No, but in order to hear the DTS Audio Track (one of the actual advantages to Superbit titles), you do need a DVD player and a AVR that will pass the DTS signal.
There is a standard Dolby Digital on all superbits, though, so you don't HAVE to have the ability to play DTS to watch the film.
And don't forget the extra $$ required to buy them.
Honestly, for the most part I like Superbit releases (but I think there should be NO Edge Enhancement or ringing, something Sony has to work on. (ironically their early releases had no EE on 1.85:1 titles.) At least a lot if not all seem to have seamless layer changes.
The thing that really gets me is a barebones SB title costs substantially more than Special Editions of the same films. To me, they should be the same price, one with a lot of supplements, one with the best AV quality. It's ESPECIALLY puzzling when you see the rare SB Deluxe that costs the same as regular superbits. I can justify the highger prictag for the SB deluxes, but not for the vanilla superbits.
Yup, it's totally absurd, but CTS has managed to convince much of the DVD community there's something "special" about Superbit releases. That's why we get threads like this one or the ones that talk about the "Superbit process" or technology.
All they are is bare-bones discs, folks. The emperor has no clothes...
They look better than Columbia's regular discs, but only because Columbia doesn't do as good a job as thye could on those. They don't look any better than Warner's, for instance.
I like Dan's comment about Warner's discs. Superbits really are better than non-superbits, but Warner has some truly amazing DVDs out there that do in fact look better than anything that Columbia has put out - "Training Day" is a great example.
I have learned that I do not really watch any of the extras after the first time I watch them, so I don't really care if there is nothing else on the disc.