i thought all the hd dvds were gonna be holding hours and hours of extras on a single disc?

what went wrong? are they just lazy?

HD-DVDs usually have all the extras ported over. Perhaps you mean Blu-ray?

They don't want to do it now. Otherwise, how would they double dip the titles later?

Check out Superman Returns and get back to me.

Maybe the OP heard about King Kong or Superman the Movie.

Have you looked at extras for Fox's $40 blu-ray titles? Or lack thereof?

They potentially could hold more extras if they would compress them using advanced codecs such as VC-1 or AVC. So far, they haven't done that; they've just copied over the MPEG-2 files.

Most of the HD DVD titles do have the same extras as their DVD counterparts. King Kong is a big exception. I heard Universal was pressed for time on that release due to it's inclusion w/ the X-Box HD DVD drive. I'm guessing it also had to do with the fact that the movie itself pretty much filled the entire HD DVD disc, so extras would have needed to be put on a second disc. (I don't think Universal has done any 2-disc sets yet.)

Blu-ray right now is a different story as everyone else has already described. Reasons for continual lack of extras on BD appear to be a combination of...

- Frequent use of 25GB single layer discs
- Frequent use of MPEG-2 video compression
- Frequent use of uncompressed PCM audio
- Incomplete implementation of BD-J feature set.

Hopefully these things will change in the future.

Exactly. Release most titles bareboned now...and once the masses join in on the fun, then they will rerelease them with extras.

At least that's how I look at it.

The problem is that most of the consumers (maybe not you or me but the J6P which comprises 90%+ of the buying population) generally don't care about extras. Walk down Wal-Mart or Best Buy and ask people buying DVDs whether they watch extras. The #1 response will be, "What's that?"

And, yes, the double/triple dip factor which is huge these days.

They may not care about extras, but if you ask them to pay $40 for a movie, they're going to ask what is on it other than the movie.

HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs with "lots" of extras:

Mission: Impossible III
-The HD DVD even has a video commentary track.

World Trade Center

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift
-Includes "U-Control" for cool in-movie experience

Pearl Harbor
-All the stuff from the two-disc DVD plus a lossless audio track

Open Season
-All the extras from the DVD plus lossless audio.

Do you have any data to back this claim up? And if it were true, why would studios continue to release super special deluxe editions advertising "all-new" extras if there were not a substantial market for it?

I wish that the HD discs had all new extras, and all of them in HD. Most of the extras in DVDs were crap, and when they port that over to HD discs, they're just porting over crap. Before some of you go all nuts on me, I said "most" meaning more than 50%, which is not the same thing as 100% (seriously! less than 1/2 of all extras are ever worth watching).

Wrong.

It's laziness. Pure and simple.

There is a thread over at AVS that lists the sizes on the discs. There's room for the extras being left off. For some reason, they're just not putting them on there.

For example, Flight Plan had 20GB worth of room left on the disc. You want to know how large the extras were that were left off? about 2gb.

Since when does "most" = 50%?

I'm no math major but doesn't that equal half? Exactly?

And, yeah, I'd love to see the facts to back up your statement about people not caring about extras. Cause Lord knows you'd never state something as fact that is one of your theories, like you accuse others of doing.

He said "more than 50%." That means most.

Misread it. My apologies.

Still, doesn't matter. That's all opinion. From one person.

Clearly people are liking the extras and the re-releases or else we wouldn't be getting so many double-dips and whatknot.

The public at large may not watch extras, but they want them on there. That's why studios are so eager to dump extras on a second disc even if it's not at all necessary. It's all marketing.

I'm 100% in agreement. Most of the extras go unwatched, but consumers still want them there. Marketing at its finest.


DVD Josh, I have no hard data to back up my claim. It is based mostly on personal experience. However, I did peruse an impulse study done from 2002 regarding DVD sales which concluded that for impulse purchases, the only things people cared about were the movie title and the price, with almost zero regards to PQ, AQ, or extras. They just assumed that PQ and AQ would be much better than VHS, and something like 50% had no idea what "extras" meant and ~90% had never watched extras on DVDs. Anyway, the reason why you see some DVDs stands near the checkout at Target is largely based on studies such as this one.

I'm sure much has changed since 2002. I would love to see a more recent study (or even an informal poll) regarding this. Naturally, we can't do it here since most of us are DVD enthusiasts (or at least claim to be one). Maybe at a place like Fatwallet or iVillage. I'm willing to bet that the majority of people still don't watch extras on a regular basis. We're talking about the average consumer here. Until like a year ago, weren't full screen editions selling as many as widescreen editions?

Namja, I think Adam's thoughts are correct - the public may not watch them but they certainly do want them. Bare bones editions are followed by SEs on a regular basis. If this were not profitable, then studios would not bother. Now, we are seeing more and more day and date BB and SE releases (see, POTC, for one). But again, if there were not a substantial market, they would not make the releases.

I think that HDD/BDs that do not include a full slate of extras are missing an opportunity to capture market share. People have become accustomed to not only better PQ/AQ but also a "loaded" disc with plenty beyond the movie. If you want to charge them more and not include those goodies, you are liable get "DVD is good enough for me", which attitude we need to move away from.

One of the selling points of the new formats is "interactive technologies" (ala BD-J and HD-I). Meaning, the next generation of optical media should include things and extras not available anywhere else. If not, why upgrade at all?

Clearly, content is king (meaning the feature presentation). But if you are going to get J6P to upgrade and buy Star Wars for the 10th time, you need to give him something he didn't have before, or then at least what he had before, only better. Bare bones releases accomplish neither.

I don't think it's laziness at all. They're just preparing for double dips. What did DVD's have for extras when they first came out? Not much of anything. Now you're getting multiple disc versions of those same films. Studios know that the people who have already invested into the new formats are also the same group of people who will most likely pay for a movie again to get more extras. I know I'm guilty of it.

DVD's really didn't have anything to live up to. They were light years beyond anything that the general public had experienced before. They were fantastic all around and it didn't take much to convince people to drop VHS.

The HD formats need to work OVERTIME on doing that. Dropping thing early on is, IMHO, definitely not the way to do that. There won't be an opportunity to double-dip if they keep this up and I hope they're not naive enough to believe that they're guaranteed that point of success.

Also, there are different kinds of extras, and people have different preferences as to what they like. I don't care much for deleted scenes, but for some that's their favorite extra. Some people don't want to hear how something was made, and would prefer discussion of the themes behind the movie. Some just like extra material not directly related to the film, such as a historical documentary, or the short films with Pixar's and other animated studios' titles.

Take those stupid games they put on Disney DVDs for instance, like that Virtual Safari. I'll bet 80-90% of adults don't care for those at all, but if you asked kids, they probably like them. The idea of including the extras is to satisfy more consumers: those who don't care for extras at all, those who like certain kinds of extras, and those who like any and all extras.

That's precisely how I see the new HD discs. I want more than just the SD extras ported from DVDs. I'd like all the extras to be in HD. Having interactive extras would be a wonderful bonus. Both HD DVD and BD do need to work "OVERTIME" to get this right. This could be a huge selling point for both formats.