LD Season 5 DVD

After having introduced the format for the prior Lower Decks season four and Prodigy season two DVD releases, this became the third official Star Trek franchise DVD release for which the "Manufactured-on-Demand" (MOD – meaning that no stock was produced for retailers, the so-called SKUs; Stock Keeping Units) only release format was applied. The official franchise home video format trailer did not even mention the DVD option, which was offered for Region 1 only, the second time where official franchise home video trailers were concerned. [1] [2]

Disc contents

Background information

• The franchise had already experimented with the MOD-only format for the series' prior Blu-ray third season release as a cost-saving scheme, but which was remarkably not applied for its DVD counterpart, as application of this release format would have been the more obvious option for the DVD format. While Blu-ray and DVD are both facing rapidly dwindling sales, this is especially pertinent for the DVD, which as a physical home video format was in the process of being phased out at the time. As a result of this, DVD releases usually merely enjoy an one-time-only pressing in the current market – meaning that once sold out, no new DVD batches are manufactured for retailing SKUs afterwards. Applying the MOD-only release format would at least eliminate the stock keeping costs at distributors and retailers. The format became more logically applied again for the series' subsequent season DVD release.
• For those customer fans still preferring to own their home video productions as a DVD, the on-demand option was introduced at selected online retailers, [3] the franchise's go-to online retailer Amazon.com in particular for their international coverage, to have a DVD professionally manufactured to industry standards, even though it was not specifically mentioned as such on Amazon. This was not restricted to customers in the American home market alone as the service was also available to customers elsewhere in the world, albeit in NTSC encoding only (not an issue as digital disc home video players had already been able from day one to play the various television formats), typically through Amazon.com (US). This also indicated that the MOD DVD variant was actually region-free (reinforced by the lack of the customary DVD region indication in the listings of on-line retailers, Amazon included), contrary to DVDs sold as regular retail copies.
• Being retailed as a MOD-only product, meant that customers received their DVDs in the standard plastic snapcase only, without the customary cardboard slipcover, which was an additional cost-saving element.
• While both the UK and Germany have seen their own near-concurrent Blu-ray counterpart releases, no Region 2 DVD variant was offered as MOD option in either territory, they therefore having to make do with the US Amazon MOD release instead.

External link

• Announcement at TrekCore