Someone at Starfleet Headquarters has clearly not been thinking straight.
Paramount have released/unleashed what they call the Ultimate Star Trek Collection, a 212 DVD Set
I don’t know which is worse, the fact that this is a blatant cash in on what is predominantly already out there, or that pre-sales of the set managed to get to a sales rank of #18,460 in the Amazon DVD charts. But is it really a rip off, or are you getting value for money?
Well, to be honest, at $2,499 it works out at $11.78 per DVD. Now that might seem good to some of you (god only knows who) but bear in mind that that’s a per DVD price, not per Season. Most of the films can be found in bargain buckets the world over, and according to one review, the box set works out at 85$ per season
So what’s in the box?
- Star Trek The Original Series: The Complete Seasons 1-3 Separate Cost: $265.99
- Star Trek The Next Generation: The Complete Seasons 1-7 Separate Cost: $583.98
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Complete Seasons 1-7 Separate Cost: $636.95
- Star Trek Voyager: The Complete Seasons 1-7 Separate Cost: $809.95
- Star Trek Enterprise: The Complete Seasons 1-4 Separate Cost: $335.99
- The 10 Star Trek feature films in two-disc special editions: Total Costs: $74.69 (Original Crew), $15.99 (Generations), $15.99 (First Contact) and $15.99 (First Contact)
- Total Cost: $2755.52
Making a total saving of $255.53. This means that if you’re a major fan, with the exception of the next generation films then you’re probably ahead, although if you find that Captain Janeway’s dulcet tones grate like chalk down a board, or that William Shatner’s ‘acting’ is just too much to cope, or even if you just think that the Enterprise series was quite frankly abysmal then it’s definately a waste. The best thing is seeing the retail price of this, $3,908.99. At that price, you’re down a staggering US$1,153.47!
Of course, if you choose the bargain bucket route (all of the DVDs had used and new equivalents far cheaper than the prices shown, with savings of hundreds of dollars on the series box sets) then it works out significantly cheaper, but you knew that already.
Which begs the question, what type of idiot would actually buy this?
Living in China, its no big deal to buy a boxed set – they usually retail at Number of DVD’s x 6RMB.
I bought Seasons 1 – 4 of Enterprise for 216RMB (9 DVD’s per season x 4 seasons x 6RMB) yesterday (freeing up a few gig of various downloaded EP’s from Bittorrent).
Thats retail price. Wholesale is less.
RMB216 (27$) vs $335.99