I often pick up movies I'd like in my collection when I see them in the "cheap movies" bins at whatever local BigBox I'm at. I picked up SAINT with Val Kilmer yesterday for $5.

Does anyone know if these cheap releases are exactly the same as the orginal DVD releases of the movie? This DVD has minimal extras. Using DVD shink I rip my movies to a big external drive so I can access them over my home network. DVD shrink will compress a movie to fit on a single sided/single layer DVD recordable. It usually compresses most movies to from 40 to 80% of their original size. SAINT didn't need any compression, indicating it only filled half or less of the DVD it came on. The case also came with just a simple DVD in it, no inserts or extras.

I'm wondering if movies are repackaged to sell cheap after they've long drifted from consumers minds.

Any Opinions?

Who released it? Some companies do release inexpensive (and obscure) movies. Such as Alpha Video. On the other end of the scale is Criterion, which is anything but cheap.

I'm wondering if movies are repackaged to sell cheap after they've long drifted from consumers minds.

A lot of times these movies fall in to Public Domain. Then anyone can release them, cheap or otherwise.

Paramount is the only company mentioned anywhere on the case. Target had put their own bar code over the one on the insert so when I first searched for it using LIBRA it couldn't be found. I slipped the cover out and sure enough there was a bar code that LIBRA found right away.

Many of my original DVD purchases were loaned to folks who never returned them. So when I see a movie I knew I used to own for real cheap I usually grab it again. The cheap ones just rarely seem to come with the inserts and such that I remember from the original, although the movies look the same.

Many movies that are no longer "hot sellers", have been released for a number of years, and still have significant stock remaining usually get put into the "bargain bin"... at my local stores there's huge round displays of these provided by the studios, usually priced $5 - $8, often with a discount if you buy multiple, also usually sorted by studio (ie. Warner will be cheaper than Paramount).

I've haven't seen any volume discounts, but then I'm usually looking for new releases and only glance at the discount bins/shelves for a classic or two I recognize.