CD-WOW gives an innovative method to circumvent added retail cost by ordering the DVD or the CD from its supplier stripped of its plastic packing and utilizing a cheaper postal delivery route called World Post. If not for the e-mail and text messaging, a cheaper postal service such as World Post would not have been offered because media items like CD or DVDs are normally imposed a tariff or Customs tax. Due to the massive slowdown of the postal service being an anachronistic snail mail in an age of e-mail - they're gasping for a another breath of life by offering World Post. The only (insignificant) drawback is that CD-WOW could not collectively mail your total order in one package because to do so is to get "noticed' - by the tariff police.
But I have no cause to complain about that. Its a brilliant idea that if known by more Filipino videophiles, could impact Amazon's DVD business' purse. Wow's mad-genius marketing scheme delivers two salivating benefits: comparatively lowest cost retail price and fast delivery. A lethal combination indeed.
But then Wow seems to be a European-based operation with a British principal, hence in 9 out of 10 cases their film stock is coded at Region 2 & 4. For players thats locked up at Region 3, its an inconvenience. But for folks like me who sees a Region-3 locked equipment as a bedlam straighjacket being twined around a player, and so wisely take a ZERO Region hardware - a PAL DVD is a godsend. Thats because at 576 video line resolution it technically offers a better, more detailed picture than any NTSC-set disks.
The site's inventory, admittedly, is very limited but its only from Wow that I finally got a DVD copy of an obscure, hopelessly forgotten film called FIRE ICE & DYNAMITE. A film about a mad race similar to 1960s Its A Mad Mad World but transplanted in the 1990s and has a hundred times more kinetics, testosterone and adrenaline thrills. As well, I finally got a copy of a Europe-only musical documentary called THE STYLE COUNCIL ON FILM - a staple DVD for New Wave-era nostalgists whose musical eclectism also meant having relished too 80s jazz and exotic lounge music.
You just hope that your CD-WOW packet will not get the rapacious attention from the mga halang ang kaluluwa sa post office....