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Originally Posted by SMHarman
A Rental DVD is more expensive (significantly) than a retail disk. Back in the 80's a friend of mine was so desparate for a copy of top gun he bought it the day it went rental, that VHS cost him £80! Prices have fallen since then and the movie houses have worked toward a commission based system, so you pay per rental, not to buy the disk outright (this is why you could not rent Warner from Blockbuster last year, they were arguing about this contract). I would think that 25 cycles is break even and 50 is what they want to get out of a disk at a minimum.
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I have been informed today by mailbox movies that the DVD rental disks cost around £40 when they are new releases and after around 2 to 3 weeks come down to £15.
http://dvd.mailboxmovies.com/welcome
Thus in order to keep costs down these people show new releases as 'coming soon' until they can buy them in bulk at the lower price. The benefit for the customer is that (in theory) lower costs means they can have more copies available or lower subscription prices.
What you'll find though is that most people who rent by mail have new releases at the top of their list and want to see them within the first week of release!