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Why are the DS9 box sets priced so high? (1 Viewer)

Sven Lorenz

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That's very interesting.
Do you have the sale numbers for other TV shows (MASH, Friends, Farscape ...) too?
 

JonZ

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I agree if the sets were cheaper, they'd sell more.

Probally like 4x more than they sell now. I think the higher price turns people off.I myself, know about 5 peopel who want star Trek sets, but dont buy them beucase they think theyre too expensive.
 

Jeff

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I'm a huge fan of the show and have seen the series five times over. I'd love to own the DVD's but I never will at their current price. Over $700 Canadian to own the whole series is nuts!
 

Randy A Salas

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MASH S3 sold 229,000 copies ($6.8 million) in 2003. MASH S4 sold 215,000 ($6.4 million).

Friends S3 sold 533,000 ($19.5 million). Friends S4 sold 488,000 ($17.5 million). Friends S5 sold 405,000 ($14.5 million). Friends S1 sold 379,000 ($12.4 million). Friends S2 sold 333,000 ($11.1 million).

Farscape did not make the top 50.

You can see the 50 top-selling DVDs at Video Business' web site, although you might have to register (free) to view them:

http://www.videobusiness.com/yer2003..._TV_on_DVD.asp

One note of caution. The list ranks them in order of revenue generated, which I think is a really lousy way to do it because of the wild variation in retail prices on TV DVD sets. But the actual units sold are listed, so you can reorder them to see what the true ranking should be. That's what I did when I listed them in the newspaper. Here's what the top 10 would be doing it that way (with number of units sold, in thousands):

Top 10 TV DVDs of 2003 (Video Business)
1. The Family Guy: Seasons 1 & 2 (890)
2. The Simpsons: Season 3 (797)
3. The Family Guy: Season 3 (629)
4. Sex and the City: Season 4 (555)
5. The Osbournes: Season 1 (Uncensored) (543)
6. Band of Brothers (540)
7. Friends: Season 3 (533)
8. Friends: Season 4 (488)
9. SpongeBob SquarePants: Tales From the Deep (422)
10. Friends: Season 5 (405)

One other note, to give you an idea of how movie-related DVDs sell in comparison, none of the TV titles sold well enough to make the top 50 overall DVDs. The No. 50 DVD of 2003, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, sold 1.9 million copies, more than twice as much as the biggest TV title.
 

Joshua_W

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Hey, thanks, Randy. Those are some interesting numbers.

About TNG being the top-selling "Trek" TV set of 2003, since it was released 12-31-02, all of its sales were reflected in 2003. Meaning that DS9, released throughout 2003, sold considerably less than TNG.

And Buffy Season Two moving 131,000 units in 2003 is quite impressive, considering it had already been out for six months. Friends and SATC, too. Looks like setting the price lower gives the series legs.

Sort of surprised to see Sopranos do as well as it did. It's up there at a premium price, with only thirteen episodes. But that's probably a combination of all of the hype, the fact that it appears on a premium cable channel, and probably appeals to an older, more affluent demographic than other series.
 

Joshua_W

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Randy A. Salas wrote:

Might the numbers for movies be inflated by sales to the rental market? Presumably those numbers include the boatloads of copies of new releases that Blockbuster stocks. The rental chains usually buy up huge numbers of movies -- it seems like even midlist films will get at least ten copies on the rental shelves -- and they seldom stock TV shows. I've only seen "Sopranos" and "24" at my neighborhood BBV, and only one copy of each at that.
 

Malcolm Cleugh

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I agree with the comment made above that the price of Star Trek on DVD reflects the age profile of its core audience. People who like Star Trek tend to be 20 + (I am in my 30s) so have higher disposal income and can afford to pay more than viewers of other series like Buffy & Angel who tend to be younger (teenagers). Same with XFiles as again this has an older audience.

Also they are good value compared to VHS where the cost was probably 3 times the price of a season DVD set.

Some interesting points from the UK.
We had an online survey from Paramount, via their UK ST website about the release of Voyager. In this it asked about price points and free gifts when you bought the seasons. One interesting point was at least here they are considering individual disks for ST TNG. However they were taking about price points of GBP16 a disk which is very poor value for money as you can pick up season sets for GBP45 online or at instore sales which get you 7 disks. Looks like they dropped the idea if everyone was as negative.

Also Fox have been looking to lower their prices of boxsets. They were intending to reduce the price of XFiles, Buffy, Angel etc from GBP85 to GBP35 with these repackages last December, although these have been delayed until June 2004 at the earliest.

Again I got an online survey from Fox asking about season sets and price points, as they are considering single disks, half season & full season sets. I said a fair price was GBP50 to GBP60 a set as anything above GBP50 online I have to consider carefully before purchase.
 

Sven Lorenz

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Cosidering that they don't remaster the episodes, produce no extras and have a blind intern do the covers they make a lot of money from these sets.
 

Mikel_Cooperman

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I dont think they are fairly priced by a long shot. This is discussed in several other forums including the top TV shows on DVD that were sold for last year. DS9 wasnt there.

No commentaries and the supplemental stuff we do get is run of the mill.

I imagine Voyager will be priced just as high and they wont sell very well. I have many friends who like(d) Trek and feel its not worth it to buy Voyager because of the quality of stories.

So where does Paramount supposedly do this Market research?
 

Bill Williams

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May 28, 2003
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There's only one word that sums up Paramount's thinking in pricing their Star Trek box sets (TNG, DS9, and now with Voyager) so darn high, and that word is...

GREED.

Pure and simple.
 

JohnAP

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May 20, 2003
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Funny how Buffy and other fox series (excluding X-Files) have become the defacto comparison for tv series pricing. Whowever has the best prices is what we consider should be the standard I guess. I admit that there is a downside to this as with Fox's Roswell set which is having all the original music replaced to keep it at the same price as their other sets.

There is a lot of truth to what people are saying about Paramount knowing they have a product with brand loyalty and an older fan base that has already been paying $20 bucks a piece for vhs tapes with only one episode on them. They know they can get good money from these people and they are not going to buy another show that's a little cheaper. They go to the store knowing what they want and prepared to pay for it.

That said, the high price points turn-off more casual fans as well as young people with less income to spend. I'm a 22-yr. old art student and I really enjoy the star trek series, but there's also many other shows available on dvd that I enjoy just as much and so when I go to the store with my fixed income and see one of those series for half as much as the star trek sets, my mind gets made up for me. Paramount talks about how much they want to get new, younger fans interested in the shows, but at the current price, I don't think too many people are going to pick up DS9 to see what they've been missing, regardless if the show is worth the price.
 

Nelson Au

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I was thinking about the issue of audio commentaries and the above comments that the Star Trek extras are lessor compared to other shows.

I only collect Star Trek and a few other shows, but only a season or two. No Fox shows are in my collection, so I don't know what they've got. (I don't have time to watch all this stuff!) That being said, I still think that the Star Trek sets are pretty good for what you get.

So about audio commentaries, I have several of the Gerry Anderson series and two seasons of The Simpsons. If you noticed on the Gerry Anderson shows, they do have audio commentaries, but not for each show. If you think about how audio commentaries are done for feature film releases, the people they invite are likely busy, so to make time to sit through a 2 hour movie and comment on it could take a full day with all the preparation they might do. For Star Trek, that's 26 hours for a full season. That's a lot of time to ask of someone. (Matt Groening must have been pretty gung-ho)

As a solution to no audio commentary, the makers of the Indiana Jones Box Set did the featurettes and they felt that should cover it. As for the Star Trek sets, each season of the later half of DS9 focused the featurettes on specific episdoes that they knew the fans would appreciate, like the Tribbles show, the Worf/Dax marraige, the Dominion war, etc. I think they did the right thing, as those covered the landmark shows or something else that was important of that year. The earlier featurettes would cover the highlights of the whole year as was done on TNG and early DS9. So they did cover the year of shows with featurettes. The hidden Section 31 files are cool as they give the actors POV on a character too.

I doubt audio commentaries for each show would be good. Can you imagine how dull it would get for the actors or directors and for us to listen to them being bored! I can imagine they could do one of two shows, but for me, the featurettes are good enough for me. More the better of course, as long as its good and informative.

I'm not defending the price, I think you get good content. A lower price of course would be appreciated.

Nelson
 

Josh Steinberg

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That's probably true.

I like how on the "Family Guy" sets (Fox) and "West Wing" first season (Warner) there are commentaries on select episodes.

It might be interesting if they picked one episode and did commentaries for it similar to the Lord Of The Rings set, where there are multiple tracks and pretty much every department is covered. Since I imagine it takes a lot more work to do a Star Trek episode than a lot of other shows, it might be interesting to hear from as many people as possible on one episode, so you can get a sense of all of the work that went into that one piece.
 

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