I haven't bought a lot of movies from Amazon recently but I used to and they just seemed like normal retail discs? A lot of record stores sell movies too.

Movies at record stores are kind of a novelty. You can go there to browse, but chances are that you will not find the movie you were looking for. I’ve actually had better luck at thrift stores. That being said if they happen to carry a copy of a movie that you want to see and don’t mind adding to your collection it is definitely a joy. But it is kind of a rare experience compared to music.

DVDs at amazon range from fine to terrible. It is almost always better to just torrent the movie. Quite often the DVD has no extras, terrible subtitles, wrong aspect ratio, etc. I have quite a few DVDs which I’m never going to watch again, if I want to rewatch the movie I would rather torrent it, even though the DVD is right here.

Amazon commingling inventory will probably mean that quality varies quite a lot.