Original TV Series That Are Not In Production Anymore

Gidday Everyone

Well it has been a while since I posted here and so I thought I would pop in to discuss a serious issue regarding the sale of TV Series DVDs.

Recently I have been searching for the Australian Medical Drama; All Saints DVDs - There were 12 Seasons in the Series, it ran from 1998 to 2009. It would seem that the production company no longer distribute this series.

Another TV series I loved was Melrose Place, now I am having no dramas finding the early seasons, but Season 6 and 7 seem impossible to find at a decent price. I have been trying to find this one for years. I got lucky last week and found Season 2 at a second hand DVD and music store in Tuggeranong. Any resident of Canberra knows where I am probably referring to. I am now off there tomorrow for another look see and if I find more rare gems, I will be putting these on laybuy. Yes, this store does laybuy. Can you believe it. Not many shops do anymore, because everyone has credit cards. Well, not me, not anymore.

When something is hard to find, where do we go, obviously we look online. This is what I have been doing for the past few weeks and also putting a few items up for sale on Ebay and Gumtree. I have noticed while surfing online that some auction sites and trading sites are allowing sellers to offer pirated material for sale. A full series of a certain TV show has been copied to discs or an external HDD. I messaged one seller to clarify what I suspected. I do not think these websites should be letting these individuals get away with this. I have already contacted a few of these sites, however I have not had a response from their management.

I was shocked to see someone doing this on Ebay a couple of weeks ago, so I have made a note to check this out and make sure I am correct before I let Ebay know about it.

This takes money out of the pockets of the company who produce the DVDs, and the reason the DVDs go out of production is because of piracy, people are happier to pay a cheaper price for a copied TV Series or movie trilogy or whatever and this affects the bottom line, it is why the DVDs for these particular TV shows are not available in the shops. You can get Melrose Place, but only up to Season five. All Saints has not been seen in the shops for years. The shops stop ordering them because people are resorting to piracy, and getting these shows a lot cheaper. Once they go online to be downloaded, this is when DVDs are a reasonable price. Why can't they just be affordable, then people would not pay for pirated material.

And what of the actors and writers, they can forget about getting any royalty income from these DVDs. The productions department really need to consider releasing the DVDs and pricing them so everyone in the market can afford them. Perhaps this would help stop piracy sales if these TV series and certain movies were available on DVD.

I have no problem with someone downloading a TV show episode that they missed or perhaps it comes from the US and the network will not show it in Australia for another six months. The networks do that to themselves. Most people I know who download illegally, only do it to catch their favourite show along with the overseas audience and when the DVDs are in the shops, they go and buy them.

This is what I do. My favourite shows are Person of Interest, Grey's Anatomy, and Scandal. I download these shows, simply because I do not want to be spoiled. When the DVDs come out I will go and buy them. The networks shoot themselves in the foot by waiting too long to air the US material. Their cheap, reality crap rates better. Perhaps it does, but it is costing the networks' viewers and ratings in the long run.

The older demographic do not generally like reality TV, people who are older than the target demo want more from their TV experience, basically they want to be entertained. Even the target demographic are looking for more than people cooking on TV or falling in love at first sight. Or young, twenty something kids, doingnaughty things in the pool ( Big Brother anyone)? What a waste of space that show is.

Most people in their 30's and beyond want something to stimulate their mind or at the very least want a good laugh. It is difficult enough to get good comedy. A well-written, clever show such as Person of Interest or Grey's Anatomy are not being given the respect they deserve, the network no longer listen to the viewers and free to air TV has gone to crap. Pay TV or Foxtel which is the one most Australians are subscribed to now shows ads, and costs a fortune to get the channels you want. The ads are a joke, Pay TV is meant to be ad free, so if they have to get greedy and show ad, then subscription prices should go down.

Every All Saints DVD set that I have found online, is priced out of my price range. But I will not resort to buying pirated copies of the DVDs I want. This is illegal and this is making it more impossible for people who might want to re-watch this series and enjoy it. Report these people, who are literally stealing the work of others and profiting from it. I will be back with more next time I have time to post here.

Update: 15 August 2015; it is confirmed that the Federal Government of Australia have introduced laws that can take effect immediately for the blocking of Torrent sites to begin. What's fishy about this is, this legislation came into effect almost two months ago, and not one single site has been blocked. What annoys me is, that this will cost tax payers many, many thousands of dollars and for what. Quite frankly, I would not be surprised if the Government have changed their minds.

Wow, what a bunch of idiots our Government are. Why don't they channel the thousands this will cost the Australian tax-payer and block the kiddie porn sites. That is a far more serious problem than file sharing. Innocent children are being hurt and abused everyday! Do something about that instead of chasing after people who are supposedly breaking the law because they shared a file with someone online. Please!

I will be back to say more about this state of affairs and other issues.

Till next time, take care....Jel

This rant is also posted on my blog, Jel Writes.

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