Warner Bros. Imposing 56 Day Delay On DVD Rentals

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Why stop at 56 days? It seems like such an odd number. Why not 60, 90, 120 or 365? :rolleyes:

The new restriction will double a 28-day delay on DVD rentals that Warner Bros. reached with Netflix's video subscription service two years ago. A person familiar with the matter explained the new rules to The Associated Press on Friday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the changes won't be announced until next week.
 
I don't see why Netflix just doesn't go out and buy the DVD's retail like they used to and flex their muscle a little bit. I don't appreciate Netflix price hikes, but there's no sense in them rolling over for the movie studios and killing their profit.
 
lol..
Anyone that wants to see something that bad will just DL it.. delaying rentals will just help encourage downloads happen so they can cry about lost revenue later..
 
umm, if i was a netflix user and i had to wait 56 days for a movie, i would have either

a) downloaded and watched it already

or

b) forgotten about the movie.

i should mention i'm not a netflix user though and i watch maybe 5 movies a year so this doesn't effect me at all but if i was interested in movies, that's what i would do.
 
I don't see why Netflix just doesn't go out and buy the DVD's retail like they used to and flex their muscle a little bit. I don't appreciate Netflix price hikes, but there's no sense in them rolling over for the movie studios and killing their profit.

They don't do that because its a felony.
 
Actually, its likely for Blockbuster and Redbox as well (or will be once their current contracts are up).
 
I don't have netflix/blockbuster/anything..

Hell I don't even own a TV (27" HP LCD is enough for me)

but yeah -- you want to wait 56 days before you can start serving a customer (Netflix) with cash in hand?

This is just the same crap on a different day -- they will never learn that things like this is the reason piratebay and EZtv flourish.
 
"Sir no one wants to buy our shitty movies." ... "It must be Netflix fault, it couldn't be that we rehash the same shit over and over, or that we have replaced good stories and good acting with high priced special effects." ... "Now that we have taken care of that lets take some perfectly good old movies and make them 3D." ... "Excellet idea president Scroob."

They should call most modern movies 4D. That way they can quanitfy the time you just wasted that you will never get back.
 
Actually, it's perfectly legal under the first sale doctrine and how Netflix built their core business.

I think current copyright law says that media sold for consumer use cannot be used to gain a profit, and I'm going to assume that renting the movie to others does not qualify as "private" in-home use as specified in the piracy warning screens we're all familiar with. I'm also assuming that making a profit by renting a movie intended for consumer use is a violation of that same statute.

In addition, movie rental outlets have for years had to buy special versions of media for "rental" use specifically because they were making a profit from rentals and because nearly every person who rents a movie will then NOT buy it, so the studios would lose money if they sold rentals at retail price.

Same reason your local movie theater can't go buy a DVD and pop it in a home theater projector and sell tickets.

However, I do think this is self-defeating on WB's part because it is bad press and will potentially anger consumers while not really getting them anything in the long run. Consumers who really want to rent the movie will still rent it, but people who might have opted to rent instead of going to the theater may forget about the movie over the two months between theater and DVD rental.
 
I don't see why Netflix just doesn't go out and buy the DVD's retail like they used to and flex their muscle a little bit. I don't appreciate Netflix price hikes, but there's no sense in them rolling over for the movie studios and killing their profit.

Then Warner Bros. will pull their licensing deal with Netflix for streaming rights, which is now Netflix' core business.

[Tripod]MajorPayne;1038232271 said:
I think current copyright law says that media sold for consumer use cannot be used to gain a profit, and I'm going to assume that renting the movie to others does not qualify as "private" in-home use as specified in the piracy warning screens we're all familiar with. I'm also assuming that making a profit by renting a movie intended for consumer use is a violation of that same statute.
. . .

This went to the Supreme Court a few years back in NEBG v Weinstein. You CAN purchase movies and rent them out under the First Sale Doctrine. Red Box did this for a while when some of the movie studios were dicking Red Box around.
 
Then Warner Bros. will pull their licensing deal with Netflix for streaming rights, which is now Netflix' core business.



This went to the Supreme Court a few years back in NEBG v Weinstein. You CAN purchase movies and rent them out under the First Sale Doctrine. Red Box did this for a while when some of the movie studios were dicking Red Box around.

You learn something new every day.
 
This went to the Supreme Court a few years back in NEBG v Weinstein. You CAN purchase movies and rent them out under the First Sale Doctrine. Red Box did this for a while when some of the movie studios were dicking Red Box around.

Slight correction: It never made it to the Supreme Court, but the courts did rule there was no exception to the first sale doctrine for movies like there is for computer software.
 
56 days of torrenting huh? Have fun with that Warner Bros. :p

Most of their movies aren't even worth torrenting though to be honest.
 
and they wonder why piracy is so prevalent....

Yep pirates can get the movies on release day (if not earlier). As usual this only prevents legitimate customers from seeing it, the pirates won't even notice this happened.
 
I love this counter-intuitive bullshit. People are staying home and not going to see enough movies in the theatre!

MAKE THINGS IN 3D! RAISE TICKET PRICES!

people are still staying home and using Netflix instead of buying our movies!

DENY THEM WHAT THEY WANT!

People are pirating our movies in droves!

RELEASE THE HOUNDS!



And you know the people who make these decisions are making 6 figures. It's such a bummer that they can't understand that our methods of consumption are different now, we like the new way, and artificially restricting what we want isn't going to bring us back around to the old way of doing things.

I'm not going to go buy a $25 retail priced, not on sale yet blu ray, to watch any movie, just because it isn't on Netflix yet. I'll wait, or buy it for 5 bucks used on sale at GoHastings.com
 
They're "hoping" it will increase DVD sales by enticing people to buy a movie. In actuality, it will only delay income from wholesale and increase the incentive for piracy.

People purchase movies when they want to own them. If someone wants to see a movie but doesn't care to own it, they will either rent it legally or download it from the Internet illegally. Now that they have to wait 56 days to rent it legally, where do you think they will get it?
 
lol..
Anyone that wants to see something that bad will just DL it.. delaying rentals will just help encourage downloads happen so they can cry about lost revenue later..

And they wonder why people end up pirating movies. :rolleyes:

QFMFT. Exactly this. All this does is encourage people to download rather than use Netflix or rent from retail. Then the movie industry complains about piracy. Maybe if you got with the times and changed your archaic and retarded business model, you might have less of a problem.
 
Warner Bros. are morons, there are tons of things they can do to allow rentals right from release day and still make DVD/BD purchases attractive, with booklets, separate discs with extras, vouchers for upcoming releases, special editions with collectible merchandise, whatever.
But most of all, good movies...

The rest of the article seems to contain a lot of nonsense. Why should it matter to Netflix whether they can get the original DVDs directly from WB for $10 or from Amazon for $15? They burn dozens or hundreds of their own copies anyway. Maybe it's a different story for Blu-ray though.

Also, who said Netflix will be at a loss in 2012? Sure their capitalization went down $12 billions last year, but that's nothing to do with revenue and profit. This year seems to be starting great, it shouldn't take that long to grow again. There's probably some cutbacks to make, especially on international investments, but that can only improve results.

The DVD rental service seems to be on life support indeed, but now that Netflix separated rentals from streams, each service should be able to make a profit in their own sector. Otherwise it's to despair of their managers, especially for the rental service whose model is long known for years. If USPS postage goes up, so should the Netflix rental subscription. It's that simple. If USPS don't deliver on Saturdays, probably many customers will switch to streams, but there should still be millions who can't stream or prefer to watch from a much bigger and more interesting catalog than the poor collection of hits and low quality movies/TV shows currently available on Instant Watch.
Netflix could also create Redbox-like plans or introduce other initiatives to beat their competitors.

And about UltraViolet... Well I read enough about it here to know what the [H]orde thinks about this joke... ^-^

My 2 cents.
 
Studios want people to pirate shit that they are unable to sell, so they can complain about the lost sales in order to further legislation like SOPA. Every time more barriers are put between consumers and legitimate acquisition of media, it just means there's a huge load of unsellable crap about to arrive at market.
 
heh.. So I have a friend that likes to uhmm pirate movies.. This shit wont even get noticed really, but my uhmm friend said he would pay a premium for a service such as netflix to get the movies streamed on release day.. Having to wait for or go get is what killed my uhmm friend on renting traditionally..
 
What's with media companies that have this insatiable hunger for the hand that feeds them?
 
What a silly change. I rarely see a movie in the theater anymore. I have no problem waiting for them to come out on blu-ray. If it looks like something I will watch repeatedly then I'll pre-order it on amazon, Otherwise I'll just wait for it to inch its way up my que on netflix. A 56 day wait isn't going to change that. Take the Harry Potter movies. I actually like them, but I haven't seen the last one yet. Who knows when I'll get around to watching it.
 
Does this apply to streaming videos as well? :confused: Since Netflix wants to go to an all-streaming model eventually, this seems like it would be helpful to them in some ways... if they are allowed to stream new movies on Day 1.

Plus, the studios should theoretically care less because piracy is less of an issue with streaming content. That and people who want the best in video/audio quality are the ones who are more likely to be concerned with having a physical disc, and are also (presumably) more likely to buy the discs.
 
You think they don't realize that this will only increase piracy? They want it to so they can send the MPAA after people and collect $100,000 for you downloading 'another shitty movie', the profit margin is much higher that way.
 
What's with media companies that have this insatiable hunger for the hand that feeds them?

It is the old guard in management that wants to hold onto profits from physical media, even when they are at the point where they might be better served with another approach. They see the market changing and the response is usually to try holding onto the money as it flies from their hands.

I wouldn't mind a common and shared system where I could buy digital movies from various media companies and play/download them on various devices. I would buy movies for a reasonable price on launch dates if I could stream or download them to my consoles and PCs, and if that system was being utilized by the major studios.

As it stands now, I stopped buying Blu Rays because I freaking hate the previews that cannot be skipped and the fact that they were using different systems for the digital copies of the movies.

Hell, these companies could just sell movies on Netflix and I would buy them if they came out on launch and also let me download a copy for my mobile devices.
 
What's with media companies that have this insatiable hunger for the hand that feeds them?

Because fuck you! That's why!

I know it's a running joke now when talking about companies like the RIAA and MPAA, but it stands the test of time with many of their decisions.

The higher ups only know what made them money in the past and they're going to stick to that until they're promoted up and out or until they die.

To be honest, I would LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE to sit in on some of the meetings just to hear how and why they come up with ideas like this. My brain just can't come to the same conclusions theirs do so I would enjoy seeing the process that gets us to where we are now.
 
You think they don't realize that this will only increase piracy? They want it to so they can send the MPAA after people and collect $100,000 for you downloading 'another shitty movie', the profit margin is much higher that way.

Except when they sue people like a mother of 3 who works at Dennys and her 12 yr old dl'ed the movie. Good luck with the $100 much less $100,000.
 
Yes, because increasing the demand for piracy through these actions will definitely help their business model. They are acting like some sort of monopoly by trying to force people to act in a certain way while neglecting the existence of alternative ways of gaining such content. They kind of deserve the impending results of their actions.
 
Its perfectly clear now that these people running the movie and music industry just don't get it. Their way of thinking is outdated, useless and they are incapable of changing along with times. Maybe its time they retire before they drag the entire industry down to hell.
 
I don't see why Netflix just doesn't go out and buy the DVD's retail like they used to and flex their muscle a little bit. I don't appreciate Netflix price hikes, but there's no sense in them rolling over for the movie studios and killing their profit.

Becasue they would have to raise prics to pay for them and its obvious that their subsriber base has said that having thousands of movies and tv shows at $8 - $16 a month is already way too much.
 
Becasue they would have to raise prics to pay for them and its obvious that their subsriber base has said that having thousands of movies and tv shows at $8 - $16 a month is already way too much.

As a former suscriber, I can say I dropped them because of:

- They had a 28day delay put on their new releases. I may or may not have started a newsbin service at this point.

- They decided to raise prices by two times. I never used the dvd part of it but once a month as I mostly streamed, but I liked having the option. When they split it, I had enough. A raise to $10-$12 would have been fine to me.
 
Congrats on continually shooting yourselves in the foot, movie studios :)

I wonder what are they going to run out of first, feet or bullets?


And they wonder why people end up pirating movies. :rolleyes:

So we have 3 solutions for Movies.
1. Subscribe to Netflix, and be rewarded with an extra 2 month wait. FAIL
Hope you enjoy listening to your kids complain about not being able to see the movie for 2 month.
2. Pick the DVD up on sale the day it's released (then why am I spending money on Netflix?)
3. Download the movie a week before it's released.
No advertisements like on the DVD, and you get to see it before everyone else.

#1. is ok if you don't care when you eventually see the movie, but they should at least have it available for streaming instead of making you wait for 2 months for a DVD

#2. Make a deal with several friends/family members to trade DVD's. Take turns buying them and trade away. With enough people in your group, it could be cheaper than Netflix, plus you get to see the movies sooner than Netflix

#3. Cheap & fast, as the downloads are usually available before the DVD is even released, but it's a bit risky. Bonus if your have a HTPC or computer connected to your TV, as you can download HD quality movies and play them back at better quality than streaming. No blu-ray drive needed.
 
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