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The Irish home entertainment giant Xtravision appears to be having difficulties.
An interim examiner has been appointed to the chain, which has 1300 employees and over 180 outlets across the 32 counties of Ireland.
According to The Examiner, the company is suffering from cashflow issues due to the withdrawal of trade credit facilities combined with falling revenues.
Xtra-vision has been very vocal in recent months about copyright theft and has been pressing the Irish government to enact legislation to deal with illegal downloads of copyright content ie. films
However, in some respects these kind of problems are not that surprising.
In the US the mega-chain Blockbuster, which also had interests in several European markets, got into difficulties and was sold off.
So while video may have killed the radio star, has iTunes and the other streaming services, combined with Amazon, killed off the “traditional” home entertainment market?
Really not surprised to be honest.
They’ve done nothing innovative in the last few years it has been a dwindling business for years. With 10 – 20 Mb/s download speeds these days you can download whatever you want in 6 – 10 minutes easily. When I’m home in Oranmore it takes me 10 minutes to get to Xtravision and another 10 to get back also my DVD might not be there. It’s kinda insane.
If they had any forward planning they’d have been on this years ago.
James
The entertainment industry has been changing, but I suspect a lot of these companies weren’t changing quickly enough.
I remember there being 24/7 self-service video / DVD booths in residential areas of Paris over 10 years ago. I think they only started offering those kind of services here in the last year or so ..
As for downloading versus renting – I can legally get most new releases on iTunes or I can get the bluray delivered to me by Amazon (or one of the others). And if I buy the DVD or bluray I don’t have to worry about late fees and can lend the disc to a friend ..
Thanks for your comment
Michele
Think it’s about the last 4 ish years I’ve known about the video booths where you can pick up a video but they just didn’t seem to pick up in Ireland. I’ve one across the road whenever I need a movie which is quite handy it’s attacked the the laundry mat .. (spelling) … XtraVision expanded vastly and if memory serves me correctly ran up against a major problem about 12 years ago where they’d over expanded and had to close down a lot of stores ( or something along those lines ) … they’ve never actually done anything innovative they’ve just followed the leads of others only this time … they’ve not … they’ve done nothing and they are complaining about piracy and so on … erm piracy has been around a long time … stupidity has been around a lot longer
James
I wasn’t overly impressed with their entire piracy stance / rant. They’re entitled to voice their opinion etc., but as someone who:
– watches a LOT of movies
– doesn’t download ANY of them illegally
I find the entire “piracy is to blame” argument is more than a little weak
I’m sure that piracy has contributed to some extent, but I’d be pretty confident that the ease of downloading movies via iTunes or using Zune on the Xbox etc., has had a much BIGGER impact.
Michele
as someone who works for xtravision i can tell u downloading has zero effect, the vast majority of people wouldnt have a clue to how to do it. its the lack of selection on xtravisions part coupled with external factors like the huge rise in cinemagoing as a cheap alternative to a night on the tiles and the ease of subscribing to upc and sky. plus the quality of tv shows is streets ahead of cinema now. why rent a bad movie on dvd when you can watch a quality show in hi-def at home?