A Few Thoughts About....Blu-ray/DVD FLIPPER DISCS - Page 9

Quote:

Originally Posted by Man-Fai Wong 

 

The Bourne films can be had on BD w/out flippers....

I didn't know this, thanks for the info! However I still hope to find out why my BD35 will not play the Blu-Ray side of flippers.

 

I played both out of africa and the jackel with an lg370 on my 56 inch zenith tv and they looked great

I am completely against flipper discs of any kind. After all the garbage I had to deal with with the Universal Legacy monster sets (movies skipping, player freezing), I refuse to buy a flipper if I know it's a flipper before hand.

My feeling exactly.  Having suffered the same lousy, disappointing experiences with the Universal Legacy monster sets, the Hammer Horror set, and probably a few other examples that escape me at the moment, there's no room for a single additional instance of that crap in my movie-buying life.

It's been discussed to death already but many people use the DVD-18 as an excuse for why they don't want dual sided Blu-rays but since there haven't been the same problems* with dual sided Blu-rays, it doesn't really make much sense.

* Personally, I haven't read of any but somewhere in the world, there must have been defective ones.

IMHO, the inevitable extra risk of going w/ a double-sided format just for the sake of adding a DVD version of the movie is just not worth it (at least for most of us who are already invested in BD and not still using DVD as our primary format).  But yes, that would just be IMHO, and I'd be perfectly fine if studios offered us a choice (between BD-only and the BD/DVD flipper), which Universal (and maybe a couple other smaller distributors jumping on that bandwagon) does not seem to be doing.

It's pretty meaningless to say there are no significant reports of problems so far since there really hasn't been much going on yet w/ that.  It's not like there has been millions of these flippers already sold (as far as I can tell) and in use for a few years afterall.

Anyhoo, I really hope Universal (and whoever else) will relent and at least give us the option to buy BD-only versions of such releases (w/out paying a premium or losing anything).  As it is now, I just noticed that the recent release of Ghost Writer is apparently only available on BD/DVD flipper, and that will probably be the first case that will actually impact my decision to *NOT* buy the title (at least for the forseeable future)...

_Man_

Quote:

Originally Posted by Man-Fai Wong 

 

It's pretty meaningless to say there are no significant reports of problems so far since there really hasn't been much going on yet w/ that.  It's not like there has been millions of these flippers already sold (as far as I can tell) and in use for a few years afterall.

It certainly didn't take very long or millions of discs sold for problems with DVD-18s to appear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TravisR 

It certainly didn't take very long or millions of discs sold for problems with DVD-18s to appear.

That doesn't tell us anything about how long it'll take for actual problems to show up w/ these flippers.  It only means that they did a better job of QC-ing the process for the short term, but doesn't tell us anything about the long term -- and I buy BDs to keep them for many years, not just a year or two, especially since I really don't forsee a need for anything better than BD (unlike DVD).

FWIW, even w/out the flipper issue, there are already more playback problems w/ BDs than DVDs at the same stage in each format life cycle.  I don't see the point in taking on additional potential playback issues, especially since we're only talking about backward compatibility for DVD players.

Again, if the studios want to offer backward compatibility using flippers, then that's fine w/ me as long as they also offer us the option to choose BD-only w/out any drawbacks.

_Man_

Quote:

Originally Posted by Man-Fai Wong 

 

That doesn't tell us anything about how long it'll take for actual problems to show up w/ these flippers.  It only means that they did a better job of QC-ing the process for the short term, but doesn't tell us anything about the long term -- and I buy BDs to keep them for many years, not just a year or two, especially since I really don't forsee a need for anything better than BD (unlike DVDs).

 

_Man_

But by that logic, all your Blu-rays could fail at 5 years so why buy them?

Quote:

Originally Posted by TravisR 

But by that logic, all your Blu-rays could fail at 5 years so why buy them?

What logic is that?  You mean the one that do not simply assume flippers are completely reliable for the long haul based on essentially zero data?  Or that there had been previous problems w/ other kinds of flippers even though this new flipper seems more reliable (at least at the outset) given extremely limited data?

Hey, FWIW, I also didn't buy into BD until a couple years after the format came out (and the format war was nearing the end).  I'm not a bleeding edge kinda guy, but you're very welcome to be the guinea pig, if you want.   And it's not exactly like the studios (and CE makers) have been model citizens for giving us quality, reliability, etc. afterall.

Anyway, all I'm asking for is an option to choose BD-only, which makes perfect sense under the circumstance.  I'm not demanding they also provide separate, non-flipper BD+DVD combos afterall although I'd certainly prefer they do that in some cases where it matters at all to me (eg. new family-oriented day-and-date releases where it'd be nice to have the DVD for roadtrips and such).  But I could easily live w/out the inclusion of the DVD version either way...

_Man_

Quote:

Get the Canadian version.  It is not a flipper.  Also, if you care about that sort of thing, language censored in the US version to make the PG-13 cut, is left intact in their release.  Unfortunately, you do have to pay an import premium, but at least it is not a "non-flipper" premium.  :(

Thank you for that Canadian version Amazon.ca link.  Excellent movie.