Why are Maltese shops so terrible?

Go to buy something, you'll find it's been lying there for ages. It's either something lying in a shop window, gaining dust and becoming yellow due to the sunshine (and we have a lot of that), or it's old technology still being sold at yesterday's prices. I mean you can shop online and get a cheaper deal within the EU... Even if you want to buy a DVD, it's often cheaper to get it from websites like Amazon.co.uk than to get it from D'Amato or Exotique.
The prices are often twice as expensive at the local shops I mentioned, and you can't find anything different from standard hollywood fare and little else. Try to get a tv show dvd box set. You will get strange looks. Once I saw a Smallville box set in a shop window in Sliema. But Amazon UK had a cheaper deal, so I got it from them instead and you order and pay everything online including VAT (no need to hassle at the customs or post office now we are EU members).
Sigh.

Try to get a good digital camera, you might find a shop which tells you 'sorry we don't stock that model'. It's cheaper if you get it from abroad too.
Try to get a digital projector of some famous brand, you might find a shop (the agent of that famous brand) that tells you 'we don't sell that anymore, buy some other brand instead'.

Why bother.. indeed. It seems that recently our shops have become hopeless. They aren't selling much stuff, so what they have becomes old (especially for technological products including cameras and computer stuff).
I haven't mentioned how some other shops foist bad quality merchandise on unsuspecting customers...

Forgot to say that I found also that D'Amato has some good prices on Cd's. In particular you can find italian cd's which are not that easy to buy online at the moment. And Malta cd's of course.