Have you ever stepped into Blockbuster and wondered why there are only 20 copies of The Motorcycle Diaries and 200 copies of Catwoman?
One would think the government had a hand in the lack of Che Guevara's pilgimage. You can relax, this is not the case ^_^'.

And how about that video game section? There is 10 copies of Bioware's latest sensation "Jade Empire" while there is 20 copies of The Guy Game, a crappy trivia game disguised as pornography?

It turns out that the rental chains of the world, and the Entertainment Industry are clashing once again!

Movie Industry.
For a while now, the movie makers of the world enjoy revenue from three different sources: ticket sales, DVD sales, and the licences for rental copies.

However, lately the movie industry is not satisfied. They feel that rental stores are shafting them. When a rental store is finished with a rental copy of a movie, they will sell it for half price.

Consumers have adjusted to this, waiting patiently for the hype around a movie they like to calm down so that BB or another chain will dump the movie, half price. Movie companies do not want people having the rationale "I love that movie SO much, I'm going to buy it used half price!"

Recently, movie companies would provide less and less of their copies for rental purposes, to make sure that "half price DVD" never exists. Vivendi Universal is infamous for this especially.

Blockbuster has agreed to destroy half of the DVDs they no longer need instead of sell them used, and in exchange, movie companies provide a lot more of their copies.

So why are there 200 copies of Catwoman, when the whole world knows that movie sucks? It is because the makers of Catwoman have offered them to Blockbuster at a low price. They desire promotion through rentals, which is the original pupose of rentals to begin with. Also, the movie companies realize that if their movie sucks, the rental stores will be the only one to pay for it.

So its a matter of Money vs Promotion. If a movie company knows they have a hit and want to force consumers to purchase it, they will hold out on rentals. If a movie did poorly in the box office, expect to see a lot of it at your video stores. They desire promotion.

There are plenty of exceptions. On May 3, Phantom of the Opera will be released, and rental chains will recieve plenty of it to go around. Even though it was obscure in the theatres, the makers desire promotion, giving a lot of that title. A welcome decision by movie lovers and rental chains.

Stay tuned and I'll tell you about the Video Game industry...

Great.. payola rental.

The last time i rented.. months and months ago back in late summer.. it took us forever to find something to watch because of the crap you describe.

Yep.. just another rationale for those people grabbing movies on kazaa. They suck too badly to bother downloading though.

These people are just BEGGING best brains inc. to create a new mystery science theater show to ridicule them all.

Such artificial scarcity of movies/music/games etc. and the manipulation of the market will become a thing of the past as the technology develops and the consumer grows wiser in the digital age. The monopolies will fall.

(we hope)

or the consumer will just be taught, as the propaganda says today, that refusing to consume is evil. I'm sure anyone can understand on a very basic level how wrong that is.

I have always bought my DVDs from blockbuster, which is owned by Viacom. 2 for 20 dollars. Yes I have to wait a little bit and yes sometimes they don't have them. But I will be darned if I feel that a DVD (and many don't enclude anything extra or will have a Collecter's edition soon) is worth 20 dollars plus. When blockbuster stops selling these movies, it just means I will borrow from friends more or stop buying movies all together.

Next thing you know they will try to shut down the used CD/DVD stores, if they haven't already tried.

They've tried to shut down used CD stores already. Tried and failed. Garth Brooks was big into this.

They have. The arguement was something like "They are selling CDs without paying royalties! That is illegal! Ban used CD stores!" It didn't work.

Uhh....Viacom got rid of Blockbuster over six months ago. Blockbuster is independent from them now.

In japan, used game stores are now illegal, making it a direct market for the developers to profit from. Also they made renting illegal as well.

They do lack a serious amount of judgement here if they cut off selling copies, cause certain movies are going to depend on used sales to make any form of profit ranging from $10-full price. Without them, they'll continue making losses and look for a scrapegoat to point their guns at (P2P anyone?). I'm not too worried about it though, there's ebay and wal-mart which sells vids for as cheap as $5, so I'm not affected.

Big "LOL" at the studios!

Q2, you live in japan?

"Why does Blockbuster's selection suck?"

Because Hollywood ran out of material two decades ago.

And the majority of Americans fall into the group of people you can fool all of the time.

Uh, no it's not illegal in Japan?

From "Power Up [2005]": "... on April 25, 2002, [the Supreme Court] rule that "in the case of the transfer of ownership of copies of cinematographic work that are used in conjunction with household TV game machines...the right to transfer to the public the ownership of copies of the works concerned shall be exhausted by the legitimate first sale...and copyright shall not have an efficacy on the conducts of re-transfer to the public of the copies concerned." p.195

This book is fairly recent, too. It was finished in late 2004, I believe, and published in 2005. So unless they just made some random change to that law from the Supreme Court, well then I'll be damned.

Oh and incase it gets asked to me, no, I do not live in Japan.

Now about the topic: that's why I prefer going to Hollywood Video. Very rare when they will do that, however, I DID see the "NEW DVD" sale section get a little bit bigger, so who knows?

"copies of cinematographic work that are used in conjunction with household TV game machines" - legalese for console-games? And I notice PC-games are not included. We really need some younger Supremes, who can remember computers after the invention of the microchip.

I think one regional court in Japan ruled selling games illegal, and another one didn't, so it's illegal in some places and legal in others, kind of like state laws in the US.

Netflix is better for selection. Rent it, watch it...um...and send it back. Try to do this quick or you end up with about 3 movies a month, which is not worth $19.95. Pretty good deal, lets you see all the movies you were only so-so about without having to plunk down $15 each.