Good grief...is it really <i>soooooo</i> hard to return a frickin' DVD? Sheesh. What a waste. AOL and Buena Vista must be on a mission to cover the earth with digital media.
Assuming they're packed in cardboard, what's worse.....a throw-away DVD media of which tens of thousands could fit in a single lawn size garbage bag.......or the pollution, traffic congestion, vehicle wear and tear, and wasted time of tens of thousands of trips to blockbuster to return the movies. Like I said, there is a market for the blockbuster crowd. I haven't been in a movie rental place in years, but people like Madmax still enjoy that experience. I doubt anyone enjoys returning a movie though....unless they're going with the intention of getting more. I haven't seen one good argument against this yet.
a throw-away DVD media of which hundreds could fit in a single lawn size garbage bag, all the trips to deliver them to the stores, and the energy wasted processing them over and over again by far.
Dude....what the hell are you comparing this too? We get our CDR's in 100 pack spindles, so I know hundreds of those things can fit in a shoe box. And it's not like they're going to put four or five of them on an 18 wheeler for delivery. Shipping today is a bit more efficient than that. ONE HELL OF A LOT more efficient than returning one DVD to blockbuster in your Ford Explorer. And these things cost pennies to make. If they didn't, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. You're gonna have to do better than that.
I'm with Pole on this one, I've yet to see any real negative aspect of this concept. I hate returning movies because I always mess it up and return my movie a day late or "After Noon." Also, Philly76, what has Disney done lately to make you think they're being any more greedy than any other high-level corporation?
Disney is often referred to as Di$ney, if that helps you, BGM. By the way, for the convenience of being a lazy bastadge, you'll be paying anywhere from 2-7 times as much as a normal DVD rental. Yes, the price point is $7. That's right. They're all about helping consumers and this isn't a money grab.
"Also, Philly76, what has Disney done lately to make you think they're being any more greedy than any other high-level corporation?" I don't rent movies that cost that much. If there's a market that will spend $7, then those people can spend it and not have to worry about late fees. If people don't like the price, then Disney will have to reduce the cost of rental. The only complaint I could envision would be if Disney only rented their DVDs out in this fashion. Saying it will cost a lot, isn't a negative in my book if the consumer has viable alternatives.
If you want to have less crap in the landfills, stop AOL. I already have 5 times more coffee mug coasters than I need.
Oh gosh, I'm starting to sound like an environmentalist. Kill me now! I don't understand your argument. How much do you think the average DVD is rented out over the course of its life? I really have absolutely no idea, but I'll be extremely careful and say 10. That means currently people would have to make 20 trips to the movie rental store for a single movie, correct? With this new idea, there would have to be ten times the about of DVDs made, correct? Doesn't that mean ten times the amount of space needed to ship these DVD's? Or, in other words, ten times the amount of vehicles needed to ship these DVDs over MUCH greater distances? So, with the new idea we now have ten LONG trips of shipping the DVDs, plus possibly ten shorts trips for picking the DVD up. With the old way, we only have twenty short trips. Plus, most people have video stores within a mile of their house. Not to mention a lot of people rent movies when they're already out doing something else. I realize it wouldn't be as cut and dry as I just made it, but then again my estimate of "10" rentals over a lifetime probably isn't even close to the actual number. What if it was 30? 50? I just don't see the wastefulness of the transportation being all that much different either way. However, the ___-fold increase in DVD production and landfill storage for DVDs is pretty obvious. Maybe it's not that big of a deal, but I think suggesting that this idea will actually help the environment or help to conserve resources is pretty far-fetched. Although, I wouldn't mind seeing a more in-depth study of this. Oh, and I'd like to see you try to carry tens of thousands of DVDs in a garbage bag. Probably a little bit heavier than you'd think?
Oh geeze... Disney is a notoriously greedy company. I'm not particularly keen on Disney bashing, but it's out there if you're actually interested. To start, flat out lying on the future availability of titles...remember those "will never be available again on DVD after a short time" headlines they used to pump up sales? They followed them up with a "oh, yeah, um, we changed our minds" response and made a lot of them available again. They've attempted to undercut actors that worked on other company's animated films. And they've done a lot more. Again, Disney is notorious. Anyway, as to the second point... that is the point. They start off just dumping a couple titles there as "a new option" and then they start having short time exclusives, then they go for the kill. There's almost zero chance they simply offer it up as another option. If they did just stop, sure, great (other than being incredibly wasteful and unnecessary), options are nice. BTW, normal rental costs are 3.50ish for new releases and down to possibly a dollar for back catalogue stuff (that makes this anywhere from 2-7 times as expensive). Where are you getting them for so much cheaper than that? Has no one here heard of Netflix?? You get full DVD's, you know with special features, without having to get off your fat bums, and it's cheaper than this stuff and there's no rush to get the thing viewed in a short period. Watch, re-watch, and then just dump it in the mailbox (post paid) when you're done.
I'm not sure anyone was saying this was necessarily a good idea for the environment. My point is that it could be a good business decision (not a seven bucks a pop; if that's correct). The point I was trying to make is that it's not much (if any) worse for the environment (which seemed to be one of the reasons why people are against it). Anyway......I'm at home now and not trying to kill time at work, so I'm just going to have say, "lets agree to disagree."
With this new idea, there would have to be ten times the about of DVDs made, correct? Doesn't that mean ten times the amount of space needed to ship these DVD's? Or, in other words, ten times the amount of vehicles needed to ship these DVDs over MUCH greater distances? So, with the new idea we now have ten LONG trips of shipping the DVDs, plus possibly ten shorts trips for picking the DVD up. With the old way, we only have twenty short trips. I don't think DVD's are shipped individually to stores. If I need to to ship 200 DVD's to a Blockbuster instead of the old 20, I'm not going to make 180 separate trips to do it.
