Blue Harvest was iTunes.

Correct...Family Guy: Blue Harvest was the FIRST Digital Copy ever, from any studio, to be in iTunes format, as well as WMV (PC media). Fox's only non-iTunes DC was Die Hard 4.

Lionsgate supports iTunes on all of their Digital Copies.

Sony does NOT support iTunes, at least not yet, but instead all of their Digital Copies support their own PSP videogame system, as well as PC Media. Noone else supports PSP yet, but I've heard there is interest in other studios supporting it (one commenter at my TVGuide.com story mentioned that there are 12 million PSPs out there, almost as many as the number of people who own a video iPod, so it's not a small market).

Warner has not supported iTunes on releases on the market so far, but will begin with their upcoming releases of Supernatural - Season 3 and One Tree Hill - Season 5. These two releases, the first TV-DVD season sets to have digital copy, will make many in this thread happy because there are "no coasters". The Digital Copy will NOT be on-disc; you will have to download it.

I should point out, as I did in my TVGuide.com story, that Warner did the FIRST experiments with Digital Copy even before Fox did, with selected titles (Superman Returns and Blood Diamond among them) being sold in selected retailers (exclusives at either Wal-Mart or Target) having it accomplished by a downloadable method; a process Warner called "E-Copy".

The long wait for the download to run, and the complicatedness for people who weren't tech savvy, made it such a hated thing that Warner has now gotten rid of the term "E-Copy" because of the bad feeling associated with it. However, while Warner has released a few Digital Copies on physical disc, like the aforementioned I Am Legend and Harry Potter DVDs, but they are going back to the download method.

Why? Partly because they think they've improved it (time will tell), partly because of wanting to eliminate the need for the extra disc. From what I've heard, it's NOT to mollify 'coaster' complaints. It's NOT to save money, or save the environment, or anything. It's because guys like me complained that "hey, I bought the Blu-ray versions of I Am Legend and Harry Potter...where's my Digital Copy of these?!" And Warner didn't want to toss in the Digital Copy DVDs into the Blu-ray boxes, so they hope a downloadable Digital Copy will solve that problem. And they want to support iTunes not only for the iPod users, but also for iPhone users and for people who have Macintosh laptops and prefer to have it on the hard disc for a long trip, rather than carry the disc with them.

After having one in the past (the 3-DVD version of American Gangster), Universal has a couple new Digital Copies coming out, on the DVD re-releases of Mummy and Mummy Returns (but NOT on the Blu-ray versions, which is odd and upsetting, since they are using the download method!). But no mention of iTunes at all, so I assume it will be PC Media only.

Disney's first Digital Copy will be on their 8/26 release of Nightmare Before Christmas. They call the process "DisneyFile" (leave it to them to come up with such a name!), and the material I've seen says it will be a separate "DisneyFile disc" that comes with both the Blu-ray and the 2-Disc DVD. iTunes (as well as PC media) is supported for Nightmare Before Christmas.

Does this mean it will be a third disc with the DVD set, or it IS the second disc? And if it IS the second disc, will it be a coaster, or will there be other material on it? There is such a long friggin' list of extras on this new release, I have to believe that the 2-DVD set doesn't use the second disc just for digital copy, but time will tell.

^I thought the first Digital copy was on the T2 "Extreme" DVD that came out like 5 years ago.

In this sense, "digital copy" means a low-quality portable version. The one on the Extreme Edition was an HD version that was not exactly portable (especially at the time).

Wake the fuck up. This isn't a stripped down rerelease. This is a timed rerelease of a good-sized set of movies still in print heavily advertised as having digital copies included on them. If they sell well, expect Sony to include digital copies as the only extra on future releases.

Comments like that are uncalled for.

And you've never seen that before, without Digital Copy?

As I said, the studios aren't doing anything differently than they've always done with or without Digital Copy. You're venting your anger on the wrong target.

Digital Copy is just a bonus feature like any other. You can watch it or not watch it. When Paramount re-released the Indiana Jones movies with a new featurette promoting the Cyrstal Skull movie, did you vent "OH MY GOD I HATE FEATURETTES!! FEATURETTES ARE EVIL!!! I'LL NEVER BUY A DVD WITH A FEATURETTE ON IT!!1!!!!!!1!1!!"?

Nobody's arguing that Digital Copies are not bonus features.

Some of us are complaining about a bonus feature which takes up a lot of room on the DVD's in question and either pushes off bonus features which we'd prefer or (in the case of digital copy 2nd discs) causes a huge decrease in the quality of the original feature.

Unsurprisingly, your analogy sucks. A better analogy would be if more and more studios started replacing bonus features with FS versions of films (which used to be quite common). While a FS version of the film is probably more welcome to the average movie purchaser than a digital copy, you can imagine that it would be seen as unwelcome to your average DVDtalker.

Dude, in a world where people spend as much time as they do bitching about lack of inserts and snapper releases, is it really that incomprehensible to you that people are as vocal as they are about digital copies?!?

The point of this topic is "Digital Copies..Why?". I’ve seen a lot of people say why they don’t want them. I’ve yet to see you post why you do. So, unless you care to post why you think they are a good idea, why not stop the thread-crapping and just STFU? Oh, and your personal attacks against the people posting here ("silly", "pretty asinine") are not appreciated.

I really don't have a problem with the studios adding the Digital Copy as a bonus feature. For those who love it, more power to them.

The problem I have, which doesn't seem to be getting across to some people here, is devoting an entire disc to that one feature alone and having it become useless afterwards. I mean how much space does a Digital Copy take? When I downloaded Rambo, I saw that it was a 1.4 gig file. That is more than enough room to put some more bonus features to keep the disc from becoming useless.

Again, this will happen with or without Digital Copy. Studios routinely release or re-release discs barren of bonus features all the time. Or that strip out most of the bonus features from an earlier release to add something useless and lame. That has nothing to do with Digital Copy.

If the Digital Copy's on a 2nd disc, how does it decrease the quality of the original feature?

I've used Digital Copy and found it very useful on a long flight I took recently. But I'm not going to argue that I love the feature and need it to be on every release. As with most bonus features that I hardly ever watch, I'm pretty much indifferent to it. It's there on the disc, I might use it, I might not.

However, if you're going to argue what a horrible, awful, evil idea it is, you better hope that your arguments hold up to scrutiny. In this case, they just plain don't.

Well, looking specifically at titles like "Hitman", the digital copy sits, by itself, on the second disc, while all of the (other) extras are squished onto the first disc. In order to fit them all on the first disc, the main feature is compressed significantly more than if many of those features were moved to the second disc, where there is more than enough room.

DJariya said that the Rambo download was 1.4G. That means 3G of unused space on the second disc. That means 3G of extras could have been moved off of disc 1 and the Rambo features could have been expanded by 3G. That extra 3G could make a big difference in the quality of as SDVD.

My argument has been pretty consistant and it does hold up to scrutiny. You just chose to ignore it and instead resort to sarcasm and personal attacks. Whatever.

Both Hitman and Rambo are of such a length (barely 90 min) and aspect ratio (2.35:1), that they occupy little space (video is less than 4.5gb for each movie) while still having a healthy bitrate. They are hardly "significantly compressed" to make room for the extras on the same DVD.

Wow..Everyone has their own opinion about the Digitial Copies. I said before I don't mind them being an extra bonus. I have some on my computer, but I don't see myself really using them at this time. "Digital Copies..Why?" I was upset because the studios are giving me an extra disc that in most cases can only be used once, as I said the Coaster Disc. Calling the release a 2-disc version with extra features not included on the 1-disc upset me because they are putting it on one disc to begin with. I feel alittle cheated. I know one of the studios got it correct. They included the film with commentaries on one disc and the special features plus the digital copy on the second disc. I didn't mind paying over $22-$24..it was a value. That is my problem with the release of digital copies. I wanted to hear from other DVDtalkers and see if I'm the only one that it bothers that we get a coaster disc. I want my Digital Copy with my Special Features on disc 2..that's all....Again, my opinion. :shrug:

I'll admit that "significant" may have been ill-chosen with respect to these two titles, but thay are hardly the only titles with wasted 2nd discs.

This is incorrect. Fair use is still an affirmative defense to a claim under the DMCA. The DMCA states explicitly: "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title." It is true that it is, practically speaking, harder to prevail on a fair use defense under the DMCA.

It is also not true that fair use was never a law. It began as judge-made law and was eventually codified in the 1976 Copyright Act.

My point is just that I don't think it's been established that making a personal copy is a fair use.

I can think of a few others, The Eye, AvP2 and Family Guy: Blue Harvest come to mind, but they are also fairly short movies where there's hardly enough extra materials to make the bitrate suffer.

I'd be really interested in hearing which titles actually do suffer from poor video quality because they didn't put the extras on the second Digital Copy disc.

You assume that Fox had planned to release Hitman as a 2-disc set with all of the supplements on Disc 2, but had to shift them to Disc 1 due to Digital Copy. That's not the case at all. If it weren't for Digital Copy, Hitman would have just been a single-disc release with the supplements exactly where they are now. The Digital Copy is a "value add" that they threw into the case as a companion to the main DVD itself.

Enough with the martyr act. You can't claim to be a victim of personal attacks while launching personal attacks left and right.

DJariya,
This is exactly what I was talking about and why I started this forum. I know we can add some of the features on to the second disc...why not? Anyway, thanks for keeping with the forum..