By David Chen/March 12, 2009 7:26 am EST
Can you imagine explaining this to all of your customers? People will think when they rent, it should have everything on it. And why shouldn’t it? This is just silly, and consumers aren’t going to be happy.
Since the First Sale Doctrine allows any copies purchased allows any retailer to rent a legally purchased copy of a movie, we may still see retail copies on video rental store shelves. Video Buyer’s Group president Ted Engen remarked:
I can understand Fox’s desire to stop the bleeding , but you don’t do that by taking value away from already-existing products and annoying your customers. Maybe instead, they should focus on creating discs with special features that will make them worth owning. In fact, I heard a rival studio is already doing some cool stuff with special features and tie-ins involving a small Zack Snyder film that was released last week…
There’s no question that some rentailers will go and buy from Wal-Mart and rent out the copies, and you can’t stop that. But it’s not going to be that big of an issue as people think. The main thing is that studios have to add value to get customers to buy, and they aren’t buying. Numbers have been falling through the floor.
Discuss: Will Fox’s removal of special features from rental DVDs cause you to buy DVDs instead of renting them?
[Thanks to /Film reader Egyptnation for the tip]
