“Generous offer?” Holy fucking spin zone. Every disc they let a customer keep is just a disc they don’t have to worry about disposing off. Just happens to be a modest bonus for their subscribers.
There is lots of content that isn’t licensed for streaming, and is out-of-print on DVD. Its entirely possible that Netflix DVD rental may be the ONLY place to get certain titles. Depending on what you had out, this may be quite a boon for those that have rare titles in hand.
Something like the Blu Ray of Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie “Dogma” could cost you $150 to buy
Something like the Blu Ray of Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie “Dogma” could cost you $150 to buy
…but why?
Weinstein.
Yep it sucks because I think it’s Kevin Smith’s best work but I do respect him for refusing to buy the rights back or arrange for a deal for streaming rights because it would be giving Bob and Harvey Weinstein money.
For anyone unaware, the film had a complicated release because there was a lot of controversy surrounding Dogma, particularly from the Catholic League, who were pissy about being made fun of. So Disney, who owned Miramax at the time, allowed Bob and Harvey Weinstein to buy the movie themselves. So they personally own Dogma.
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It’s available for “streaming” on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZVEe_5Fo1QHere is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=7ZVEe
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Because its out of print. There are no new copies to replace ones sold. So the remaining copies in inventory rise in value.
OK but a disc burner is like $50
Well, DVDs are cheaper. Especially used DVDs. Dogma on DVD in state “Very Good” goes for around £2-3 on amazon.co.uk.
Honorable mention: You can stream it on himovies.sx for free. You can also use Inspector’s network tab on Firefox to get the .m3u8 stream and pass it to youtube-dl. For true experience, burn it to DVD.
Edit: You can also get it on VHS tape for £3 apparently.
Well, DVDs are cheaper. Especially used DVDs. Dogma on DVD in state “Very Good” goes for around £2-3 on amazon.co.uk.
Those are PAL and Region 2 DVDs. So they won’t work in regular US DVD players. Welcome to the wonderful world of regional distribution contracts.
I checked the US Amazon, Dogma DVD is mostly Region 2 imports… and used Region 1 discs are like $15. Oh, and amazon.co.uk has Region 1 Imported discs for £3 as well. But shipping cost will make the price about the same I guess.
Or how about a region-free South Korea version?
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once again companies make consumers responsible for the trash the companies made
I wouldn’t call it trash since the consumer actually wanted that DVD, maybe they didn’t plan to have it forever but who would complain about that?
And anyone who doesn’t want whatever they have out can still return it.
spin zone
You cheeky monkey
Translation: Netflix can’t be fucked dealing with the waste, so you can deal it.
My other thought is there is probably some convoluted US tax law that can turn it into profit.
Yeah, they could try writing them off at full RRP against profit. No idea if that’s allowed given the value of those disc must be in the pennies by now (they probably won’t even take them at the second hand shop), but since when has that stopped an honest corporation from trying…
they’ll write off what they paid, not what they can sell the discs for now
I mean, can’t you write off the purchase cost as soon as you get the asset on the books? Maybe gradually over a 5 year period or whatever. I’d be surprised if they haven’t done that yet.
Now that I think about it too they are probably so big to have ways around taxes anyway so they can do all the right offs they want and pay nothing for any profit
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No but all the plastic they’re stored on is
Yes…
In the hands of Netflix after they stop dvd service? Yes. In the hands of people who want the DVDs? No.
They either have to give them away or throw them away. May as well give them away.
The fact that we’re even still using fucking dvds is baffling.
How much room is there on this planet to allow everyone to have everything and anything they want.
It’s psychotic and it’s why the upcoming decades are going to be especially rough
Edit: some poor wording in that first sentence, I didn’t mean it to come off as blaming the consumer, there’s plenty use for dvd, but the fact that it’s not been switched over outlines other issues (internet infra mainly)
Some places are very remote and have bad internet. Some people like the special features on DVD. There are movies only available on DVD that aren’t streaming or on Blu-Rays. Some DVDs contain the original edits or music recordings that have since been changed.
Lot’s of reasons some people still use DVDs.
Oh yeah I’m not blaming the consumer (this time!) but the producers themselves.
All of that content could be provided digitally if we only took internet architecture and that sort of stuff seriously.
We could eliminate a lot of the need for physicality if we improved digital infra
There’s a lot more people than just the producers to blame when it comes to licensing and digitizing of content. Every record label and musician used, actors royalties, director royalties. Lots of people can make it unprofitable to digitize content, because it does cost money to store and host TV and movies just for server costs, so some profit has to be generated to incentivize it.
Right, no free lunches!
Way I see it, it was either give it to you or let it go to a landfill.
Can people sign up to get some? My gut says that it’s existing customers only, but I’d like to have some DRM free local copies if I can.
Then again, it’s easy enough to just download…
DVDs are not DRM free, they’re just easily broken 15 years after the format stopped seeing innovation.
You can sign up until August 28th
I liked the idea of them being given to libraries.
That would require distribution work. This way, the DVDs go to someone who actually wanted to watch them, rather than a landfill. It’s the cheapest option that isn’t straight up evil.
And nothing is stopping anyone with one of these from now donating them to a local library, should they not want the DVD to keep.
thats a good point and a reason for folks to grab any they can just to do that.
Sadly, like most companies, they’d rather throw them away quietly.
I assume Netflix had ways to slim down the number of discs they had in the past (like once a new release is less in demand), were those all going to the landfill or did they sell them to some sort of 3rd party? (I know GameFly will sell directly to consumers, but not sure what Netflix did)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Netflix won’t charge DVD.com customers for any discs they still have after September 29th, the company announced from its DVD.com account on X on Monday.
That generous offer, combined with Netflix’s recent announcement that it may send customers as many as 10 extra discs from their queues, means that some people might end up with a bunch of disc copies of movies, courtesy of Netflix.
DVD.com customers will need to visit a special link on DVD.com by August 29th to apply for the promotional offer.
Netflix will then send up to 10 random discs based on the movies in the subscriber’s queue.
Netflix first announced its plans to sunset its DVD subscription service in April, marking an end to the DVD shipping business that originally launched the company that’s since become a streaming giant.
It’s going to ship out the last round of discs on September 29th.
The original article contains 147 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If the summary is just as long what’s the point?
It saved me a click, I guess.
I prefer reading the TLDR instead of clicking into the article, opening a new tab, having to deal with all the cookie popups. AutoTLDR is just raw text.
Totally agree, news websites have only pushed me away with all the ads and spam
Am I the only one who uses reader mode?
What’s the point of writing a 147-word article? These news “articles” are getting so short that they add no value to the content they steal.
How much longer do you expect it to be? It pretty concisely summed up the entire situation. If it was any longer I would feel like they were just padding it out.
Everything in the text was important.
Didn’t need to leave my app 😁
Although that short article is a bit of a wasted chatgpt API call for Rikudou who covers its cost 🥲Edit: pretty sure this used to use chatgpt to create the summary, however it appears not to anymore
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What year is it?!
2023 👍
Thanks 👉👉
I remember when Blockbuster did this. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything good checked out at the time.
Grab some out-of-print DVDs for free, nice!
wait when did this get unbundled with netflix itself? totally would’ve picked up a few discs but not worth actually signing up for this to do that lol
Like 10 years ago? Google “qwikster” for all the entertaining details.
So that is why the subscription is going up for everyone else…
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So what’s that special link to click to have the 10 DVDs sent?
It is indirectly linked from the article via a “the service formerly known as Twitter” link.
I like the idea of calling it ex-twitter. I came up with the idea when I was having a shower… Hang on… there’s a community for that! brb
