. After they killed off the smaller stores, the chains raised their prices. What were their customers going to do? They had no where else to go.
To those who simply respond by saying, "Oh well, that's capitalism," I say that's no excuse. Just because a company CAN do a thing, doesn't make it okay for it to do that thing. Legally, yes, ethically no.
I use Netflix, and if I have to rent from a brick and mortar store, I go with an independent.

 

[ChuckSolo]

Strange as it may seem, I know a whole lot of people, who actually prefer the pan & scan versions of films and absolutely hate the black bars on the screen. I actually had to make up a cock and bull story about the zoom feature damaging his big screen TV to a pal who had zoomed "Tears of the Sun" to 3x because he and his wife hate letterboxing so much. They even hated the thin black bars in the lowest zoom setting. I have tried to explain to them that they miss so much of the movie by zooming, but they just don't care. They rent from Blockbuster specifically to find movies in the pan & scan version. Go figure.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

So why didn't they rent the VHS instead???

 

[Trent_N]

At least Blockbuster finally offers widescreen though-I will give them that.

Maybe YOUR Blockbuster is, but my local Blockbuster is actually getting MORE fullscreen and fewer widescreen titles. I now rent exclusively at Hastings since they offer an even mixture of both.

 

[cafink]

They had no where else to go.
To those who simply respond by saying, "Oh well, that's capitalism," I say that's no excuse. Just because a company CAN do a thing, doesn't make it okay for it to do that thing. Legally, yes, ethically no.

I agree with the sentiment of your post but I don't understand how it applies to this particular situation and will indeed have to resort to the "capitalism" rebuttal.

Competition drives prices down, and, in the competition of other local establishments, Blockbuster priced their product accordingly. Are you suggesting that they have some sort of ethical obligation to keep their prices high because other video stores have high prices? That's absurd.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I've been renting with Netflix since they started up, and as long as I can remember, they've always rented multi-disc titles by the disc, whether the second disc be bonus features or half the film. Apparently the reason they do this is cost cutting; customers can rent as many DVDs as they want, so if they want both discs, they have the option to. But being that most customers watch only the movie, it saves them the extra cost of mailing out two discs for what's supposed to be one rental.

I'm against Blockbuster or any other chain imposing content restrictions on any company, especially when the intent is to withhold stuff from the consumer. If, for example, Columbia TriStar/Sony makes a two-disc set, a lot of time, effort and money has been put into the creation of it for the benefit of home viewers. It should be rented complete, or not at all. I understand that Blockbuster already divides up multidisc TV season sets into individual discs for rental, and while I suppose that's not as awful as cutting content, it doesn't seem right either. At the least, some kind of concession should be made for the viewer that wants to take home the whole season at once; offer them a discounted rental fee.

I'm sure at least part of the reason the whole stupid Divx thing failed was because their discs, besides being (mostly) pan and scan versions, besides the inconvenience of going to the store to buy something that only worked for five minutes, besides all of that, was because they didn't offer special features. Why would anyone pick up two copies of the same movie - one on DVD, one on Divx - and see that the DVD had a commentary and a making of and the like, and the Divx had nothing, and still grab the Divx? I know when I rent a DVD, that doesn't mean I suddenly stop caring about what the bonus features are. Perhaps at first no one will notice, but when people begin to see that part of the product is being held from them, they'll get upset. Or maybe a Mom & Pop shop will continue to offer the entire set and make it known that they're loaning out the full thing.

 

[Larry Talbot]

"Competition drives prices down, and, in the competition of other local establishments, Blockbuster priced their product accordingly. Are you suggesting that they have some sort of ethical obligation to keep their prices high because other video stores have high prices? That's absurd."

It isn't a question of "having an obligation to keep their prices high because other video stores have high prices." What the big chains did was to use their buying power in a concerted effort to drive the little guys out of business. They didn't just want 95% of the market, they wanted ALL of it. They had trade magazines that gave tips on how to crush the mom and pop stores. So, in this particular instance, they dropped their prices to a point so low the mom's and pop's simply couldn't afford to compete. Then, once the independents were killed off, they raised their prices again. I'm all for healthy competition, but where is the competition now?
I'm not saying that evil corporations are entirely to blame for this. Of course the consumer has a role to play too. Those consumers who chose to abandon local businesses for the cheaper prices at the chain stores, only to face higher prices once the local stores died off, have only themselves to blame.

As to what my posts have to do with this particular situation, that being Blockbuster's menu demands, you're right: they don't really have anything to do with it. And I should say that I wouldn't mind if special features options were no longer listed on discs that didn't actually contain those special features. That's no big deal to me. I do think it isn't good for consumers, however, when a company has enough pull to begin demanding changes that may not actually benefit its customers.

 

[TommyT]

When have big corporations EVER done anything ethical? What BB does with their price-fixing is undersell the competition until they're forced out of business. I've always felt that practices like this are not competition but monopolization. This is were the question of ethics comes in: Does monopoly = competition? For me, the answer is no. Walmart is/was notorious for doing this; they open a store in a small midwestern town, under- & outsell the small businesses, wait until those businesses close leaving a ghost town & then pack up the store leaving a dusty slab of concrete. When the Olympics were held in Atlanta in '96 the Olympic Committee forced a small restaurant called the Olympic Cafe to change its name or close. The Olympic Cmte WON without a shot being fired because they threatened to sue this small restaurant that 'bore' their name for at least 50 yrs.

Is that ethical?

 

[Lew Crippen]

As some of you have already written, this is just another reason to support your local, independent video rental store. Or Netflix. Or both.

Long live Premier Video on Mockingbird Lane.