As collectors I imagine most of us here enjoy owning rare and hard-to-find items. Sometimes it's obvious when a DVD is rare, maybe there was a numbered collector's edition released... but sometimes DVDs go out of print shortly after we purhcase them, and they become rare simply because they can no longer be bought in stores.

As I recently learned from THEMADCHEF in this thread, this is the case with the 2003 release of the movie 1984 which apparently now is a much sought after collector's item.

So, what I think would be a very nice feature would be a checkbox, maybe located in the "Release Information" section of Profiler, that people would click if a particular release is Out of Print.

Now... one problem I can foresee is how one would provide sources for this during a contribution process. And I have to admit I'm drawing a blank. Maybe others could chime in with suggestions for that? Would a link to an Amazon listing of the product that shows it as not being stocked anymore be good enough? Probably not...

Thoughts?

KM

I think this is a great idea.  I would love to see it implemented.  It would not only help find discs with potentially higher value it might help people get a heads up on discs on their wishlist going out of print so they can snatch before it's too late.

As far as sources go... That is a puzzler...

Sounds like a decent idea... but what about titles that go out of print... and then back in print after so long. Sounds like a field that could easily go back and forth.

Providing accurate sources for this concept is dubious at best. Typically even retailers do not have access to this information, there are, notable such as Disney who publicly announcement retirement of titles, but MOST distributors do not provide that information, titles quietly come and go. The reason of rthis is from their viewpoint, there is very little they can do with it, it is not going to affect their pricing, nor in 99% of the titles is it going to make them scramble to make sure they can remain in stock. I think it is a great idea, I use my tags for it and have for years, because I recognize the nature of it and the difficulty to provide backup sources to a claim of OOP and i am not interested in providing or accepting data that cannot be reliably sourced. I suppose you could send inquiries as to status to the Distributors but whether they would respond or not is unknown.

Skip

Terry:

As with anything I would not lean on just one site to try and document OOP. I did do quick scan of their list, I didn't sse anything which I believe to be errantly entered there, BUT I did notice MANY titles which should be there but are not.

But as with anything else the more support the better and I would also not use Amazon, since there is an association between the site you listed and Amazon, I would be looking for INDEPENDENT datasources.

Skip

I think this is something best left outside the core program.  You can still maintain the information as a group (already done with headshots, movie awards, episode guides, etc.).  It can be very difficult to demonstrate if something is OOP, and would be even harder outside of R1.

Quoting skipnet50:

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Providing accurate sources for this concept is dubious at best. Typically even retailers do not have access to this information, there are, notable such as Disney who publicly announcement retirement of titles, but MOST distributors do not provide that information, titles quietly come and go. The reason of rthis is from their viewpoint, there is very little they can do with it, it is not going to affect their pricing, nor in 99% of the titles is it going to make them scramble to make sure they can remain in stock. I think it is a great idea, I use my tags for it and have for years, because I recognize the nature of it and the difficulty to provide backup sources to a claim of OOP and i am not interested in providing or accepting data that cannot be reliably sourced. I suppose you could send inquiries as to status to the Distributors but whether they would respond or not is unknown.

Skip

Well put Mr. Net 50

Quoting Katatonia:

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Quoting Addicted2DVD:

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Sounds like a decent idea... but what about titles that go out of print... and then back in print after so long. Sounds like a field that could easily go back and forth.

I agree, and it can flip-flop with some studios. For example; many Troma DVD releases suddenly went out of print (and sold on ebay for hot $$$), and then subsequently came back into print 3-6 months later. They utilized the same UPC codes and artwork, no alterations.

That is what I thought... and I am sure there are more examples that have done the same. I could be wrong... but don't something like this happen with Disney Movies (Skip?) Where they go "Back into the Vault" for a certain amount of time?

while i agree this could be useful... it is hard to provide proof, and is more of a local thing... tags would suffice...

also the issue of movie studios re-issueing titles with same upc code causes problems... until of course we can get more then one title per UPC...

so... either thats a feature request in itself, or this is something that i would like to see added with that functionality.