Black Friday Bust

[nialla42]

For several years now, I've set aside about 1/3 of the library's DVD budget to be spent during Black Friday sales. This year, that's $300. It's now the day after Black Friday, and I've spend less than $100. Last year there was the pandemic induced delay for, well, everything, so there just wasn't much newish stuff to go on sale, but this year is

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Maybe they figure they don't need big discounts to get people to buy?

But I'm amazed Disney is selling MCU things on DVD in the UK but not here; now is the time to sell for people buying for Christmas!

[nialla42]

I did come across a mention somewhere that the supply chain issues are affecting Black Friday. They can't get as much stock to do a deep discount sale.

Shang-Chi is scheduled for a physical release this Tuesday, but it's not listed for sale on Amazon except for the UK version. According to what I can find online, it's been out in the UK for a couple of weeks.

I do see it listed at other vendors, but it's weird Amazon doesn't have the US version for pre-order. Well, maybe not so weird, as I've seen this happen before. Usually it's a pissing match between studios, which Amazon is now.

[ariss_tenoh]

It's happened a few times where I find the UK release is much faster than the US one. Not sure what's the reason really.

[nialla42]

One thing I'm jealous of is the UK also seems to get a lot more boxed sets at relatively reasonable prices. Not just TV seasons/series (that sometimes aren't even released in the US on DVD though they're produced in the US), but movies too. To use the MCU as an example again, I frequently see all three Iron Man movies in one package, as well as all the other multi-film ones.

I'm sure it's a money and market thing, with companies doing away with physical copies in the US because streaming is so widely believed to be available to everyone. Maybe availability will change in the UK once streaming is more established.

[ariss_tenoh]

And if you wait for 6 months to a year, the boxsets become even cheaper. I've picked up quite a few for my own collection.

As much as streaming is being promoted as the new way to watch tv, I don't think it's available in every country in an accessible manner yet. Plus there's the issue that you don't own the content, you're just paying to watch it and the platform can remove it at any time. There's been a few instances of this in the Asian market and it caused an uproar.