film

How Blu-Ray is dropping the ball w/ Special Features

I’d like to take a moment to rant a little bit. Recently, I took advantage of the clearance sales at Circuit City to pick up some Blu-Ray movies – specifically, upgrading some of the titles in my collection – Patton, A Bridge Too Far, and Black Hawk Down. Of these movies, only Patton matches the special features of it’s DVD release. The DVD release of Bridge Too Far has commentary by World War II Veterans who participated in Operation Market Garden, as well as documentary material. The Blu-Ray release has the theatrical trailer. That’s it. The Blu-Ray release of Black Hawk down has all of the commentaries from the Special Edition release of the movie (director’s commentary, writer’s commentary, and commentary of people who actually participated in the events depicted in the movie) but none of the other special features exclusive for that release (an episode of Frontline and History Channel documentary on the events as well).

The big selling point of Blu-Ray is that there is more storage on the disks, so you can have more information on the disks, so that which once took two disks now takes only one (for example, Batman Begins Blu-Ray release). So, why the fuck can’t you take all the special features that were on the special edition DVD release of a movie, and put those on the Blu-Ray disk, so we can leave those imbecilic shenanagans behind us! You do that, so that the special features of the Blu-Ray release are equal to or superior to the DVD release, while retaining picture quality, and you will get more people to adopt the format. If people feel that they’re getting more with the existing format, then they won’t switch.

So, stop ripping me and other customers off by scrimping on bonus features!

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