The Big Whatsit

Every day, I check the usual DVD selling websites, do the occasional reconnaissance mission into the town centre of Greater Rochdaleshire, very often check the Bargains forum at DVD Times. The results, as I search for sales, are disappointing.

Put it another way. I have bought precisely two dee vee dees since Christmas - Leon, and A Few Good Men. Both came from HMV’s Guernsey warehouse (at the princely sums of £3.99 and £2.99 respectively), and were signed up to the squad to replace ancient VHS copies that had been handed to a charity shop months ago. And that’s about it. By my standards (I’m becoming a hardened addict, partly thanks to this site - yeah, cheers DVD Times) this is pitiful behaviour. It’s just that nothing has leapt at me, squealing ‘Buy me!’ and making me forget things like overdrafts and needing to eat in order to possess some collector’s edition or whatnot.

What’s gone wrong? Have I lost my craving for the things (mine wife would love that, admittedly)? Is it possibly the case that I am coming close to owning everything I want on DVD? The answer’s no on either count. If my addiction really had lessened, I wouldn’t do my regular price checks, would I? Similarly, there are of course thousands of titles I’m after, and no doubt many more I’ll wish for in the future e.g. I’d dearly love the Ealing Collection, but even I have to admit we bought far too many discs over Christmas to justify the purchase. But mmmmm, Dead of Night…

I think the real reason is that the sales simply haven’t been too great, and that’s because pre-Christmas, DVD prices were getting so low there just wasn’t much more they could slice off whilst still turning a profit. Well, perhaps they could, but you must admit they’re an awful lot cheaper than they used to be. I remember when each new DVD we bought cost twenty quid, around five years ago when we had our first player (which was considerably pricier than models these days). That’s a more serious sum for a movie. It meant every purchase had to be thought about with some care before splashing one’s cash. It meant we got something we really wanted, a movie we cherished and was a bit special, as opposed to now when I wouldn’t pay much more than a fiver for anything that isn’t brand new, which is cheaper than a packet of smokes but quite often gets watched once and then added to the pile.

Not that I believe the price crash is a bad thing. I don’t. I think it’s great that even new titles can be bought for as little as a crisp tenner. More often than not, supermarkets are great places to go to snap up the latest releases. I almost dropped and kissed the ground when I saw Peter Jackson’s King Kong was on the local Morrison’s shelves for a mere £9.99. Mine thifty wife will often wait a few months later, when a slew of further releases have been and gone, and she can then pick her disc of choice up for a lot less. It’s a superb time to be a buyer, helped along by some insane online competitors, the cut-price high street likes of Music Zone, and now traditional RRP slaves such as HMV.

Ah yes, His Master’s Voice. The one sad time I’ve ever been excited over an online offer is when they started churning out their Deal of the Day promotion, in the run-up to Christmas. The retailer really pushed the boat out, going above and beyond the call of duty to demand frankly ludicrous amounts for some top titles. What could I do but invest again and again, whether it meant slapping down my three English pounds and 99 pee for the Gremlins box set, or the same for March of the Penguins? God, I wish they’d do it again. It was this more than any other discount effort that makes the current sales look a little shabby. Then again, I can get the 2-disc edition of Se7en from CD Wow for under a fiver…