And home movies come alive

People prefer to rent or buy DVDs and watch movies at home these days

And home movies come alive

People prefer to rent or buy DVDs and watch movies at home these days.

The home video business has improved by nearly 30 per cent in the last few weeks.

And they have the recession and producers-multiplex owners impasse to thank for it.

People can't go to watch movies in multiplexes. Nor are they keen to these days as everyone is cost cutting.
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Instead, they are opting to rent DVDs from parlours such as BigFlix and 70MM or buy them off-the-shelf and watch movies at home with their families.

Besides, it works out much cheaper to be a member of one of these outlets for a mere Rs 300 and watch 30 movies a month rather than spend the same on just one ticket at a multiplex. Going out with families to watch movies works out to minimum Rs 1000 on a weekend.

Little wonder then Ramaraju, city head operations, BigFlix, Bangalore, says there's been an overall nearly 25 per cent increase in movie rentals in the first week of May only. He said across the country their stores have seen 15-20 per cent growth in movie rentals. "Earlier members used to take about six to eight movies a month but now it has gone up to 10-12 per month," Ramaraju told MiD DAY.u00a0u00a0

He attributes this increase to the ongoing summer vacations and the current multiplex-distributors strike.

Sunil, general manager, 70MM, Bangalore said their store too has seen nearly 30 percent growth in video rentals. "People have stopped going to multiplex these days. They prefer home videos."

He said his customers have also increased. "Especially after the recession, our business has gone up."u00a0 He said he has also seen small video parlours shutting down, probably because of raids as they sell pirated videos. That has brough a sizeable to crowd to more credible parlours like theirs, he believes.

Dharmendra Sharma, a businessman who loves watching movies said, "It has become very difficult to spend so much and watch movies in theaters now. It's better to buy DVDs or rent them." He says on weekends he buys DVDs and watches movies with his family at home.

Manjunath Kumar, who owns a video parlour in Koramangala said, "In the last two months the business has gone up. I get more customers coming and buying and renting movie CDs/DVDs."