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If public domain cheapies sold well, it might provide incentive for studios to release better prints onto DVD and tap into the market.


Just the opposite. The studios would figure the market was saturated and figure there wasn't enough money in it for them to justify the expense of a quality transfer. So the original negs and other quality elements would decay in the vaults while all that was available to the public was cheap junk. Sure the studios sometimes put out quality versions of public domain titles, but that's the exception, not the rule.

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Here's a question: is Hitchcock's REBECCA in the public domain? It was an independent production released through UA in 1940, and since then has been on several labels, including Anchor Bay. I have the same question about Spellbound and Notorious.


No, those films are still under copyright. Several labels have put them out over the years because the owner licenses them out to different companies. When one deal expires, they strike a new one with a new company.