The DVDs that get reviewed here, why so early?

[Wonderlicious]

I've just been wondering about this...on this site and other DVD websites, the reviews of discs yet to be released appear a week or two before they hit stores. My question is, where do these DVDs come from? Do you have to pay for them? Do you get to keep them?

[RJKD23]

I wonder too..

but I'm glad they do the reviews early! Helps in the blind buy!
So thank you Luke, Aaron, and those who contribute to the reviews.

P.S. Please answer Joe's question. I'm curious too.

[deathie mouse]

UD being member of the Elite Press , and other review sites get advance copies so they may do a review that may help promote the sales of a DVD. If they got the DVDs from the stores the day of release, by the time they watched them and wrote the review lots of people would have bought it so there would be a lesser need for reviews, and/or many people that would have bought the DVD if they knew the contents would hesitate, not knowing anything about the DVD, and buy something else.

Also Luke has a DeLorean time machine and sometimes goes Forward to the Past in his orange tights and grabs a copy and types at Incredible speed while the clock hands are moving backwards so you get the reviews even before the discs are mastered in Burbank

so.. yeah..

[AwallaceUNC]

^ what deathie said (about the DeLorean). On his way back from the future, he occasionally drops a few over my house.

Okay, so maybe deathie's first explanation was the correct one. Sometimes they come pretty close to release date though, as was the case with the 3/22 preschool DVDs, but that seems to be the exception.

The same thing happens with music, books, etc (for other press outlets, that is, as we obviously don't have book reviews and the like here). It's routine and a pretty smart idea on the part of the distributors.

-Aaron

[orestes.]

Video stores get copies early too. Back in the summer I was staying at some friends place and since she worked at Blockbuster we were watching movies about a week before they were to be put out for rental.

[AwallaceUNC]

Yeah, nearly all retailers get their copies early, but of course they aren't allowed to open or sell them until the release date. That's not to say it doesn't happen.

-Aaron