CAV Warner Home Entertainment is selling the DVD of the Leonardo Di Caprio movie The Aviator in China for the equivalent of just US$1.50, according to an FT story on MSNBC. The idea is to see if this new low price will grow legitimate sales and reduce piracy.
However, although this represents a major cut from the CAV Warner's usual ticket of around $2.75, it is, seemingly, still twice as much as most ripped-off discs cost in China.
The report says that the move by the company - established early last year as a joint venture between Warner Home Video and China Audio Video - is likely to anger western DVD buyers who currently pay $20-$30 for recently-released DVD movies.
In the short term, that may be correct but our take on this trial is somewhat different.
We see it showing that Warner is coming round to our way of thinking. We've long believed that excessively high pricing is one of the main reasons for DVD piracy in the UK and other developed countries.
Hopefully, a successful trial in China will result in similar experiments in the west - and mean that, in the not too distant future, we all pay a lot less for the latest hot movies on disc, whether from Warner or its competitors.
Of course, that might just be wishful thinking given that the movie studios have an abysmal track-record when it comes to dealing intelligently with different distribution media, including not just DVD but also VHS, Betamax, S-VHS and LaserDisc.
So, is CAV Warner's low-cost trial something you think we should get cut up about or welcome? And do you think it will make a scrap of difference to movie disc pricing in the UK and other developed countries? Tell us your thoughts over in the HEXUS.community.
