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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated July 21, 2005 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
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Chappelle's Show: Season 2 (Uncensored!) Paramount Home Entertainment
A company known for its burgers and fries said that it is expanding a $1-per-night DVD rental pilot program after a year's test in Denver. The fast-food chain is putting automated DVD rental kiosks in restaurants in the Houston and Minneapolis areas. The service is aimed at catering to busy consumers who may be eager to grab a bite to eat and plan the evening's entertainment in one stop. The chain's move into DVD rental comes as profits in the $9 billion industry have slimmed due to intense competition. The two leading rental companies have said they would run near break-even this year and have cut prices in an attempt to quickly add subscribers to their online rental services. The fast food chain's kiosks feature the most popular 35 to 40 DVD titles, and new releases are added weekly.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) confiscated 680,000 pirate DVDs between January and March - a 41% rise on the same period last year. The Industry Trust for IP Awareness now estimates the value of the black market DVD trade - worth £600m in 2004 - to exceed £1bn within three years. Case studies suggest increased links between piracy and organised crime. Lavinia Carey, director general of the British Video Association and director of the trust, said: "Anyone who buys pirate DVDs has to open their eyes to the fact that they may inadvertently be supporting crime in their own community."
Big-name retailers are taking steps toward decreasing their stocks of VHS movie offerings in response to a fall in demand, as customers prefer DVDs, which offer superior sound and picture quality and extra features such as outtakes. "We've seen a growth in DVD [sales]," said a retail company spokesman. "It is very similar to what you saw with cassette tapes and CDs." VHS is being replaced by newer technologies including DVDs and video on demand. In the first quarter of this year, sales of new VHS entertainment tapes fell by 40% compared with the same quarter the previous year, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. Sales for new entertainment DVDs were up 20% in the same period, according to NPD.
In a first-ever move to stem overseas sales of illegally copied movies on DVD, a major film studio released the DVD for a recent film in China on the same day it debuted in U.S. theaters. The release illustrates the lengths to which Hollywood's motion picture studios are going to curb video and DVD piracy that they say costs some $3.5 billion a year in lost revenue. Typically, a movie would first play in theaters and several months later, the videotape or DVD would be sold in stores or made available for rent. But advances in digital technology have allowed people to make good-quality, illegal copies of movies and rapidly ship them around the world via the Internet. The studio estimates there are as many as 100 million video and DVD players installed in Chinese homes, and the studios want to tap that market.
A group representing the Japanese content industry of films, music, comics and games said its antipiracy measures taken jointly by local law enforcement authorities resulted in the seizure of 707,709 pirated Japanese items in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between January and April this year. The Content Overseas Distribution Association said it investigated 994 stores in the three economies, including shops exclusively selling pirated Japanese DVDs and other items. The probe led to the arrest of 59 people, it added. Major Japanese content makers previously investigated the distribution of their pirated goods individually, but they set up the umbrella group in 2002 and began joint investigation with local police and customs authorities in other Asian economies to reduce the Japanese firms' costs and procedural burden. According to data compiled by the Cultural Affairs Agency, 84% of Japanese content products in China were pirated in 2003, causing an estimated 550 billion yen in damage.
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