Are Xtravision cutting down on movie availability?

Archeron

Just wondering if this is a nationwide thing.
My own local Xtravision used to be kind of okay for its stock of movies, but over the past few months I've noticed that the choice of movies has gotten really crappy.
Used to be that the whole shop was rentals, but now when you go in, there is one wall of movies for rent. Half of that is new releases, and the other half is a "family favourites" stock of relatively new films on cheap rental. All the older films are gone now, and 2/3 of the store is now dedicated to selling DVD's, Games, CD's and phones. A bit disappointing not to be able to get many old films to rent anymore.

Anyone else find the same thing, or is my local Xtravision just doing something unique? Used to take an hour to browse the rentals in those stores, now you're in and out in two minutes.

Edit, I'm in Meath BTW.

prendy

ya iv noticed it too...over the last 18months they'v become more interested in selling than rentals.

blah

I'm surprised they haven't gone into business sending dvds by post a la busybeedvd or netflix. I use lovefilm.co.uk and couldn't tell you where my local dvd rental place is if I tried. It looks like xtra vision won't last, the one near my parents house in Clontarf is now an Insomnia Coffee place.

shoutman

I think with the likes of Sky box office and that movie rental places have just become unneccesary for a lot of people, thats why you have blockbusters turning into a tanning salon/internet cafe.

It is quite frustrating though that when you go to xtravision looking for something thats not on telly that they dont have it. I went up looking for the bourne identity and 28 days later and they didnt have either of them. Nor did they have Saw 3 on normal dvd, they only had it on blue ray.

Red Alert

Once chartbusters opened in ballinteer xtravision appeared to be finished.

pinkypinky

I worked in Xtravision in 2001 and even then there was a major shortage of "back catalogue" - they were only interested in the new releases. I actually used to bring videos to work to watch because they had nothing old that we could have playing in the background!

muletide

Good riddence Xtravision went on a campaign in the early 90's to run every small family run video out of town. Good to see them suffer

Lawless_Samurai

My Xtra Vision has a pretty wide range of old dvds. OP is the Xtra Vision in Meath you're talking about relatively small. Maybe they got rid of some of there stock because they had no room

Lord Deco

3mb internet connections,rapidshare,megashares etc have killed xtravision and co....€4 per night when you can buy the dvd for €13 is not on either..I only ever go in there to rent games

Neamhshuntasach

My mate works in the Xtra Vision in Finglas. I was only talking to him about this around a week ago. He said that Xtra Vision have plans to get out of rental altogether. Nearly all of their revenue comes from retail. That's why a lot of the stores have expanded in consumer electronics and they began opening larger stores.

liger

Yeah i think its to do with the need to change the business to reflect against the market, like people have pointed out, sky box office is just as cheap as going to the video shop and to rent a movie for one night at €5.25 when you can buy the did to keep for €20 on release or €10 a couple of weeks later means these days peope buy more than rent. Thus xtra-viion is doing the smart thing, closing smaller shops where selling wont take off and cutting down he rental selection and incresing their for sale section.

As for closing down, i dont think thats anywhere near.

anotherlostie

Until the last month or so I hadn't rented a movie in years, prefering to buy from cdwow and the like. But now I have a PS3 and buying the Blu-Ray DVD's costs several times as much so I have rented 5 titles. I notice that my local store in Clondalkin (which survives despite a much larger Chartbusters across the road) has doubled the area given over to Blu-Ray in this time so that will prob come from standard DVD rental space too.

tvnutz

It depends on the size of the store,small stores will have a smaller selection. My store still has half the store dedicated to rental and it is a very big store. And overall the company makes more from retail than rental. In fact rental has dropped considerably in the last few years.

As for certain titles not being there it all depends on what happened to them. At one stage or another every store had very major new release. So for example recently we got about 55 copies of Spiderman 3. They all rent out for the first few weeks and then die down. Obviously you don't need that many copies anymore so every week a few of them are transferred to Previously Viewed and sold off cheaper than a new copy. So basically after several months you end up with only a few rental copies left. 2 or 3 maybe. Because that is all that will rent.

Then what happens is the copies that are left eventually either get stolen (i.e never returned) or go faulty. From my experience working there people don't give a toss about dvds that aren't that they don't own and so many dvds come back scratched and in bits. it doesn't happen to every title,but it is the reason some stores don't have certain movies. My store doesn't have 28 Days later either,although we did have 2 copies a few months ago,we had 1 copy of the first hostel movie but that's gone now as well. It's not that they never actually get these titles in or that they are cutting back.