Movie Studios Looking to Screw Over Home Viewers Even Further

Several movie studios have reached agreements with outlets, primarily Redbox and Netflix, to delay the renting of movies for four weeks from their official release date on DVD and Blu-ray. That has been going on since the beginning of the year. Warner Bros was the first followed by Paramount, Universal, and Fox. There was some hope though when Paramount backed off and decided to drop that delay period and Sony has not taken up that idea at all given that studies have shown they do nothing to increase DVD and Blu-ray sales. Something myself and many others suspected would be the case.

Unfortunately things could be getting worse despite that. Some ideas being considered by studios includes even longer wait periods than the current four weeks and possibly forcing Netflix to reduce the quality of their streaming service if they don’t get more money in return for having their titles available.

It is sad that most of the studios have not caught on that consumers are only going to buy movies that they really like or at least have the expectations of enjoying greatly. There is a reason that some movies continue to break sales records while others fall flat. Who is going to spend money to buy copies of terrible movies? Certainly no one that couldn’t just wait the month to rent them.