Fox appears to be loosening a policy that strips special features from rental DVDs, letting rental outlets buy the full-featured version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Officially, Fox hasn't changed any policies, and refused to comment on the matter, Video Business reports. But distributors say the studio isn't pushing the issue.
For rental outlets, there's no incentive to request the feature-free version over the sell-through copy, because it costs the same and has lower resale value down the line. Short of accusing rental buyers of lying, distributors say enforcement is proving difficult.
Compare that to Blu-ray movies, which include a digital copy at retail, but not in the rental version, and it's easy to see why buyers are abiding by the rules: Why give rental customers a copy they can keep?
This is the latest setback in the plan to increase Fox's DVD sales. The program also suffered some early fits as Fox's distributors accidentally sent featureless rental DVDs to Amazon.com, and rental stores received copies with the bonus content included.
The only incentive for rental stores to go with the featureless copy is to participate in a revenue share agreement, handled by a company called Rentrak. However, one retailer says he and others are finding it advantageous to forgo that agreement so it can offer full-featured DVDs to its customers.
I've been following this issue with great interest, as the more I think about it, the more misguided it seems. Selling rental shoppers a limited movie does nothing but punish the customer, and it hurts the seller as well. Earlier, I wondered if the plan would backfire because rental outlets would be stuck with second-rate DVDs, and that's exactly what is happening.
In May, Disney jumped on board with the tiered DVD plan as well. Let's hope they get the notion from Fox that it's not working.
