I was a fairly early adopter of Blu-Ray technology when it came out, incorporating it into a HTPC (home theater PC) I was building at the time. The resulting experience was full of troubleshooting and researching fixes. When it finally seemed to work, something else would stop working a week later. But after all the hard work it was satisfying getting that HD picture onto my TV and have 5.1 channels of surround sound blasting out the speakers. In hindsight I would have saved a lot of time by getting a dedicated player, but I guess I got a lot of experience investigating and finding out what was wrong.
I bring all this up because one of the habits I garnered from this was checking out an ongoing thread at a home theater online forum on sales of Blu-Ray discs. These movies are expensive. We're talking $40 MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) for new releases. Granted, stores do not generally sell products at their MSRP, meaning prices for the titles were more in the $25-$30 range at brick and mortar stores or $20-$25 for e-tailers like Amazon.com. Even this price is too high for me (I will say that I bought Iron Man the day it came out though). So for someone like me, buyers have two choices: buy used, or wait for a ludicrous sale. Stores often run buy one get one free sales or have random coupons floating around to bring disc prices significantly down. Being patient and researching has allowed me to get most of my high-definition movies at an average cost of about $13. When you think that a movie ticket to a theater is almost that much, it really isn't that bad of a deal.
So while I'm very patient and can wait and shop around for the titles I want, every once in a while a third option pops up: retailer error. I was able to get The Rock for $5 because the Best Buy ad mistakenly listed it at $15 (probably for the DVD version), and the Blu-Ray version came with a $10 mail in rebate. Most recently, Amazon.com listed the upcoming Blu-Ray release of Star Trek: First Contact at an erroneous price of $9.99. The good news is that Amazon.com will honor the prices of their products on orders, so I was able to get a pre-order in before they fixed their error.
First Contact is not just one of my favorite Star Trek movies, but probably one I would put in my overall list of top ten movies. While many people thought Star Trek was too nerdy before the recent summer blockbuster reboot, First Contact is a solid movie because it takes
"Yo David, I'm - I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of the best Star Trek movies of all time. One of the best Star Trek movies of all time."
I bring all this up because one of the habits I garnered from this was checking out an ongoing thread at a home theater online forum on sales of Blu-Ray discs. These movies are expensive. We're talking $40 MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) for new releases. Granted, stores do not generally sell products at their MSRP, meaning prices for the titles were more in the $25-$30 range at brick and mortar stores or $20-$25 for e-tailers like Amazon.com. Even this price is too high for me (I will say that I bought Iron Man the day it came out though). So for someone like me, buyers have two choices: buy used, or wait for a ludicrous sale. Stores often run buy one get one free sales or have random coupons floating around to bring disc prices significantly down. Being patient and researching has allowed me to get most of my high-definition movies at an average cost of about $13. When you think that a movie ticket to a theater is almost that much, it really isn't that bad of a deal.
So while I'm very patient and can wait and shop around for the titles I want, every once in a while a third option pops up: retailer error. I was able to get The Rock for $5 because the Best Buy ad mistakenly listed it at $15 (probably for the DVD version), and the Blu-Ray version came with a $10 mail in rebate. Most recently, Amazon.com listed the upcoming Blu-Ray release of Star Trek: First Contact at an erroneous price of $9.99. The good news is that Amazon.com will honor the prices of their products on orders, so I was able to get a pre-order in before they fixed their error.
First Contact is not just one of my favorite Star Trek movies, but probably one I would put in my overall list of top ten movies. While many people thought Star Trek was too nerdy before the recent summer blockbuster reboot, First Contact is a solid movie because it takes
"Yo David, I'm - I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of the best Star Trek movies of all time. One of the best Star Trek movies of all time."... huh.
No comments:
Post a Comment