Why are porn DVD's so expensive?

Author	Post
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 24 2002 : 5:55PM Why is it that hollywood makes a 150 million dollar movie and you can buy the DVD for $18? Then you have a porn movie that I venture to say costs No more then 40 thousand to make and yet the charge $25 for the DVD? This doesn't really make any sense to me. [Link]
DenverDon Benevolent Firmly Embedded in Depravity 5914 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 24 2002 : 5:58PM Economics of Scale. Mainstream market is a larger market than the porn market. Also, the DVD's for the mainstream stuff is only a secondary income market - the main, and first, market is the theatres. DenverDon [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 24 2002 : 6:06PM At $40,000 to make a movie, you don't have to sell too many to pay for itself. Everyone involved in a the movie is way underpaid from what I have heard. So how do they justify the high price? [Link]
DenverDon Benevolent Firmly Embedded in Depravity 5914 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 24 2002 : 7:40PM mrpeepers, Again, Economics of Scale. If you order a DVD run of say 5,000, you will get one price. But if you order a run of 500,000 to a million, you will get a bulk rate pricing that is usually much less. I just checked my database for my porn DVD's and I am paying an average much closer to the $20 to $21 dollar range per DVD, not the $25 you stated. That being the case, the $18 for a mainstream Hollywood DVD is far more overpriced than the porn DVD at $20-21. DenverDon [Link]
Saki At-Large 2087 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 24 2002 : 8:25PM DD pretty much sums it up. There's a lower economy of scale. There's no box office receipts (that was the only reason why 70's porn was shot on film -- there were actual theaters and foreign distribution to pay for the increased costs). Smaller studios have to front all of the costs for a movie with little guarantee that it will do well at all. Some even have to rely on the previous video's receipts to fund the next one. DVD authoring and mastering is additional expense above and beyond the VHS release, especially if it includes extras. Then there's marketing (full color ads in AVN aren't cheap). Plus, if you take into consideration the wholesale costs from the studio to the distributors, there's not more than a few bucks profit to the studios. If there's profit to be made, it's in the distribution or retail channels. - Saki [Link]

Rumplestilt Skin Deactivated User 931 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 25 2002 : 10:06AM I always go for the best buys. I would never pay more than $20 for a movie. I've seen movies like a Girl's Affair for as little as $9 - AND AS MUCH AS $34. That's crazy...someone's making bucks out of thin air. The advice is, shop around. Edited by - Rumplestilt Skin on 10/25/2002 10:08:24 AM [Link]
HoustonDon Member Houston 561 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 25 2002 : 2:34PM Rump, I used to buy according to cost as well but later found out what I was missing. By limiting yourself to under $20, you cut out some of the very best companies on the market. Luckily, ADT's pricesearch helps us save money. Yay Drew & Steph! [Link]
tricia_devereaux Evil Angel DVD Patience is a virtue, but who wants to be virtuous? 4283 Posts 4/00	Posted - Oct 25 2002 : 3:07PM Say each studio profits an average of $10 per DVD they sell out their door. If the cost of that movie was indeed $40,000, they would BREAK EVEN at 4000 pieces. For average adult studios, that's an exceptional sale. For each EXTRA 1000 pieces, they actually profit $10,000. WOW! Yeah, they're raking in the big bucks, now!!!! Granted, these are averages, and some studios do better and some actually do worse. The thing to keep in mind to answer your original point is that it's impossible to compare mainstream and porn sales. A $10 profit on each of 100,000 units of a Hollywood DVD means $1,000,000 in sales profit. Since many Hollywood movies do indeed cover their costs in the box office, that's a million dollars in profit. And the adult company makes $10,000 to $50,000 in profit. [Link]
ThighMaster Member 169 Posts 1/02	Posted - Oct 25 2002 : 11:24PM mrpeeepers , who is that a picture of in your profile box? Is that Chasey Lain? What movie is it from? It's a hot picture and you've got me wanting to buy it now! [Link]
Alan Smithee Member CA 17 Posts 5/00	Posted - Oct 26 2002 : 1:37PM I usually laugh at any discussion of DVDs being priced too high, having been a laserdisc consumer prior to DVD and having most of those priced at an average of $40! Regular movies on laserdisc were usually at least $35, and porn LDs (what little there were) sold for $50-60! I have noticed that the prices in "Adult" stores (places that sell nothing but porn-related stuff) are ridiculous- last time I went to one I saw some DVDs priced at $40 that I had gotten for $7 at Fry's! So I'll continue to stay away from those places, as fun as it is to laugh at all the dirty old men in there looking at the magazines :) [Link]
Rumplestilt Skin Deactivated User 931 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 26 2002 : 2:48PM @Don... Yeah, I accept your point. There have been occasions when I have bought a movie for under ten dollars and thought, "YOU ONLY GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR". Yet there are other occasions when a movie has been priced over twenty dollars and that wasn't up to much either. The point I was making is that there sometimes seems a big price difference between the SAME movie, whether good or not so good. So the advice remains: shop around before you buy. [Link]
HoustonDon Member Houston 561 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 26 2002 : 4:34PM Rumplestilt Skin wrote: @Don... Yeah, I accept your point. There have been occasions when I have bought a movie for under ten dollars and thought, "YOU ONLY GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR". Yet there are other occasions when a movie has been priced over twenty dollars and that wasn't up to much either. The point I was making is that there sometimes seems a big price difference between the SAME movie, whether good or not so good. So the advice remains: shop around before you buy. Click to expand Rump, I agree with your sentiments, I was just pointing out that having a $20 limit for a movie removes most Evil Angel (as an example) dvds from consideration. Tricia has shared with us the general pricing they charge distributors so it's unlikely that you'll find a legitimate copy of one of their hits for less unless it's used or a bootleg. Shopping around for titles will save on most companies dvds but the premium stuff has a much more limited range of prices. I have noticed that local stores often charge $50 for used porn dvds so you can see why I'm not a regular customer of theirs. [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 26 2002 : 6:30PM ThighMaster, yes that is Chasey. Don't know what movie it's from. She has always been my favorite to look at. [Link]
wetmartini Member Windy City 221 Posts 10/02	Posted - Oct 26 2002 : 8:13PM it's not even necessarily economies of scale (though to a large extent it is). the average bystander might compare typical hollywood movie budgets (most in excess of 30 million) to the typical adult film budget (guesstimating at 20K?) and think, my god, hollywood spends well over 100 times more on their productions. it's a bit harder, however, to grasp and compare the final sales of the respective groups. to say that most hollywood productions also "sell" over 100 times more than - not just most, but - every porn production would be a ridiculous understatement. i think the multiplier is actually closer to 1000 - at a minimum. in other words, more than 1,000 times more people contribute to sales and revenue for a hollywood production than for a porn production. hard to believe? maybe not once you factor in box office revenues (from domestic AND extensive worldwide releasing), merchandising, franchising, broadcast rights, rentals and finally ... DVD and VHS sales (i'm sure i even missed a few other sources of revenue for hollywood movies). the bottom line is that the ratio of cost to gross profit (or sales) for most hollywood pictures FAR exceeds that of any porn film. duh! right? just take a look and compare the size, power, influence and yearly revenues of most hollywood movie studios (Universal, MGM, etc.) to even the most successful porn studios - you get the idea. [Link]
baronorca Member Montana 528 Posts 1/01	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 12:18PM Just as a note of historical interest, my store (People's Choice Adult Book & Video in Missoula Montana) has been in business for about 18 years (beginning of the video age). Way back then, vhs videos (and beta) were priced at $89.95, now we price new releases at $39.95, so even the "dirty book stores" have been lowereing the price. BTW, the reason for the "high price" of porn is really this, it's what people will pay. Above and beyond the raw production costs, price is always based on whatever the consumer will pay. I think that porn is dirt-cheap, the real price-gougers are the bottled water companies (99 cents for a pint of water!) Karl [Link]

DenverDon Benevolent Firmly Embedded in Depravity 5914 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 12:24PM baranorca said: now we price new releases at $39.95 Click to expand They may have dropped prices, but not near enough. Also if I read your statement correctly, that is still for VHS. Even for the multiple disc DVD sets I have purchased, I haven't come close to your $39.95. But that is why I buy on-line, and not from the local brick and mortar store. DenverDon [Link]
wetmartini Member Windy City 221 Posts 10/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 2:47PM the advent of the online porn market was a huge blessing for consumers thanks to the introduction of widespread competition. prior to the internet many of us were "forced" to purchase adult material from our local bookstore - local in some cases being more than an hours drive. this lack of proliferation gave owners a niche monopoly and the power to set prices at, as Karl stated, "whatever the consumer will pay." it also doesn't help that the demand most of us have for some adult titles is relatively insensitive to changes in price (low price elasticity of demand). these two conditions combined (monopoly or cartel + low price elasticity of demand) allow sellers to set inordinately high prices - as OPEC did in 1974-75? when they raised gas prices almost tenfold. we shouldn't be too hard on the local stores however. as with most businesses their primary aim is to maximize profit; they don't benefit from economies of scale due to small markets and it's not their fault many of them had niche monopolies - in most cases local ordinance and legislators would prevent more than one adult store to be set up in a fairly large radius - often times none at all. [Link]
Rumplestilt Skin Deactivated User 931 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 2:57PM How can some leading dvd companies justify selling movies as old as 1994 for $34.00? Someone must be buying them, or else the companies would be out of business. I saw one movie (made in 1998) at dvdadvantage for $5.55, and the same skin flick for $32.00 elsewhere. Crazy price difference. It makes ya think. When I see huge prices differences like that, I don't touch the companies who are overpriced. [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 3:06PM That is exactly right Rumple. Something is wrong with that. Go look at this movie and the difference in prices Private XXX 14 . Go look at almost any DVD and you will se a Huge price difference. So how do they justify that? I don't by the fact that they are on special. It's every DVD out there. Why can it be priced from $12 to $30? [Link]
Rumplestilt Skin Deactivated User 931 Posts 7/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 3:40PM @mrpeepers.. Same with a Girls Affair. Adultdvdnow sells them for $9.99, yet I have seen them for as much as $28.00! WHAT!? And it's not as if the picture quality is exceptional. Fat Dog's picture quality often sucks, but the movies are fair. It's the same with a No Man's Land 28, starring Devinn lane; I got that for $11.95, yet another leading company is selling it for $34.00! Crazy. Edited by - Rumplestilt Skin on 10/28/2002 3:39:09 AM [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 9:04PM It's all just a big scam! We are seeing right through it. [Link]
headbanger Member 48 Posts 10/02	Posted - Oct 27 2002 : 11:45PM Yes, IMO this is somewhat of a scam, but moreso simply a naive consumer. Profit margins on adult DVDs are huge. Not to the production company as some have mentioned, but to the reseller himself. The top quality DVDs sold on most popular sites go for $20-$25. These cost the company about $8. This defies the laws of supply and demand. The adult market is one of the most highly competitive markets in existence. The means margins on a commodotized item, such as a mainstream Vivid DVD should be low. Fetishes and hard to finds fetch a premium, but realistically a company that can keep it's overhead low and should be able to price considerably lower and make it up on volume (proportionately to the mainstream market, of course). The internet greatly facilitates communication, which lends itself to price shopping and comparison, a service that exploded with the advent of the internet. I have thought about this a number of times and the only answer I have come up with is, the industry is so fragemented that there are not very many clear leaders. Hence, volume is harder to achieve and margins must be kept somewhat higher. Additionally, as has been mentioned, you can find tremendous fluctuation in dvd pricing if you look hard enough. That's a big "if". I'm sure if there's a DVD that you would like to buy, you could search places like ADT for to compare pricing, get the lowest price you can find, then go searching around the internet for some obscure site that happens to probably sell it for less than that. The question is, what premium would you pay for the convenience of going through the bigger, more reliable sites, versus spending 2 hours to "maybe" save $4. I think I've begun to ramble a bit, but I think you can get my point. [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 28 2002 : 8:14AM So the problem is getting clear now. Why is there no honest and fair priced place to order from? From what I have seen all of the play the big price game. Alot of them try to get you on shipping as well. [Link]
Janitor Retired Porno movies, sexy videos, xxx. Adult DVD Talk at your service. 6409 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 28 2002 : 9:41AM Why is there no honest and fair priced place to order from? Click to expand That's quite a leap. The stores represented here are all honest and most are fairly priced. Some stores offer some incredible deals. But just because one store has a line of titles on sale doesn't mean that the other stores are unfairly priced. Some stores get a deal on say 50 pieces of x title. So they can afford to sell that title inexpensively until they run out of those pieces. Think about how complicated it is for them to price their stuff when they brought 10 pieces in at $x and 30 in at $y and 60 in at $x. Then they also have to think about affiliate commissions, fraud screening charges, etc. Pricing is not any easy formula of x% over cost. The market isn't that big. It's expensive to run a store of any kind. With an adult store you have added expenses (legal advice/protection, more difficult to get a merchant account, more fraud, etc.) It's up to shoppers to research orders and stick with retailers you're comfortable with. This applies to all markets. [Link]
mrpeepers Member 81 Posts 8/02	Posted - Oct 28 2002 : 9:51AM I know that the stores are honest as far as shipping goes but, I feel like they are ripping people off on prices. Goto any store and lets say look for the DVD the Matrix. 99% will be within $2-3 dollars of each other. Not $10-20 difference. The problem is that every DVD listed has a Huge price difference. This also works on almost anything you buy in life. Prices are almost always very close. Just not on the porn DVD's. [Link]

Janitor Retired Porno movies, sexy videos, xxx. Adult DVD Talk at your service. 6409 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 28 2002 : 10:07AM mrpeepers - the pricing on mainstream dvds is controlled by the producers/distrubutors. this is true of many types of products. if that were the case in adult, you simply wouldn't see the great deals you do see. [Link]
snowman872 RainCoatReviews.com 400 Posts 6/00	Posted - Oct 28 2002 : 9:16PM StephDunn wrote: mrpeepers - the pricing on mainstream dvds is controlled by the producers/distrubutors. this is true of many types of products. if that were the case in adult, you simply wouldn't see the great deals you do see. Click to expand I'm not sure what you mean by this Steph. How it is that you believe mainstream dvd prices are controlled by producers and distributors? I am under the impression they have a suggested retail price just like anything else. Retailers can buy them wholesale at whatever price they can neogotiate and then resell them for whatever the market bears. Same for music CDs. Mainstream DVDs do have variences in pricing just like porn. I often see Fry's or Circuit City offering new titles for $14.99 and $15.99 when other retailers are selling the same product as much as $22.99. Walmart frequently smokes the competition as well. -- Snowman [Link]
Janitor Retired Porno movies, sexy videos, xxx. Adult DVD Talk at your service. 6409 Posts 11/99	Posted - Oct 29 2002 : 9:36AM snowman - because coop marketing dollars depend on a good relationship between the producer and the retailer. that money is necessary to compete in that market. if a retailer didn't meet MAP (min. advertised price) pricing then they don't get that money. there isn't any formal MAP pricing in porn. some porn retailers have no contact with producers at all. and there are only informal means of coop marketing dollars. [Link]
snowman872 RainCoatReviews.com 400 Posts 6/00	Posted - Oct 29 2002 : 12:55PM StephDunn wrote: snowman - because coop marketing dollars depend on a good relationship between the producer and the retailer. that money is necessary to compete in that market. if a retailer didn't meet MAP (min. advertised price) pricing then they don't get that money. there isn't any formal MAP pricing in porn. some porn retailers have no contact with producers at all. and there are only informal means of coop marketing dollars. Click to expand I'm aware of co-op marketing opportunities, but I'm not sure they are as influential as you are implying. I've worked for large retail chains that sold music and movies and I never got the sense they were worried about meeting minimum advertised price standards as you mention. The co-op advertising deals are usually only going to affect a small number of titles, and many large retailers are going to run very large and expensive advertising campaigns week in and week out whether or not the cost is offset in small part by a Hollywood studio company. I saw co-op advertising used most with breaking music artists in special newspaper ads (as opposed to inserts) the company really wanted to push. All and all, I would think that Warner Brothers and Fox need Walmart's cooperation more than the other way around. Also, many retailers are going to move massive amounts of mainstream movies with little or no advertising -- think about Costco, BJ's and Sam's Club. And web retailers might not advertise at all. They wouldn't be worried about co-op advertising dollars. If movie studios really held that kind of power over retailers, it would amount to constructive illegal price fixing. They might find themselves the subject of an Justice Department antitrust suit. -- Snowman Edited by - snowman872 on 10/29/2002 12:55:32 PM [Link]