Friday , March 29 2024

Disposable DVDs Trashed

It may be gauche to say “I told you so,” but we did, here and here: $7 is way too much to charge for a DVD that self-destructs after 48 hours. The sales pitch is to avoid late fees, but at $7 the late fee is already part of the price – muy estupido and greedy. These puds could all do themselves a big favor by reading Blogcritics.

So anyway, the disposable DVD experiment is going poorly:

    About 20 H-E-B grocery stores in the Austin area sold the EZ-Ds, vacuum-sealed movies that, once opened, play for 48 hours before a chemical reaction on the surface of the discs renders them unplayable.

    Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of Disney, has been test marketing the product since September. More than 30 movies are now available in the disposable format, including Chicago, Freaky Friday and The Waterboy. The discs sell for about $7.

    H-E-B stores will stop selling the EZ-Ds in the next two or three weeks, according to Susan Ghertner, environmental affairs manager for the grocery chain.

    Ghertner said the decision was not made for environmental reasons; rather, company officials “made the decision strictly on sales.”

    “It just wasn’t a good fit for us,” she said. “It didn’t turn out to be an item that our customers were looking for.”

    ….The disposable movies are currently available in three other markets around the country: Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; and Peoria and Bloomington, Illinois. Stores that sell the movies include 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Winn-Dixie, Sam Goody and Cub Foods, among others.

    Last October, Wired News surveyed a handful of stores that sell the EZ-D and found that the product hadn’t really caught on with shoppers. [Wired]

At $4 each, or $3-for-$10 they might have a chance but you’d have to be smart to try that, and clearly those involved are not.

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

Check Also

CES LG

CES 2023: LG Electronics Wins Dozens of Awards

LG Electronics won dozens of awards at CES for technology that links your world from your home, to your car, and to work. And Fido is part of it, too.