Disc Special Features

When DVDs were first released I was so freaking excited by the format and especially by the concept of special features. At one time I vowed to only buy the deluxe/special edition of any movie I wanted to own and I watched the crap out of all the features on all my disks.

Then streaming came along. The ease of starting a film without commercials and FBI warnings slowly wore me down and, seemingly out of the blue (ray? ), I found myself agonizing over commercials and previews and FBI warnings and interactive menus and now I've started building my film collection onto a 2 TB hard drive that I connect to my TV.

On top of that, I've found myself trying to find the bare basic blu-ray releases (when there are any) and I avoid the big multi-disc sets like the plague.

Besides the convenience and speed of streaming, I've found that hours and hours of behind the scenes footage is just redundant. I know pretty much everything about film making that I ever wanted to know and then some. I've seen enough animatics and guys in ping pong ball suits to last a lifetime and I've finally just said to myself "enough."

So, is there anyone else out there like me? Am I just bonkers? Am I losing my film geek cred because I don't care how Gravity was filmed?

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I'm the opposite, I love special features. Plus I'm pretty peeved at how they're executed. I mean DVDs themselves have had a great following with them. Discs have been released with a crapload of bonus features, and I know for a fact that studios CAN release a DVD with loads of features as well as making them director's cuts and such. When Blu-rays were released they took over DVDs (obviously) and now the people who purchase DVDs, are left in the cold.

Studios CAN release both Blu and DVD with identical bonus but they are too weak. They have the the money and the definitely have the ability. Just because Blu-ray is so called "better quality" doesn't mean that they have to quit making better releases. There are actually better DVD releases out there then there are Blu-ray releases. I own plenty of them.

Agree with jrs.


Since BluRay came out, DVD has suffered terribly.


I love features and the major selling point for DVD was the features they contained. Even if they put two or three discs in the box it's still worth it.


Sadly, most new DVD releases these days have one disc that contains a trailer... if you're extremely lucky a commentary track too.


It's all about hocking the higher priced BluRays to the populous.
"If we put all the features on the BR and cock all on the DVD, people will by the more expensive one"


It's like DVD lovers are actually being punished.

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The worst thing, to add to my dislike of how DVD users are punished...


BluRay users get slammed as well. If you're a genuine movie fan, and like features, you have to buy a BluRay player... then... you have to get upgrades for it which means you have to get a decent expensive internet connection.


Someone in my situation is screwed. I can't afford the £500 for the player, and can't afford the £40+ for the discs either. Even if I managed to scrape the money together, I couldn't afford the internet needed to do the upgrades.

I have no idea what 500 L-things is in us dollars, but I can get a decent blu-ray player with wi-fi and built-in netflix/hulu/etc. for $80 US.

I didn't know this would turn into a DVD/Blu-ray debate, I assumed everyone had just moved on to blu-ray. It's definitely the superior format.

Am I the only person who is tired of seeing the exact same making of features on every movie?

Count me as a special features guy. And the most special features are on Blu Ray. I do not have a Blu Ray player, not do I like spending a butt load of cash on one DVD unless it is from the Criterion collection. And I buy those only during the Barnes and Nobles sale, and for movies I can't get off Hulu Plus.

Now a good chunk of my favorite movies have some great special features, but I would love to watch certain special features like on the Marvel Phase One Blu Ray package, The Expendables, and Taxi Driver. And in order for me to do that I will have to find a decent Blu Ray player or a Playstation 3 or 4.

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I'm just gonna wait til I get my X-Box One. Then I'll purchase "specific" blu-rays. I will not be replacing my entire DVD collection because A.) it 's a waste of my money and B.) if I even try to it would actually be a waste of my time as well. Sure I love movies and collecting them, but if I look at it sensibly I need money for more important things at my age. Plus if I just wanna watch a movie I can simply do it other ways through my big screen TV.

That is for the best. I would do much the same thing. I have too many DVDs to replace, and I do not think that I need to see everything in HI DEF.

Where on earth are you looking? You can get blu-ray players really cheap, for example my latest one was about £45. And £40+ for discs? unless you mean more than one brand new disc then yeah it's going to add up, just like it would if you bought brand new DVDs that go at the average price of £10.

Ohhh, another interesting point brought up; converting DVD to blu-ray.

I want to go on the record now since jrs brought it up, I have only bought about 2 or 3 blu-rays of DVDs I already owned and those were films that I really love. I have no plan of replacing my DVDs with blu-rays but I don't buy DVDs anymore at all unless they come with a blu-ray. I will say that's nice when it comes to kid friendly fare because my kids have a DVD player in the toy room and we have a PS3 in the living room so having both formats in one package is nice.

That said, I still try to buy the bare bones edition of discs these days. What's crazy is when DVD was first released I absolutely vowed that I would always buy the versions with the most added stuff. Strange how much we change.