So after years of "Special Edition" and other such labels being slapped on seemingly every new and catalog release (not to mention being used on CDs and other non-DVD items), has the phrase lost its meaning?

I believe it's exclusively a meaningless marketing term at this point, and that it's only a matter of time until people stop buying it (in both senses of the word).

Collectors Edition, Limited Edition, Special Edition..

All of them are marketing gimmicks and have always been. If you ever bought something with "Collectors Edition" printed on it, there is a 90% chance that it wont be worth much of anything above what you paid for it. The real "Rare" items are those that no one buys or that have a limited # run and is popular enough that it sales out. Other then that, all those names are just marketing gimmicks and always have.

Will that mean people will stop buy it? well yeah, that's why the different names are used. people catch on to one, they just move on to another that will fool the folks for a while.

On DVD it is 99.999% completely meaningless.

On LD it meant something becasue SE's we not made for every single title. Generally, the title had to have some merit.

Fitprod

Of course I could argue the Limited # run with one title, Army of Darkness.

Shit even the term UNRATED has become a gimmick... What isn't a gimmick these days...

I agree the term is now meaningless, I think certain studios are thinking about this a bit more though now.
The term "collectors edition" is the one I hate. There are certain releases that the only version out is the "Collectors edition", is this to mean the casual buyer is a "collector", I'm not trying to be snobbish but I hope you can understand what I mean.
I believe Fox are one of the companies trying to deal with this properly, with Master and Commander. I bought the deluxe collecters and felt it is a very nice release, the way that was handed was very well done in my opinion. I would class myself as a collector and I do welcome the extra effort.

It was actually pretty meaningliess when they started using it on some early DVD's. On some, special features were listed as "trailer(s)", filmography, or on a rare occasion "animated menu" --- nothing else was added, but it was still billed as "Special Edition"...

UNRATED really became a marketing gimmick. Sure you get those titles that have it really contain items that would make it unrated, but a lot of the times the film would have still pulled in a R rating if it was actually resubmitted.

Yeah mike, A lot of the limited # is still very common. I mean half the titles that get a limited run to 15,000 would have normally gotten that much of a run anyways.

The best was Disney listing disk art as a special feature.

I wouldn't be so opposed to "Special Edition" if every dvd didn't have that slabbed across the top. But as it stands I really wish all the "special collectors limited" edition shizzle would go away. Those words have never and will never make me buy a dvd.

The only title that means anything now is "Extended Edition".

My favorite is DISNEY DVD. How long did it actually take them to make the plunge into the market??

Doc

I think the term "UNRATED" is also being a bit overused now. Almost every movie geared towards 12-25 year old men is coming to DVD unrated, which usually adds nothing good to the film.

The worse was Terminator 2, how many versions do they need?

Well the thing about UNRATED is people think it means more nudity and violence when all it really means is when you add footage to a movie that was not in the released version it will be referred to as unrated unless it's resubmitted to the MPAA. So you can add a guy reading a newspaper and call it the unrated cut. Of course the marketing department is banking on the nudity/violence connotation regardless.

How many themes have companies used? We have special, collectors, millineum, 5-star, boomstick...

Exactly. A perfect example is Charlies Angels Unrated where they just added a slightly more piece of violence that would have still made it with the same rating. Folks do connect unrated with nudity and that is what the studios are abusing.

Actually, the footage in the unrated version was indeed cut to avoid an R rating. The footage would've gotten the same rating would be a huge newsflash to the MPAA and Columbia.

DJ

It's all pretty bad. The new trend it seems is to release a movie after it's inital release with a few more extra's, ala Underworld.

Special edition means nothin' more than a marketing gimmick tagged to a particular DVD. Just like Microsoft, they will still screw you by releasing another edition in the future, and you will wanna upgrade.

Fok,

It could be worse... It could be the LD of Terminator 2...

Original Releases:
WS Dolby Surround
PS Dolby Surround
WS Silver Collecter's Box (Aka, "the screw job")

Subsequent re-releases:
Extended Cut, Special Edition Box (Issued three times, different Silver, Gold & Bronze boxes, each representing the subsequnent re-pressings.) - When special edition meant something.

Extended Cut, WS Movie Only
Extended Cut, P&S Movie Only

Theatrical Cut, WS Dolby Digital
Theatrical Cut, WS DTS (I think... Maybe this never happened, it was over five years ago.)

Three versions of a film on DVD is nothing.

Fitprod

And, in some cases, even after submitting.

If you go to the MPAA's site, you'll see that the new edition of Bad Santa was submitted and received an R rating. Yet it's being released as the 'unrated edition'.

Marketing gimmick all the way...

Yeah, but you're counting aspect ratio versions, and real collectors want nothing to do with P&S. So technically, it was really 5 versions.

A true super-dip would be Army of Darkness, which came to us in 1998 as a standard WS, 1999 as a special edition and a two-disc edition, in 2000 as a special edition, numbered director's cut, once again in 2001 as a Bootleg Director's Cut, and then again in 2003 as a two-disc Boomstick Edition. That's six distinct releases of the same movie in a span of five years. Ri-God-Damn-diculous.

I think "SE" was a lost label when Chrysler started using it.

As it pertains to DVD's, "Special Edition" was pretty much meaningless from the start wasn't it?

Certainly the same goes for the tag, "Limited Edition", although that moniker has to be examined on a case by case basis.


I recently ordered a DVD gift set that was not only actually limited, but limited to a shockingly low number of 100:

The Devil's Backbone

To take it even a step further, THX and Superbit have become meaningless, as well.

(I still buy Superbits because there is a slight, but noticable improvement over the regular release -- but some of their titles still don't look reference quality.)

Yes, ANY type of such labeling means nothing.

THX on home theatre software instantly became a joke when I saw the phantom menace on vhs.