I have received many emails questioning the state of the forum. Well, as you may know, our site received a pleasant Christmas gift from a hacker who decided to usurp the forum for their own political interest. If you happen to see it, it was quite unattractive and had an overall bad form and presentation.

At any rate, we have reclaimed it as our own. But it has not been restored to a presentable state, despite the fact, in all its bareness, it is fully functional. But it is a sore spot with me and I have been going back and forth about what I want to do with it. It is free to maintain, but the time is more costly than anything else. The information in the past 6 months have not been backed up and the postings have become less and less. Perhaps related to the DVD industry, or just no time to post or whatever the reason.

So, in light of this, I am not sure what the next step for the site is in terms of its reconstruction. There is call for the forum back, but I am on the fence about maintaining the forum at this point. I am interested in making it easier to just have a comment section for the articles, but I dont post enough articles for people to post new or relevant comments. And people are generally too busy to create an article themselves. A "facebook" type active status timeline would be nice, but I think that would require more work than me or the site programmer would be willing to put into it at the moment.

I am interested in hearing your feedback about what you want. You can email me at ant@rareoopdvds.com

So, with the usual, I would like to go back to some news. It has been a while and it seems so much is happening in the DVD industry, both on the good and the bad. While DVDs still provide 80% of home movie sales, Netflix posted an increase in subscribers, most likely for the streaming accounts. AppleTV sales outsold Roku, but its still a small, but growing market for both. They each have their perks. HBOGO is now live for those who have cable accounts, HBO's personal streaming app. Digital downloads seems to have a place in the market and Ultra Violet, the studios version to ward off the iTunes monopoly has come to weak reception from consumers, even if it believes its a viable option. And finally, Studios are hoping to make an active attempt at taking down once and for all The Pirate Bay, the number one bittorrent site of illegally downloaded movies and TV. 

On a lighter side, DVDs are still getting re-released, which means there is obviously still a strong demand for DVDs. While the general price points have come down since the good ole days, they are happening. At the same time there are still more DVDs being discontinued than ever. I can remember when I started this site, 100 titles were about average in a week, while today its in the thousands at a clip. This is in part due to the number of versions available of a single title and at times, a whole label will withdraw their entire library.

That is all for now.