Tuesday, January 17, 2006

How to build up your DVD collection on a budget...

If you live in the UK, the answer is simple - buy the weekend newspapers.
For the last few years, the National press in the UK has been offering (and competing with other papers in the scale of what they are offering) various 'free gifts' ranging from CD's of unsigned music acts and PC Game demos through to double CD sets of 'classic' music by big name stars to full length DVD's of older films.
Some in the media thought that this trend would die down, especially as Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International (which owns The Times, The Sun and The News of The World - all of which have issued more than their fair share of CD's and DVD's in the last few years!)announced that he didn't like the giveaways - an item in The Independent last weekend (which itself gave away two 'Arthouse' film DVD's) noted that the average cost to the newspaper per DVD was 30p - a lot, given the cover price of the papers range from 40p to £1.60, and especially considering that the freebies don't encourage a lot of brand loyalty - many people (including me) just buy the paper that has the freebie they want, and don't bother whn there is no freebie.
However, in just the first three wees of 2006, there have been 7 Movie DVD's, 4 'Classic TV Show' DVD's and a couple of audio CD's (and that is not including the discs where one has to redeem a coupon from a weekday newspaper - there are two offers of this sort running at the moment that I am aware of!) with more to come next weekend (The new, Berliner sized Observer is offering "Dune" on Sunday, and the aforementioned News of The World is apparently going to have "Highlander" on the same day - two cult favourite SF themed movies competing against each other!)
I set up, just for something to do, a webpage 'gallery' of the DVD's I had received - so far, I've only put up the Film DVD's I've found in newspapers, though I plan to add sections for TV Show discs and music CD's. I didn't think I'd be updating it very often - but it looks like it's going to be a weekly revision from now on!
(there is a link to the page in the subject of this entry!)
Au Res.,
Paul

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