I mentioned some old science fiction titles worth seeing on my last blog. Probably all of the titles can be downloaded for free if you use peer-to-peer software like Kazaa.
However even the price of recently released movies on DVD are relatively cheap. You might be able to find some at the dollar store or at a drugstore for three or six dollars.
The average price of recently released movies on DVD is about seven dollars and fifty cents. Recently released popular titles or critically acclaimed titles average around thirteen dollars but they also can be found as low as seven dollars and fifty cents (or as high as twenty-five dollars).
I don’t know how the distributors are coming up with the prices for DVDs but there is obviously no uniform or good way to go about it.
As a side note, the prices of CDs from singers and musicians are also dropping. I guess the fact that many people are downloading music (and movies) for free or are just downloading music as an mp3 or wma (or other format) file over the Internet is contributing to driving the cost down.
You can buy a classic CD from groups like Led Zeppelin, KISS, INXS, or Stevie Wonder for five dollars and ninety-nine cents at some stores. The price of CDs for newer artist (Mayer, 50 cent, Maroon 5) who are hot now average about twelve dollars but on many occasions you can catch them on sale for around eight dollars (of course the stores sell them for the magical price of seven, ninety-nine).
My advice is that one should not buy a single release DVD with a few extras on it for twenty-five dollars. In fact you should not buy a DVD release of a movie for nineteen, ninety-nine (unless of course it’s a boxed set or something). A maximum price of fifteen dollars (which is very high in my opinion) is all that one should pay for a DVD (with both wide screen and regular television dimensions on it- some time that cheaper price means you only have a wide screen version of the film, which is okay but one should expect more for the money- although if the DVD does only have a wide screen version on it and TV ratios are preferred use the zoom feature found on most DVD players to fill the screen).
I’m talking DVDs but I don’t buy that many although with prices becoming more and more reasonable I have purchased more DVDs of late.
Beware of movies that have been edited and released. I prefer seeing a movie in its theatrically released version. I read about certain companies editing movies to clean up parts that may be objectionable to some.
For some films there are unrated releases and rated releases. I would surmise that the unrated version would be very similar or closer to what the director wanted to release (sort of like the director’s cut). Still, I would get the one released in theaters because it is the one that I probably saw and liked while the director’s cut may not be as enjoyable.
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I have seen unrated movies on DVD that were shown in theaters while the rated ones weren’t and vice-a-versa.
I think films edited for any reason other than the director’s vision are flawed. Films edited to ‘clean up content’ without the permission and/or oversight of the director are not worth seeing in my view.
The bottom line is the price in most cases is right for seeing films and television programming from the 30’s thru the 90’s (and in some instance a year or so ago) by buying a DVD. I can download for free over the Internet, or buy for one to four dollars many old movies and the price of even recently released movies is becoming more affordable which for me means a growing movie on DVD collection.