Twilight Time thread - Page 11

I'm not sure what your point actually is, but my point is that I placed an order for a small item that was in stock to be shipped from Virginia to northern Florida. The order was entered online on a Monday and was still in Virginia on Friday. If you want to consider this to be good service for a premium priced product, then we will have to agree to disagree.

Further, perhaps part of my point was lost. My problem is actually with Screen Archives, not Twilight Time directly. I began my film collecting in earnest in 1989 with laser disc. Obviously I understand limited distribution and the value of a company like TT to a film enthusiast. But, this is 2012. The Internet is not some new curiosity. The electronic marketplace is very mature. Twilight Time and their customers would be better served by a distribution infrastructure that is more mainstream.

I do not necessarily consider this to be good or exceptional service, but that is the way that it is. One of the BR's from TT actually showed up a day before the release date. Sometimes there is a delay of shipping because they do not physically have the discs to ship which I found out because I called SAE.


My understanding is that TT specifically chose SAE because of their experience in releasing limited edition CD's. If you are concerned about the delivery promptness, then call up SAE and voice your complaints. Two or three days wait is a lot better than two to four weeks that occurs frequently when the distributor is overseas.

Just dropped in to see the same arguments over TT being rehashed over, and over, and over, and over again. Why not just post a FAQ for these same, tired arguments over pricing and distribution and be done with it?

Some Twilight Time titles do not seem to generate much interest or discussion here. The Swamp Water BR is visually stunning and maybe as close as I will ever get to something akin to a nitrate print. Too bad that there wasn't a magnet for the release to add to my limited collection.

SAE also sells through Amazon as marketplace sellers. Go to Amazon and search "journey to the center of the earth blu-ray"; right now the title is the second hit, after the more recent film with the same name.

Anybody who is interested in a classical movie title on Blu-ray is almost certain to try Amazon I would think. This is as good as it gets, to coin a phrase.

It will be interesting to see how this title sells on Blu-ray. I have my own guess.

Is this title expected to sell out quickly? I'd like to see a review before I purchase.

It's currently 9th on their list of top selling titles.

What do streaming services have to do with digital copies?

They're two different animals both in how the customer receives them and in the rights involved with them. Further, as the distributer, TT would have to pay Sony to be allowed to distribute (or contract to someone like I-Tunes to distribute) a digital copy, just like they would have to pay more to get any special features that might be laying around, like featurettes and commentary.

But, as far as I know, none of those services offer Fright Night via streaming (or via Blu-ray, for that matter, for obvious reasons). So, to answer your question, yes, I'm assuming that for at least the duration of TT's contract for the movie that we won't see it anywhere else but in the last DVD pressing.

Having said that, I also have no interest in those options. My interest is in not paying special edition prices for a basic disc with no expectional features. While it's nice that it's a good transfer, that's something all the studios should be doing.

Fright Night is available for streaming on Sony's free Crackle platform.

In what though? SD or 720p?

That would be unfortunate.

Fright Night is also streaming on Amazon VOD in HD

Can't wait for Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines in a few weeks!! Been waiting for this one for quite a while.

I didn't need Fright Night, but I DO need Night of the Living Dead 1990! I'm all over it.

I checked and you are correct. I did find it hard to believe Sony would give TT exclusive rights to FN across all mediums like it seemed NetworkTV was saying.

VUDU also has the original Fright Night for streaming in 1080p.

I don't think the streaming rights have anything to do with TT at all.

More than likely, TT couldn't pay Sony enough to get them to hold back on offering the title via streaming. The fee they paid was for 3000 BD copies. That likely didn't give them any extended window on Sony holding back streaming rights.

Either way, the original issue was digital copies - which TT would be highly unlikely to offer with their titles.

This post was stating otherwise:

'So, to answer your question, yes, I'm assuming that for at least the duration of TT's contract for the movie that we won't see it anywhere else but in the last DVD pressing.'

Anyway the issue settled now.

At the time I posted that, I didn't see it being streamed anywhere and assumed TT's contract included exclusivity for all distribution, not just for the BD. Apparently, their rights dollars don't go as far as I thought.

That begs the question of how long the contract for the BD is for. 1 year, 2 years, 5? If it's up any time soon, will Sony see a potential cash grab to lure in people who missed out on the TT release (or felt the price point was too high)?

Obviously, TT wouldn't want to hurt their market by doing a re-release later, but does Sony give a rat's behind about that?

Why would Sony give a rats ass? Sony cares about making money. They're like any other business. Have to remember here that nobody has ever said these would be the absolute 'final word' for these titles on Blu-Ray. Given where the format is at, they very likely will be, but they may not be -- especially if a title sells out. TT is paying Sony and Fox for the rights to license a certain number of films, to sell a certain number of copies, in the Blu-Ray format. Once they're sold, they're sold -- once the license is up, it's up. Sony can eventually license another batch to whoever they want (or release them themselves) once the license is up -- that is, assuming they sold well in the first place and someone out there wants to do a re-issue. That's not really a "cash grab" either -- it's called smart business. If there's a market there beyond 3000 copies, they'd be wise to re-issue them, license them out, at a later date when TT's license expires or all the copies sell out (not sure necessarily how it works for TT -- could be a specific window of time or the 3000 copy allotment, or both). I mean, they're Sony's movies -- eventually the license will run out one way or another and they can again do whatever they want with them.

Again, it's similar to the business model involved with limited edition soundtrack CDs. Independent labels license titles from major studios for a set number of copies. Sometimes once they're sold, and/or a set amount of time has passed, another label will re-issue another round. All depends on the specific title and how the license goes. There are no guarantees, no promises on any of this however -- but common sense is that if a title can't sell 3000 units, there's almost no chance you'd ever see it again. I'm also guessing it's much more expensive to license the films themselves as opposed to just the music, which is why the prices are $10 higher than the standard $20 going rate for limited edition soundtracks (that, plus pressing on BD media is likewise more expensive).
Edited by DM2006RI - 6/15/12 at 8:37am

Well, it really depends on whether they want to risk buring bridges with TT. If TT can't be assured that their limited editions that are popular enough to sell out will actually continue to be limited editions, they may reconsider whether they should do business with other studios instead. A lot of great movies are still sitting in vaults at other studios. Sony isn't the only source for entertainment.

If this is truly a business model Sony intends to pursue, they would do well not to undercut it. The question is, are they thinking that far ahead or just to the next quarterly earnings?

I think everyone understands that if there is a large amount of interest in a particular title, that the studio may wish to consider a wider release of their own. The question some here have is whether TT's selling mechanism is a good metric for demand. Further, there's a question as to whether Sony cares about customer trust in the collectabilty of a limited release or, for that matter, whether they plan to simply take the license fee and run regardless of potential demand.
In this case, FN did sell out.

The question is, would a re-release of the exact same basic disc do as well direct from Sony at this point?

Propably not in the same short time as TT does because of the limited model. But unfortunately, as with many other businesses today, this is nothing more than short-time business without the will/thinking of long time profits.

More importantly, common sense tells us that sales figures of a product sold only online through a single vendor operating a virtually unknown website are absolutely meaningless.

I remain dumbfounded that there exists a small number of people who think that Twilight Time/Screen Archives sales figures have ANY relevance to the real world of home video.

People keep trying to draw some conclusions from Twilight Time numbers and it's a laughably pointless exercise in futility.

It does?

I agree with Dex's assertion. It isn't even a condemnation of Twilight Time per se... but a recognition of reality.

When you have a single vendor selling online only, it is almost impossible to extrapolate any real data from that. How many people visit that Web site? How many people search Amazon for those particular movies at the right time?

Then... How many people looked in their retail stores or other online stores? How many people would have bought IF it were on the retail store or Web site they visited?

You can't answer questions for options that aren't given.

It would be like walking into a hospital waiting room and concluding that everyone in town must be sick because everybody you saw today was sick and in the hospital! You simply can't extrapolate the conclusion from the limited data set.

Is it possible that many of these Twilight Time releases wouldn't sell very well? Sure. In fact, I've gone on record elsewhere as saying the upcoming Enemy Mine release probably fits their model because for as much as I like the movie I can't find many other people who have heard of it and it was almost impossible to find on DVD when that was released... so I can't argue for 100% certain how sales would vary... but I can agree and argue that Twilight Time's sales figures can't be used to extrapolate success or failure for anyone else but Twilight Time.

Sales of Fright Night for them was a sellout, so thus the best possible success for them... a non-sellout is a marginal failure depending on how many unsold copies there are and how many they have left after say a year... but neither scenario says anything about the greater buying public. For all we know Fright Night would have sold exactly 3000 copies worldwide IF released elsewhere (though I doubt it wouldn't have sold more)... and perhaps one of the titles Twilight Time has struggled to move might have sold like gangbusters at retail. There's no real way to know.

Look at something like John Carter... the recent Disney movie that pretty much tanked at the box office, then it turns around and was the #1 selling title for its week of release. That can happen because there are a lot of people (like me) who don't even bother with theaters but will impulse buy new releases even if we've heard bad things about them.

Good show. It takes a big man to say he was wrong.

I hope Sony does not give a rat's ass since it's now OOP.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH & MYSTERIOUS ISLAND are under 500 copies left.

Glad I got my copy of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Great transfer, all things considered. (And the perfect antidote to the Dwayne Johnson version.