In other news, I asked "paidgeek" at avs (a BD insider) what the deal was with extras?

I got the typical snide BD response...

I'd love a REAL response to the question. it's like those studios just don't give a shit.

Perhaps that's the actual reason. Maybe the majority of BD studios feel like people will reject the format if they get SD extras because they don't look shiny enough on big screens. Just a thought.

Well like I was saying earlier that hardly any of the discs have TrueHD tracks. For me, that's a big negative. Titles that should have had it, didn't have it like King Kong, Tokyo Drift, MI3, and Riddick. Those titles are screaming for TrueHD tracks. Dolby Digital Plus is just not enough in my opinion for high profile titles like that. Comedies obviously I could care less if it had it or not, but those should have had them.

Plus the extras shouldn't have just been ported over, if they had high def masters which I'm sure they probably did have for some of the newer titles, the extras should have definitely been upgraded.

That does get me thinking about it, because HD benefits larger screens and when people see the quality of those older extras they may think twice.

OK but that's not a step BACK from SD-DVD. Even though the audio tracks on HD DVD are still compressed, they're a higher compression than SD-DVD.

And not all extras are HD. To me, extras are just that: extras. They don't need to be in HD and they don't need to take up more space than is necessary.

If anything, that should make people appreciate the feature film more in HD in the first place.

I suspect many studios want to do their extras in HD. This has been pushed forward on BD by titles such as Click (horrid movie, but all HD extras). HD DVD on the other hand seem to have a design philosophy of making do with what they have available. Since I'm not going to buy hundreds of discs it's more important to me that the one's i'm interested in are the best they can be. That includes having everything in HD (on the few titles who's extras are likely to interest me). If I want to see SD extras I'll just rent the old DVD.

If that's the case about extras, then why is Fox charging a retail price of $40 for their old, sometimes crappy catalog titles? What's the added value on those titles to justify that type of pricing?

HD extras are nice for new and future releases (I really liked them on the World Trade Center and MI3 2-disc releases), but existing SD extras are still fine to use and should be retained. I don't want them to just drop the extras because they're not in HD. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to agree that Disc A with no extras is better than Disc B with SD extras, just because everything on Disc A is in HD.

In many cases, it's just not feasible to redo them just so they can be in HD. What about vintage (or even very recent) television specials and clips produced in SD? What about on-set footage they can't just go back and reshoot? How about extras involving people who have passed away? I wouldn't want to see them redo that doc about the history of Chicago without the participation of Jerry Orbach and Fred Ebb just because it "needs" to be in HD.

A large percentage of DVD extras were produced specifically for the DVD market, which means they were shot/compiled recently (within 10 years). Some of them will have been filmed or shot in HD, but many will be in SD. Since they made extras from scratch for all those DVDs there's no reason they can't do the same thing again for BD. I'd prefer that studios focus their efforts on producing new HD extras than on porting over old SD ones. Could they do both? Sure. Are they going to be allocating more money to the department to do both? Not likely.

You already knew it didn't have all the extras months ago (and of course the first to point it out), so you ARE coming in the Blu-Ray section to threadcrap.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=135

This pattern is like a broken record in every Blu-Ray thread, from the release one, to the sales one, to the official blu-ray one.

So maybe I should head over to the HD-DVD thread and maybe ask why people should buy a $50 HD-DVD import from dvdhola.sp with no extras, pitch speedup and foreign language menus? Would I get the "So which HD-DVD player do you own?" question?

Obviously people are gladly buying Blu-Rays regardless if it has all the extras, no extras or are missing the 2-minute EPK clip were the cast members express their love for each other.

To reiterate:

If you're just in this thread to bitch about Blu-ray, you're wasting your time and everyone else's.

digitalfreaknyc: this is a final warning.

I honestly am not sure how that applies to me.

I am interested in acquiring a BD player and I am in the market for one. In fact, I'm about ready to buy one so everyone here will shut up about it (present company excluded). Considering how often I post bargains on the players, you should know that I'm clearly researching it. If i were complaining about the imports not having any extras in the HD DVD thread, somehow I feel like this would fall off everyone's shoulders (and it has). Does that mean I should buy a BD player so I have a right to bitch about BD releases?

Specs are never final. Hell, they didn't even announce all the Chicago extras until recently. I was holding out hope.

You wouldn't be asking that because all the Spanish imports seem to be having their own extras, even more than the BD version, it seems.

It's the Studio-Canal discs that have a raised pitch and I completely agree, it's bullshit.

Please feel free to start a thread about it. I'd love for people to know how SC is fucking up those releases. It's moronic, at best.

And I'm not the only one complaining. Do you think that if I suddenly stopped posting that the issue would go away? Obviously to a lot of us, it's an issue.

Can I request that a thread be created where every BD that DOES port over all the SD extras be created? It's honestly something I'd like to know and something that's holding a # of us back.

How can a thread be called a "discussion" when counterpoints/counter-arguments are not allowed?

A thread full of "wow Blu ray is nice", "yeah I agree", posts would be boring and pointless.

Thank you. I'm not here to piss anyone off.

When I see posts like:...and a parade of gripes about BD, plus the defensive snark that follows any criticism about HD DVD, it's hard to think of you as being even-handed.

No, but it sounds more like lip service than a legitimate interest.

Counterpoints and counter-arguments are allowed. You missed how intolerable the forum was a few months ago when it was bitchfest after bitchfest, so the decision was made that we'd take an enthusiast standpoint. If you have an interest in Blu-ray and see something to criticize, go for it. If you're "HD DVD or die!", then stay out of the Blu-ray threads (and vice versa).

I'll give you my Ebay ID and you can check to see how many samusngs and ps3's i've bid on. Doesn't matter what it comes across as if it's the truth.

And i could care less if someone criticizes HD DVD if it's founded. hell, I do it as well and you know it. So I guess I'm not allowed to do it when I'm disappointed with BD because I don't own one!?!? I love the movies that are coming out on it and I'm really frustrated with how they're being treated. Am I not allowed to voice that?

Jeez...i really shouldn't have to defend myself this much.

Funny that no one's still responded to MY complaint where someone trashes me in one of the other threads but yet anytime someone complains about me, the mods get right on it.

Oh really? So what you were implying with this post:

That I'm lying when I or others say extras are unimportant in regards to getting a film in HD? It seems I and others have to constantly reiterate that here, and that's not discussion. If all BD's suck because they have "no extras" then why are you considering buying one? How could you be happy with BD if you're only going to watch Flightplan because it has 100% of the extras?

I deleted a bunch of posts in another thread last night. I can't remember if that's what you're referring to or not. I look at every report I'm sent, although I don't always agree that action needs to be taken.

A very good question. And one which I've already answered. BD would be great if all you did was rent. There are a bunch of movies that I'd love to see and not have to rent the SD version of it. That's one reason.

I've made an agreement with friends (who already own BD) that I'm not buying into it until there are at least 10 titles that I'd be interested in which port over a majority of extras. So you're COMPLETELY right. It would be almost pointless of me to buy one at this stage. But I have my money IN HAND waiting to give it to BD companies.

Extras to me have always been that: extra. With a stellar audiovisual presentation and the trailer, I don't need anything else in my discs.

But... to not port already-existing SD extras does seem a bit odd. My preference would be discs jampacked with the extras from an out-of-print collector's edition. That's what put me over the edge for Cinderella Man.

Extras won't matter to me until they surpass the SD counterparts AND they are all in HD. And I don't mean it has an extra EPK that the DVD doesn't. As far as I know, no movie has done that on either side.

One of my favorite extras presentation was on the Disney Collector's Edition of Atlantis. It had a "Play All Extras" feature that was anamorphic and gave you introductions to each extra and made sense being shown all in a row. Something like that I will be excited to see.

As far as I know, I believe HD DVD so far is the only one with really cool simultaneous interactive extras (IME and the like). I guess BD has some and they'll be more popular once BDJ becomes more common.

For what it's worth, during the many arguments I had with Richard from R&B Films about Chronos, he was insistent that they intentionally dropped all of the SD extras because his marketing research showed that consumers were more interested in shiny interactive HD extras.

Personally, I'm bothered by the idea of dropping perfectly good SD extras for HD extras. Some people are absolutely insistent on having all HD extras, and I don't see the point. I'd rather have the information in perfectly serviceable standard definition than have it look shiny and pretty on my HDTV. So the idea that studios are dropping SD features just because they're SD bothers me.

It's also a slippery slope to say that the studios can leave off "fluffy" extras. One person's fluff is another person's gold, or something like that. My opinion: just port everything over now and then the studios can double-dip later with HD extras, if they feel it's really necessary.

I am the guy on AVS who got them early, and I thought American Psycho has some problems with the master(print scratches). That was only judged by watching the first 1-2 minutes though.

Too late, my preorder has already shipped.

I only fully watched Rambo and Reservoir Dogs so far. Rambo was awesome IMO and R.Dogs was pretty good as well. I'll really have to blow them up to size on my projector to get a better of opinion of the the quality.

American Psycho has a lot of scenes that contain white backgrounds, and in thse shots you can see any print damage easily. I'll watch Young Guns and American Psycho in full this weekend hopefully.

I was shocked to see Rambo encoded in AVC however.