HD-releases getting the upper hand with extras (vs SD DVD)? (1 Viewer)

**"War":
..will be released on both DVD and Blu-ray. The DVD (SRP $29.95) will include audio commentary with director Philip G. Atwell, a second commentary with writers Lee Anthony Smith and Gregory J. Bradley, 9 The Action of War vignettes, the Scoring War featurette, an audio trivia track, a gag reel and deleted/extended scenes. The Blu-ray (SRP $39.99) will include all that, plus The War Chest on-screen navigation mode (featuring 36 vignettes on the story, style, stunts and sound), Director's Window visual commentary with Atwell, The War Zone audio trivia track, the Yakuza Fighter BD-Java game, "dynamic resizing menus", bookmarks, a "Blu-line Slider" scene selection option and a behind-the-scenes FX Bonus picture-in-picture option (called True PiP in Lionsgate's promotional materials). The Blu-ray extras will all be in high-def."

**"3:10 to Yuma"
..will also be released on both DVD and Blu-ray. The DVD (SRP $29.95) will feature audio commentary with director James Mangold, deleted scenes, the Destination Yuma documentary and 2 featurettes (An Epic Explored and Outlaws, Gangs & Posses). The Blu-ray version (SRP $39.99) will include all of the above, along with the Inside Yuma picture-in-picture viewing option, 4 additional featurettes (3:10 to Score, The Guns of Yuma, Sea to Shining Sea and A Conversation with Elmore Leonard) and an interactive Historical Timeline of the West viewing option."

**"Good Luck Chuck"
...also available on both R and unrated DVD versions as well as an unrated Blu-ray. The R-rated DVD (SRP $29.95) will feature audio commentary with star Dane Cook, director Mark Helfrich, producer Mike Karz and writer Josh Stolberg, as well as the All About the Penguins featurette. The Unrated DVD (SRP also $29.95) will offer an unrated version of the commentary, 4 Chucked Up featurettes (Polymastia, Kama Sutra, Frank the Penguin Actor and All About the Penguins), a gag reel, ad-libs, deleted and alternate scenes, and something called the Sex Matrix, billed as "16 fierce thrusting positions in an interactive matrix." The Blu-ray version (SRP $39.99) will include all of the unrated features above, along with 3 additional featurettes (Good Luck Chuckles, Real Life Chuck and Eleanor Skepple) and a 2-song music video montage featuring Accident Prone by The Honorary Title and I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow by The Flaming Lips. All the video-based extras on the Blu-ray will be in full 1080p resolution."

Just wondering?

(Quotes from Digitalbits)

Good! At least some studios are beginning to figure this out.

Better A/V is a given but HDM buyers should get exclusive bonus features, alternate cuts, etc since we're paying premium prices compared to SD.

If it were up to me on these duel SD/HDM releases I'd strip the SD to the bones and load up the HDM with as many bonus features as possible.

I don't think studios should hold stuff back from the SD editions, but I think what we may wind up seeing is that they don't necessarily go for that second disc - the assumption being that the movie fans who are willing to pay more will buy the HD/BD edition now.

At least, that's the way I figure the studios will see it. They don't have much of a vested interest in making people migrate, and the DVD market is still strong enough that alienating it would be dumb. But the upper echelon of that market is buying HD now, so that's where the premium editions will go. So they'll probably still pack a single disc as much as they can (and they should), but the potential of a two-disc DVD edition isn't what it once was.

No different from when the shift went from LD->DVD.

I didn't know the Honary Title was in Good Luck Chuck. They're a sweet band, that I almost got to see.


Terrible movie btw.

I thought it was PG-13 and I come to find out it was a pseudo porno.


Ugh.


I only went to it to burn time waiting for Halo 3. I swear I my life, I don't have to pay for movies at the theater so it's whatever you know?

Do you work for Disney?

And this isn't necessarily true either.

It doesn't have to be 100% migration for this logic to make sense, though - if enough of the movie fans willing to pay the extra five bucks for a two-disc edition are moving to the HD formats, then the two-disc DVD editions start getting squeezed out. There still may be a market for them, but it's dwindling, and the companies may at least feel that they're better off with just the single-disc DVD and loaded HD/BD editions.

Except that Hollywood is making a LOT more money from people buying 2-disc DVDs than they are from people buying HD formats. It's not a case of wanting to spend an extra five bucks, it's a case of whether you own an HD player!

They'd be idiots to rock that particular boat.

From my observations, HD is mostly getting shafed when it comes to extra features.

This is another of those attitudes that all true movie buffs are buying HD and if you're not buying HD then you don't care or matter. That kind of thinking is ridiculous. I don't have HD, yet I just spent £900 ($1800) on a new set of front speakers and spend $150 a month on DVDs.

As long as the HD titles are carrying a premium price I think there should be extra exclusive content available on them.

The strategy should be simple.

DVD:
1. Lower price
2. Movie only.
3. Dolby Digital
4. Subtitles
5. 'Maybe', only in Fool Screen. Pardon the spelling.

HD:
1. Higher price. Not too much higher than the Double disc DVD sets, if at all.
2. Movie plus all the extras.
3. HD Lossless Audio for all languages atleast when space permits.
4. Subtitles
5. Only 'original aspect ratio' please. We really don't want a 16:9 version of Fool Screen on HD. Beware mass adoption & the Walmarts, for that maybe one of the byproducts of mass adoption of HD.

This strategy would help in moving the more aware and demanding customer to HD while DVD as a product is retained for the Fool Screen fans. Come to think of it, this may actually be how things play out as an interim stage before HD completely replaces DVD. Ofcourse this would be a couple of years down the road when HD will have created a substantial base for itself. Personally I feel that there will be room for both DVD and HD to co-exist for a very long time, specially when you consider the rest of the world. Also, if you consider that there is a lot of content that is originally shot in SD video, for which there is absolutely no benefit of being put on HD media, other than maybe in the case of TV shows where more seasons and episodes could be fit on lesser number of discs.

Dream on! Oh, I'm sorry, I just got through watching the 2-disc 20th Anniversary DVD edition of Robocop - just need to pop back to watch the rest of the documentaries!! LOL

And, what's this sitting next to me, a properly coloured Halloween, fit for the more aware and demanding connoisseur!

I think the "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" UE is a good example to this thread. For some reason, UE (SD DVD) even drops the "Deleted scenes" from the ancient DVD-releases and doesn´t include these "Explorations" extras from the Blu-ray-release.

I mean those "Deleted scenes" run approx. 10 minutes or something. I can´t think of other reason why they´re not included than they wanted to add something "exclusive" to the Blu-ray-release.. ?

Of course, these releases varies (and some HD-releases are indeed very short in extras), but IMO more and more of these "HD exclusive extras" will be included in the future HD-releases.

For me at least, the quality of extra features is far more important than the quantity. My observation is that many (exclusive) extras on HD discs are more "novelty" than actually useful. Give me a good quality documentary that provides a sound historical record of the making of a particular film over, let's say, a ridiculous Java game or the ability to fly around a CG model of the Starship Enterprise anyday!

I agree with you on this one. But with "HD exclusive extras", I don´t mean just these Java-games or fancy trivia tracks (although these PiP video commentaries are like "improved" audio commentaries and should interest film buffs).