Rental shops join Nu Metro outcry

Looks like a couple of South Africans (or perhaps International?) guys grew up playing Monopoly too much hey?
 
This kind of behavior is what drives the piracy industry. They invoke the curse upon themselves.
 
I stopped buying Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro distributions ages ago and only purchase imported discs. They cut the subtitles out of their local distributions leaving my hard of hearing wife unable to watch the DVD. As usual approaching both companies was met by the usual 'We don't give a damn' attitude... a Proudly South African service.

As BeVonk says, they are just driving piracy even more.
 
It's not piracy that's the problem, it the huge inconvenience of renting DVD's from a store.

Firstly, you have to drive there. Then the latest DVD's you want to watch are all gone. Then when you do settle on something you've never heard of in desperation, you pay your R25 and drive home - only to find the damn disc is scratched or won't play in your DVD player/drive/laptop. So you go all the way back to the store and tell them it doesn't work. They then pop it into their super-hacked PS2 and push play. Guess what, it plays fine. A 10 second test is what they consider "working". So you shout and protest and threaten arson or deboning of their beloved pet labrador and eventually they agree to let you choose something else. You settle on something you've seen already since in all the time wasting, everything in the "new release" section is gone by now. You get home and decide you'd rather watch the etv movie. By now you've spend R30 bucks on fuel and R25 bucks on a DVD you don't really want to watch.

Then, the worst part. The next day you have to rearrange your entire shedule to return the DVD - obviously the DVD shop is in the opposite direction to work, so you have to wake up 30 minutes earlier. Or on the weekend, you have to get up early and schlep there in your pajamas.

So R60 bucks in fuel, R25 for the DVD and you didn't watch it. The whole movie rental business is broken.

I want to sit on my ass in front of my TV, press "RENT", be charged R25 bucks on my credit card and watch the latest movie down my DSL line. But thanks to Telkom's gready shareholders, that won't happen anytime soon.
 
I agree that Nu Metro is squeezing things in monopolistic way... but it is also time that Rental shop owners face the reality. DVD rentals are a fast dying business model. People used to like the convenience, but these days it is just too much of a hassle. They should move to an alternative method of distribution or should just get into the retail business. Unfortunately downloading movies is not viable in South Africa (Telkom has completely screwed up that industry), but there must be other ways of doing business.
 
MusherSA said:
I stopped buying Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro distributions ages ago and only purchase imported discs. They cut the subtitles out of their local distributions leaving my hard of hearing wife unable to watch the DVD. As usual approaching both companies was met by the usual 'We don't give a damn' attitude... a Proudly South African service.

As BeVonk says, they are just driving piracy even more.
Click to expand...

They do what?

As a hard-of-hearing person myself I am offended by that.
 
The_Librarian said:
They do what?

As a hard-of-hearing person myself I am offended by that.
Click to expand...

and they also put those insulting SAFACT anti-piracy ads at the beginning of every DVD and there is no way to skip it or turn it off... you can only Fast Forward through it.

That is like SARS forcing people who have just paid their taxes to watch a video about those who don't pay their taxes.
 
@Gaz

Re Scratched CD's:

Chatted with a Video Shop Owner once and he told me that a Video Shop Owner may not copy a Video to preserve it or attain a new "free" copy from the people he buys from when a CD is scratched and unusable. What this entails is the Video Shop Owner has to fork out another R200 to R400 or more (not sure what it costs now) for a new CD from the Supplier for a CD he essentially owns in the first place as he may not copy his Original nor get a "free" replacement from the Supplier when the CD is scratched.

I told the Video Shop Owner that the "scratch policy" made no sense and he just said that is the way it is.
Hence the amount of effort the Video Shops place into making sure the CD is not scratched when you rent them.
The whole scratched CD policy is ridiculous in my opinion as it places most of the blame on the customer when CD's get scratched which is crazy as after time CD's are going to get scratched if they are used continuously as this is the very nature of the Video Rental Business.

Surely the CD/DVD the Video Shop Owner pays a premium for is the content/data on the CD and not the CD itself?
 
BTTB said:
@Gaz

Re Scratched CD's:

Chatted with a Video Shop Owner once and he told me that a Video Shop Owner may not copy a Video to preserve it or attain a new copy from the people he buys from when a CD is scratched. What this entails is the Video Shop Owner has to fork out another R200 to R400 or more (not sure what it costs now) for a new CD from the Supplier for a CD he essentially owns in the first place as he may not copy his Original nor get a "free" replacement from the Supplier when the CD is scratched.

I told the Video Shop Owner that the "scratch policy" made no sense and he just said that is the way it is.
Hence the amount of effort the Video Shops place into making sure the CD is not scratched when you rent them.
The whole scratched CD policy is ridiculous in my opinion as it places most of the blame on the customer when CD's get scratched which is crazy as after time CD's are going to get scratched if they are used continuously as this is the very nature of the Video Rental Business.

Surely the CD/DVD the Video Shop Owner pays a premium for is the content/data on the CD and not the CD itself?
Click to expand...

This is just another money-making scheme... I would tell the buggers to sod off and rent out copies of the originals.
 
MusherSA said:
I stopped buying Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro distributions ages ago and only purchase imported discs. They cut the subtitles out of their local distributions leaving my hard of hearing wife unable to watch the DVD. As usual approaching both companies was met by the usual 'We don't give a damn' attitude... a Proudly South African service.

As BeVonk says, they are just driving piracy even more.
Click to expand...

That is just LAME - it takes effort to take those subtitles out and they DONT take up much space on the disk. Very lame and will backfire no doubt.
 
I'm sure that is what we were all saying, that the distributors are screwing over the rental outlets. They certainly did when I was involved in the business.

I still prefer watching off a disc, we have two outlets a few minutes walk away and several within a few kilometres, and we like going in not knowing what we're going to watch. It is annoying that other renters abuse the discs though.
 
The number of times I have rented and taken the disk back because it doesn't play in my machine...
What I do though is copy it in the PC and watch the copy... at least the PC can sort the bad bits with a few retries.
 
BTTB said:
Hence the amount of effort the Video Shops place into making sure the CD is not scratched when you rent them.
The whole scratched CD policy is ridiculous in my opinion as it places most of the blame on the customer when CD's get scratched which is crazy as after time CD's are going to get scratched if they are used continuously as this is the very nature of the Video Rental Business.
Click to expand...
They look at the disc, but around here it is just an empty gesture. And no discs do not get that badly scratched through normal use. They get like that because too many people are barbarians who have no concept of how to handle the discs or look after other people's property (to be these people probably abuse their own property too). It was even worse with VHS. It never ceased to amaze me how people would happily put my R400 tape into a machine filled with gunk or let their child covered in ice cream carry my tape to the counter.
 
noxibox said:
They look at the disc, but around here it is just an empty gesture. And no discs do not get that badly scratched through normal use. They get like that because too many people are barbarians who have no concept of how to handle the discs or look after other people's property (to be these people probably abuse their own property too). It was even worse with VHS. It never ceased to amaze me how people would happily put my R400 tape into a machine filled with gunk or let their child covered in ice cream carry my tape to the counter.
Click to expand...
If this is in Cape Town I can fully understand.

Same question can be asked as to why do people litter?
 
It must be, easy, 5 years since I last rented a DVD.
I have a major issue with being ripped off and treated like a criminal (SAFACT etc) when I pay for something.
May as well just pirate it and be done.
As it is, every one of the many original children's DVDs I own are copied the day they are bought - not only do they last longer, but I can remove all those insulting "You would not steal a car" "advertisements".
 
Problem with DVD rentals is also their selection. 95% of the stuff on the shelf are Z Grade movies for which i would not even pay R2. How cheated do I feel after being duped by a flashy cover and a interesting synopsis on the back cover.

Ive just given up on trying anything new at a video store.
 
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