trinityvixen | Entries tagged with dvds

Netflix is raising its prices for DVD-and-streaming plans in the wake of announcing a streaming-only plan. My plan is going up!

...by one dollar.

Netflix, I don't know how you continue to make a profit by being both scrupulously honest with your customers, helpful, and pre-emptive when it comes to complaints (There was a service outage? Don't hate us! Here's 2% off your bill! Even if you weren't trying to stream!), but I think I love you.

I guess I could halve my bill by getting streaming only, but I honestly rent too damn many DVDs to do that. And I like having the option not to be totally beholden to an internet connection to make the most of my service.

But seriously: Netflix, I love you. Even when you make me pay more, I love you. You are doing everything right.

I posted a little while back about my incredulity that people could be kept waiting on movies from Netflix. Today, scanning Hacking Netflix, I see that someone did a side-by-side comparison of their Netflix/Blockbuster Online queues to compare wait times for new releases between the two. And Blockbuster promised shorter wait times overall for all the same titles.

The agitation about new releases in that post left me rather self-satisfied, I must say. It must be very hard to be so goddamned picky about movies. You may mock me for my unquestionably terrible taste in film (and television--have I mentioned I am still watching Heroes?). Heck, I mock me. But I must be doing something right because aside from having to pace back and forth and wiggle about like I'm a three-year-old who has to pee over the delay between sending back a disc and getting the next one of a highly anticipated series...I have it easy when it comes to being satisfied by DVD delivery via Netflix. Hell, Netflix keeps improving without me asking for anything! Can't get a movie on the spot? Have Watch It Now! Watch It Now too limited? We'll add 20,000 titles inside of a year and a half! Don't want to watch on your computer? Have box or an XBOX or a PS3! (Or, as rumor has it, possibly even the Wii.)

How hard it must be to be those people who have to have the movie now now now now. For whom Blu-Ray is such a BURDEN to have to pay extra for. I never have a problem with new releases because by the time they climb their way up the 400+ title list of my queue, they're no longer remotely new. It's easy being me with the way I watch movies. (Speaking of, I have three that need taking care of that I've had for weeks...)

Anyway, the title of my post refers to a trick I learned when I worked at Blockbuster. For those who might NEED movies on the Tuesdays they are released, you can get same-day delivery. Put the new release at the top of your queue, return a disc on Friday/Saturday before, and you should get it Tuesday. At Blockbuster, we got all new releases the Friday before. Employees could take 'em out, and it gave time for them to be wired up for security/scanning purposes. (I think that's why there was a delay. I have no idea, really.) Netflix will send it to you Monday because you won't get it before Tuesday. It works, I've done it. (This is also how Amazon does it with same-day releases.) Just FYI for those who might have the same-day new release fixation as the people at that post.

Amazon had a 2-for-$10 sale and I am not buying anything. No, really! I couldn't find two movies I wanted, not even for $5! I RESiSTED! RESISTENCE IS NOT FUTILE!!

Somebody tell

umeyard to stop trying to bankrupt me. I barely got out of the DeepDiscount Buy 2, Get 1 sale under $30. I just trimmed everything away until they were almost all really terrible movies that I just have to own. (

glvalentine, be proud of me?)

Remember last summer when I tried to drag people to the theater to see Mannequin? Yeah, well, um, you don't have to go to the theater any more! You lucky people! I did pick up Say Anything to counter that. (God, I'll never be able to watch it though; that movie breaks my heart every time.) Ever After is a toss-up in terms of taste. My stupid girl heart gets all fluttery and wuvvy-wuvs it. My cynical side sits and speculates about how many venereal diseases people in the movie probably have.

And, unrelated to the sale, because it was $6, I bought He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword. Sing it with me now ('cause I know

feiran is, and she's probably hating my guts right at this moment):

A stranger walked into my wooooooooooorld
And when he talked, I really hhheeeeeeeeard
He spoke of things like love and peeeeeeeeeeeeeeace
The joy they bring will never ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeease

For the honor of looooooooooove
By the power ABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE
I have the pooooooooooower, I have the pooooooooooower!

So, randomly watching a YouTube thing with Disney videos (and after playing Disney SceneIt with

feiran) has left me wistful for the the animated movies I missed before they "went back into the vault"--things I used to love but didn't know to buy 5+ years ago because I wasn't addicted to DVDs then (how times have changed, mm?). Like The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, which I so definitely would own and refuse to buy used for twice the price. I not only loathe the fact that this marketing scheme makes me panic about never getting movies or, at least, not picking them up fast enough that I don't miss them, but I just don't understand it.

Google threw up this answer--the Disney marketing plan as understood by The Wall Street Journal, so I would assume they've got it right (whether they comprehend why this is the way it is any better than I, I doubt it, but at least I can trust they've got the mechanics right):
Under the new plan, Disney would continue to retire classics such as The Lion King for about a decade, in hopes that demand will build for future re-releases. But second-tier titles such as The Fox and the Hound and The Aristocats would be on shelves constantly, giving the company a more reliable stream of video sales.

Now, I'm not an MBA. I don't do business plans for a living. This seems incredibly stupid to my layperson's eye. What sense does it make to shove the titles that you know people love back into the vault and leave the ones they're less likely to buy out on the shelves. I think the threatening people with lack of access is a deplorable move but I can see its being effective. Why not do that for the less popular titles? That way people who would otherwise not buy them, no matter how long they sat on the shelves, would rush out to do so just in case they weren't available later. Titles that are perennially popular will always find a new audience to sell to, and since DVDs, once arranged and put together cost about $0.10 to make per disc, it really couldn't hurt to have lots of stock on that one continually trickling down. It's like making 12 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--eventually, that will all move.

Honestly, isn't this just shooting yourself in the foot? Not only are people annoyed at being cajoled and basically forced into buying or living almost forever without (especially if they might have children in the interim with whom they might want to share these old favorites; ten years is a long time when you're talking about the development of children), but when they do go to Best Buy or wherever, they're going to see the second-rate movies (hey, don't get me wrong, I think Fox and Hound was cute, and I loved the Disney version of Robin Hood, but they're just not The Lion King, right?) and associate that crap with Disney. Way to hurt your marketed image there. I'm sure that people won't be bored as nuts with your thirtieth release of Hannah Montana at all. No sir.

Current Mood: curious

I feel so productive for no good reason. It's because it's really procrastination (productination!). I'm purposefully just NOT writing that last paper for class. I've decided to make it as bullshitty as I want. I spent a good two-three hours total researching a few quotes from a couple of books to supplement my thesis, and then I'm just writing about movies for the rest of it. Good enough for me.

The super came by this morning. ( He was saved from MURDERATION only by sleep deprivation and apartment-related shopping. )

Sleep deprivation happened because I got home at like 5 am this morning. I stayed up most of the night with

kent_allard_jr,

moonlightalice (who is the Devil, by the way), and

wellgull watching Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Die Hard is fucking awesome still. I'd never seen Die Hard 2, and it turns out I wasn't missing anything. It suffers from Derivative Sequel Syndrome, which is not helped by the fact that everyone is loving on McClane or else really obviously hating him only to come around by movie's end. It made picking out the fake-out good-guy/bad-guy pretty easy. I also figured out how the bad guys were going down fifteen minutes before it happened. I more look forward to Die Hard with a Vengeance for the umpteenth time. At least that one was genuinely funny, even if it, too, was retread of the first movie.

How did I come to be watching all the Die Hard movies? Uh...

I...I was weak, my friends. I discovered, while cleaning up a bit in my room, that I had some Best Buy bucks I hadn't used up. This is the most dangerous discovery since the nuclear fusion bomb. For me, anyway. Because my already nonexistent willpower was overcome, and I went and got myself Animaniacs Vol 3, which was on sale. And Office Space (which I bought another copy of for my Dad's belated Father's Day present; and now I get a $5 gift card and I am in more trouble). And, and this is why

moonlightalice is THE DEVIL, I got the Die Hard collection. I like the first and third one enough to own both, and the set was cheaper than buying them apart. I also now have another "free" ticket to see Live Free or Die Hard, which means it really will only cost me $3 to see the movie. So that's a good deal, even if I shouldn't have gone and spent EVEN MORE MONEY on DVDs like I just did. Sigh. Will power. MUST LOOK INTO GETTING SOME.

Fortunately, perusing my DVD collection after having gotten back most of what I loaned to the

moonlightalice/

wellgull household, I don't have quite 200 DVDs. This is a relief. Oh, but speaking of DVDs--

wellgull has told me that he doesn't have movie I swore I loaned to him, so would anyone else remember me loaning them The Bourne Identity/Supremacy and Batman Begins?

Current Music: Danny Elfman - What's This?

No, no, no! No more DVDs! Bad me! Baaaad!!!

::whimpers::

But I want Animaniacs!

NO! I will be strong! And wait for another 20% or BOGO sale. I WILL WAIT, DAMN IT!

Because I just bought t-shirts online and I'm out another billion dollars on that. So, no DVDs for me!

But if I just happened to be next to a Best Buy...I could pick up Office Space for just $10...

Obviously, this will power thing is a work in progress.

This DVD-buying season of discounts has taken a real bite out of the old wallet. And this is not good right before summer when I needs to be going out to the movies for stuff. Is that irony? That my love of movies and purchases of the same might curtail my ability to go out and enjoy them more? I think that's irony, but I can't ever tell. I blame Alanis.

Last night, I recounted with

darkling1 and

feiran how many DVDs I'd bought. Counting seasons of TV as one movie's worth, I think I came up with nineteen. In the past month, I have bought nineteen DVDs/sets. Man, am I reallyglad that

moonlightalice talked me out of buying Prison Break because then it would be twenty and that seems just that more gratuitous.

Oh. Wait. Shit. I bought DVDs upstate over Memorial Day weekend in addition to the Deep Discount sale and the Best Buy one. Fuck it all. Okay, then, what's the actual total?

( Counting off... )

Ouch. Twenty-four DVDs. And that number is low-balled by not counting the three-four-five dvds/sets I bought as gifts and by counting TV shows as only onepurchase per season. Ouch ouch ouch. My wallet hurts. Clearly, the solution is to go drinking tonight. And, wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what I'm going to do! Woo!

viridian informs me that some of the crazy-ass shit being written up in journals yesterday was for some zombie-apocalypse blogging. Well, I missed it and good, being crazy busy at work and planning to go to Best Buy with

moonlightalice and

wellgull. But y'all should be ashamed of yourselves--you're crying wolf and now nobody will believe me when I say the zombie apocalypse is coming. Fine. More not-getting-my-brains-eaten for me.

*

Speaking of Best Buy, all I need is the second season of The Simpsons and then I have the eight sets that I really want (otherwise known as "as much of the show that existed until I stopped caring, which is exactly when the X-Files episode aired, which is the best thing that ever happened and nothing could top it so I don't need anything else"). I also have all of Family Guy that's available now (which was more of a "Well, I got one set of the DVDs cheap before, why not just collect all of them?"), but I successfully resisted buying Prison Break. I just kept telling myself I didn't need it, I didn't need it, I didn't need it.

moonlightalice, more accurately, kicked my ass out of the pit of temptation by saying, "You don't even like the show." She's not wrong. I just like it for the eye candy and the crack-tacularity of its ridiculous, ridiculous plots. Besides, if I'm not going to buy all of a show (or at least a substantial subset, like with The Simpsons and Farscape), there's no point in just buying the one season (something tells me that Prison Break is never going to be one of those OMG MUST HAVE IT shows). Yes. So, even if I go to another Best Buy for that last, elusive boxset of season two of The Simpsons, I swear I am not buying Prison Break.

I better make sure

moonlightalicecomes with, though. Just to be sure.

*

Yay for folk coming over to watch Night Watch. Wow, does that movie make a lot more sense when you see it twice. Of course, I'm probably just an idiot since everyone seemed to have guessed the plot developments about an hour before they happened. Oh well. I'm still convinced that it's stunning--visually--and I can't wait for more of the same in Day Watch, an outing to which should be planned some time in the next week, I hope.

I forgot, though, how really very much I loved Anton in this movie. He's like the biggest fuck-up of all time, and everyone seems to know that and sort of plan around it, but his utter inability to do anything right trumps everyone else. It's hilarious and so, so sad that I want to hug him and pet his greasy hair and be like, "Dude, karma. You're bound to do something good...eventually."

( More spoilery thoughts on the same. )

In order to facillitate my DVD addiction, I need to find a certain website. Hence, I look to my friends for help.

Is there a website people use to check on various editions of DVD releases to pick the best one? 'Cause I am friggin' sick of the thirteen different releases for movies--each one more ultimate than the last! Anyone?

*

Can I just say, pet peeve here, as someone who is able to walk and read at the same time (without being annoying or getting in the way or tripping myself up), I really fucking hate people who go out of their way to fuck with me when I'm trying to read?

No, I'm being totally serious here. I can read and rely on my peripheral vision to guide me along and twice in the past two weeks someone (two different someones) have felt the need to throw an arm out in my way. In both cases, it wasn't because they especially needed to talk to me or get my attention: it was just to be obnoxious. Because they either assumed that I'd see them and look up (their motive being to disturb my reading) or that I wouldn't and would, I dunno, flail about or trip and fall (that being their motive). Either way? That is goddamned rude. I don't bother anyone when I walk and read. I walk around people more often than I do through them, and I'm frequently the first person to notice the other (I've had more people just wander into me than I've wandered into others while reading).

Why is this okay to do? Why does fucking with someone who is clearly enjoying something they're reading enough to multitask seem like a cool or funny thing to do? Am I in grade school? Are people going to put "KICK ME" signs on my back when they go by? Or pants me? These are fucking adults here, and they see no reason not to purposefully disturb my reading for no other reason than because they can and because I might fall on my goddamned nose or something.

GRRRRAAAAAAGH

Current Mood: annoyed

Oh noes! Four movies are going back in the Disney vault and you can never, ever have them evers!

Except, of course, that one of the movies is a direct-to-DVD sequel to Lady and the Tramp, and another is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is the first in a series and there's no way they're not re-releasing a super-super-super special edition when the next one comes out (I think they have three versions in stores already right now, I shudder to think what their boxset will look like).

So, yeah, if you're at all worried about missing your chance to own Bambi or Lady and the Tramp, go get those. If you think you need Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure, let me know. I'll come to your house and slap you until you stop wanting it.

ETA: For those of you who bought BTVS season-by-season, Best Buy has the seasons on sale for $20 right now. FYI.

ETAA(gain): FUCK! FIREFLY IS ON SALE FOR $20! I guess I'll be waiting a bit longer to pick up the next season of Doctor Who. Heeeeeee!!!! I have something to spend my Best Buy monies on!!!

*

In other news, I defy any of the ID'ers that exist to explain to me why, if evolution is bunk, the thin covering of bacteria overgrowth at the top of my flask looks, smells, and feels like algae (which are evolutionary cousins)? It was kinda fun to play with, actually. Mmm, bacteria. Now, I go get lunch. And hope to hell those gloves kept all the nasty gunk out.

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trinityvixen

February 2015

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Oh noes! How will I ever afford this!?!
Tips from the girl who used to work at Blockbuster
Someone be proud of me?
It's true, I am insane.
WTF? Where is xannoside when I need him!??
Martha Stewart, eat your heart out
Oh no...
The damage
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Nice try, Disney

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The Rabbit Hole

Walking Right Side Up

Entries tagged with dvds

Oh noes! How will I ever afford this!?!

Tips from the girl who used to work at Blockbuster

Someone be proud of me?

It's true, I am insane.

WTF? Where is xannoside when I need him!??

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out

Oh no...

The damage

(no subject)