video stores with P&S only versions!! (1 Viewer)

[Ken Wilson]

Hi,
I looked for a thread on this, and on the Harry Potter 4:3 problem, but there's so many threads, many that go off on tangents, that it would take me all night just to find the appropriate one to post on. So with apologies to any other similar posts....

My wife and kid came home tonight all aglow with a copy of Harry Potter from the local video store. I put it on and......ya, it was the chopped-up P&S version. The family is getting used to me, so there weren't any objections when I stormed-out and took it back to the video store. In front of four other customers, I advised the owner that I do not want to watch the chopped-up version to fill a TV screen, I want the whole picture, just like at the theatre!!! I got my money back, but....here's the point:
The store owner says that all the copies he had are the same, and that his supplier dictates what he gets for rental. This is just a mom & pop store that we use when our main store doesn't have any copies left to rent, but my larger regular store (not a chain) also told me this when I unwittingly brought Artificial Intelligence home in P&S a few months ago. I called my regular store tonight, and one of the employees pulled-out the Harry Potter box to look at it for me, and it had the "picture has been modified to fit your tv screen" advisory on it to! So I complained about it to them, and told them to complain to their supplier too!
Is this true? Are the rental stores just victims of suppliers catering to the lowest common denominator? Or should the store me more vigilant about it and request copies in both formats? How do we get at these suppliers to complain to them?! I'm sure this issue has been discussed around the Forum, so what was the conclusion?
Anyway, it's lucky I have a good stock of DVDs around that we haven't watched yet. When I cool off, I'll go watch one of them!!

Ken Wilson

 

[Vic_T]

As far as I know, any rental store that isn't a chain can get in any copy of any video they want. However, that would mean they would have to know what they were doing, spend some time keeping up on videos and figure out what there customers want ... and we all know that that is way too much to ask of most folks. Most of them will get all their videos from a supplier that also tells them what videos and how many copies of each that they should have. Most of them never buck the system any.

 

[Bruce Hedtke]

Any video store is free to order whichever version of a film they want, especially if it's a mom & pop organization. Blockbuster or Hollywood might be different in that their satellite stores have to follow a corporate mandate, but ultimately, someone is making the decision to only order P/S.

Bruce

 

[Jeff Kleist]

They probably have a standing order with their supplier, who probably defaults to P&S

They'll have to call and SPECIFICALLY request deviation