Mike86

Fuck this. Add me to the list of importing my Warner Bros. discs from the UK from now on if this is going to be the case..

bunkaroo

No, you can't. The failure rate of these types of discs has always been higher. DVD-5 and DVD-9 have proven reliable over the years. BD-25 and BD-50 have so far also been reliable over a 5-6 year span.

HD DVD combos and DVD-18 have well documented failures that occurred both immediately and later on, and they were only produced for a few years.

But feel free to buy these discs - the studios love using consumers for beta testing. I won't be one of them.

Pizza

Blows. When do they start selling bluray MODs?

Gizmo

Aside from a bad batch of Children of Men (IIRC), there has not been a whole lot of HD DVD Combo issues. Like everything, there are some issues, but it tends to get overblown because of the former war.

I've yet to encounter a Combo title that I've had an issue with that a reboot wouldn't fix and I own, and still watch, around 200 HD DVDs (on multiple players).

I still hate these Combo/Flipper titles. The days of needing them are long gone.

bunkaroo

My point is the number of people who did have problems and stated so here and at AVS was significant, and that was for a small sample size. If those discs sold hundreds of thousands of copies the problems would have been magnified.

And the scariest part is even though Uni's few problematic Combos (CoM, Good Shepherd, Smokin' Aces, etc) garnered a decent amount of attention, I recall WB had just as many if not more problems with their combos and on higher profile titles. Matrix box set comes immediately to mind. I had (and still have) three HD DVD players, and I personally experienced issues with all the aforementioned discs. Either I have extremely bad luck or those discs were pieces of shit. I'm going with the latter.

Artman

J Edgar still shows two discs... maybe flippers will only be for "special" titles. You'd think the kind of people watching Harold and Kumor would be more likely to break or find it harder to use flippers... or maybe it's just because less discs will be easier for them to keep track of.

TheMovieman

What site are you talking about? If Amazon, they have Harold and Kumar as 2 discs as well...

Artman

If you look at the item description below it shows 1 disc for H&K. They could be wrong, but it's a glimmer of hope...

Gizmo

Err he has the disc in hand. It's one disc and a flipper.

Artman

I meant Amazon could be wrong about J Edgar being two discs. They correctly list H&K as one, (even though the product title still says two).

Gizmo

Gotcha. It could change. This looks like a permanent switch by Warner (like UV).

PerryD

No, there was definitely a major problem with the HD-DVD combos. There was a poll here, I think, and it was very high occurance rate. For some reason, boiling the discs seemed to help the discs play all the way through. But there were many movies where I would have to finish the movie by watching the DVD side of the combo disc. I had the XA2 player which was supposed to be the most reliable. This was not a format war issue, I only had a HD-DVD player at the time, and I hated the combos.

PvtPlatypus

This really sucks, hopefully other companies don't follow suit.

Alan Smithee

I have almost every HD-DVD released in the US and have had far more problems with single-sided discs than the combos. The main problem was Cinram, who manufactured most of Warner's discs. I have both the combo and single-sided versions of "Happy Feet", the 1-sided disc freezes up during play but both sides of the combo disc play fine.

I haven't heard of any problems with the combo Blu-Rays that have been out so far, I have 2 of them but haven't gotten around to watching them. Again I hate multi-disc sets but have no need for a standard-def copy anyways.

islandclaws

I have no combo Blu-rays, but the few combo HD DVDs I had/have caused me enough issues that I won't buy anything that comes like this.

davidh777

It never made sense to me that I needed to enter a code on iTunes to download a copy from a physical disc when iTunes has a copy right there. That said, downloading from a disc will take me a few minutes while iTunes or Warner's site has taken me up to 50 minutes. I once heard that Warner had concerns about customers without broadband connections not being able to get the iTunes version.

PhantomStranger

Awful news, driven solely by Warner's need to control the rental market and prevent stores like Family Video from buying the DVD/BD combo pack and splitting it up.

Matthew Chmiel

I have never had a single issue downloading from iTunes when the digital copy is online only. I had both The Big Lebowski and Scarface downloading the other week from iTunes and it barely took 10 minutes. Then again, I do have 25mbps download speeds. The problem I see with Warner's argument is how is Warmer concerned about customers without broadband connections not being able to get digital copies when Ultraviolet is practically streaming only?

Most brick and mortar video stores in Las Vegas have already gone under. Not a single mom and pop store remains. There's a handful of Blockbuster locations remaining and their time is running out. On every corner now exists either a Redbox or Blockbuster Express. Family Video shouldn't even be a concern much longer as renting will be a fully automated service (Redbox), mail-in service (Netflix) or on-demand service (Netflix, iTunes, CinemaNow, Vudu, Zune, etc) within the next few years. I would be geniuenly shocked if retail rental locations still exist by 2015.

TheMovieman

To me that's a worse offender than it being a combo disc.

Superdaddy

Agreed. Lossy audio on a Blu-ray disc in 2012 is a big step backward. I own very few movies on BD with lossy tracks, and have consciously not upgraded a number of DVDs (mostly Warner titles) released to BD early in the format's history partly due to the lack of lossless audio.

Even nature documentaries--a favorite of mine which routinely have lossy audio tracks on BD (yes, I do buy them anyway)--are moving away from this. Recent titles from BBC and National Geographic have contained lossless audio tracks.

I don't own any two-sided BDs but have not yet had a problem with a two-sided DVD (which doesn't necessarily mean I'm in any hurry to buy a BD combo disc)

davidh777

Yeah, I have a standard Comcast connection and downloading TV episodes takes me a while as well. As far as their logic, that may have worked for one technology but I never heard it applied to UV.

RocShemp

I'll worry about that then. Right now I'm concerned about Sherlock Holmes.

PhantomStranger

As others have said, you will always be able to get the UK versions of WB Blu-rays if you want to avoid the flipper. Only in the U.S. do the executives pull this nonsense.

RocShemp

Are the UK releases region free? And don't the UK menus play havock with the PS3 (my default BD player)?

Mr. Cinema

There's also a BD only version of Harold and Kumar 3 coming out. So I guess if you want to avoid flippers, you have that option.