I'm not a fan of dual-sided discs either. I especially dislike dual-side single layer discs, where everything could be included on one side, such as The Girl Next Door. I can understand that some early discs used this format, but for new releases, it doesn't make sense. I'd rather pay an extra dollar or two to have single-sided discs.

The top of the DVD in that case is silver, so does that mean "Flipper" comes on a flipper?

My DVD player is a 400 disc Sony changer. It's designed so that you don't have to handle the discs. It does not flip a disc for you. Having a double-sided disc really sucks. I'd much rather have multiple discs than a double-sided disc. I most likely wouldn't buy a disk with a movie split on 2 sides or important content of some kind on the second side. If it was the special features on the second, I wouldn't care much because I might only watch it once anyway.

You people never cease to amaze me.

Breaking News: If you've lasted long enough around here to be a "DVD Talk Legend," you are among the "you people" you speak of.

My least favorite movie flippers, the ones with the widescreen on one side and the fool frame on the other side, and all the bonus features on the fool frame side.

DVD is a 2-sided medium- get used to it.
I HATE 2-disc sets where both discs are 1-sided; they do that just to make it look like "more". I would not have bought "Schindler's List" if the movie had been split onto 2 discs- getting up to flip it in the middle is annoying, but switching discs would have been even more so.
As for changers, they do make ones that can automatically flip discs. I would not buy a changer that couldn't.

Though it was already mentioned previously in this thread, it doesn't look like most people saw it. Most of the movies listed are NOT flippers. A flipper is when a single movie is split across both sides of a double sided disc. Schindler's List being a good example. When the entire movie fits on one side and the other side contains other content (bonus features, pan-n-scan version, etc.), then it's a Double Sided disc, not a flipper.

That said, I don't care much for flippers or double sided discs in general. I'd much rather have two discs in that case. But I'd never pass up something I want because it's on a two sided disc.

It's a case by case situation on what I might pass up. If it's a movie I am interested in, and it contains both wide and full frame versions on it and does it with a flipper (or whatever you want to call it, but I call it a flipper) and sacrifices bonus features, I might pick it up if it's 5.88 at Wal Mart but that's about all the disc is worth. Outside of that, given all the special editions coming down the pike lately, I am putting my wager on that the movie will be released as a special edition with adequate bonus features and all on one side of a DVD, and perhaps spread over two single sided DVDs.

TV shows, you're just screwed no matter what, there is no hope of a collector's edition later on there. But if it's between a show on flipper DVDs and a show that I want just as much on single sided DVDs, the single sided DVDs have the weight in my deciding factor if I can't afford to buy both sets.

Fleetwood Mac - The Dance is an interesting disc. Same video content; however, one side is LPCM and the other side DD 5.1. I haven't figured out why they did that.
Anyone know of others that are 2-sided just for different audio tracks?

-AC

Don't forget the MGM Midnite Movies collection. With the double feature (one on each side), it makes perfect sense. This saves space and money

"But if it's between a show on flipper DVDs and a show that I want just as much on single sided DVDs, the single sided DVDs have the weight in my deciding factor if I can't afford to buy both sets."

Funny- my deciding factor is exactly the opposite.

Yes, I truly hate flippers myself...

When it's okay and when it's not...

It's okay when a DVD is dual sided when the film contains both widescreen and full frame versions of the movie.

It's okay when a DVD is dual sided when a studio is releasing a season set of a television show that contains lots of episodes.

It's not okay when a DVD is dual sided to split a film in half. Thus use two discs.

It's not okay when a DVD is dual sided to split a film and it's extras up. Either use one dual-layered disc if it's not a lot of extras (Fox, I'm looking right at you motherfuckers) or make it a two-disc set (New Line and MGM, looking at you).

fubonics: You need to watch more Fox News. Don't you know that Kerry is a "flip-flopper?" Get with it!

And I hate me some double-sided discs, regardless of whether they're actual flippers or not.

It's never OK to fit in a full frame version. Full frame versions of movies should not exist, and should be on the way out with VHS.

Some music discs have NTSC on one side and PAL on the other but have the same content. For the tiny minority who can't watch NTSC in colour.


I'd rather the extras took the space away from the side I'm NOT watching.


So where would you put the extras now?

Well, there have been a few flipper babies.

IT WAS JUST A COUPLE OF FLIPPER BABIES!

It's NEVER OK to use 2 single-sided discs. So sayeth me.

the main thing i hate is having to flip a dvd over somewhere in the middle of a movie just to watch the 2nd half...like with my "The Pelican Brief" DVD....i hate that! It's even more annoying when i know that they could have fit the whole movie on one side of the disc.

i agree 200%

Supposedly 2 single-layer sides can fit a tiny bit more info than one dual-layer side, so that's why some discs still have the extras on another side even if both sides are single-layer.
The Fleetwood Mac disc came out before dual-layer discs were widespread, so they couldn't have fit both the uncompressed PCM and the Dolby 5.1 soundtracks together. I think the first Three Tenors DVD did that too. There's several music titles that have PCM and Dolby 5.1 soundtracks now that have them running together on a dual-layer disc. That's also why longer movies were split onto 2 sides in the beginning, since they hadn't yet perfected dual-layer. Schindler's List is still split on 2 sides but it's dual-layer on both sides, meaning they couldn't fit it on one dual-layer side with the optimum bitrate (still a bit annoying, but I like that better than 2 discs.)

fubonics Great post! That's some funny stuff man. ROTFL Yeah, you fit right in here. Welcome to the forum!

Y'all are going to be real unhappy when the Dual Discs start coming out.

Which players have this feature? When shopping for my current changer, I wasn't able to find any that were able to play both sides of the disc without manually flipping it.