With DVD sales plummetting anyway, Fox has decided to shoot itself in its pants (I think ‘shooting itself in the foot’ fails to cover how dumb this is) by trying to sell two versions of DVDs now; fully packed versions for consumers, and barebones, film-only editions for the rental markets, including libraries.
They are trying to control this by sending only the rental versions to the distributors that these institutions buy from, but needless to say, this will immediately backfire. (Which of course actually threatens the distributor’s sales and livelihoods.) I’ve spoken to the woman who buys our DVDs at the library here, and she says there’s already a movement to simply boycott buying Fox DVDs until this blows over. Of course, we can work around it anyway, for if there’s a film we really need, we can buy it from a regular commercial source, like Amazon or Wal*Mart. I imagine Netflix et al will do the same.
Speaking of, one of Fox’s first experiments in this regard involves the discs for the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, and Fox has already screwed the pooch by accidentally shipping Amazon the rental versions. Amazon wisely is throwing the matter back on them, so that irate consumers have to work through Fox to get their replacement copies. I hope these folks are properly cheesed off and let Fox know how much they like it.
