360 HD-DVD Commercial

[cthellis42]

People get suckered by anything that says "Special Edition," though, no matter how many disks it has. Same thing with "Remastered," "Unrated," and "14 seconds of never-before seen footage!" Just how many extra people do you nab if the same thing comes on two disks instead of one? That is the question. If "more = better," how come 3-disk releases for single movies are basically unheard of? I mean... more value!

Bonus "Special Features" disks are certainly expected, but I question at this point whether it adds very much to sales value since it is the norm. (Plus, I question how many people actually watch those damn disks at this point. Certainly I know of few. Commentary, deleted scenes... the important stuff people seem to have interest in are all on the movie disk.) Now that everyone is used to it, are they actually more affected by the number of disks, or by the other marketing/feature/featurette terms they expect to see? And how many are going to be paying attention to whatever NEW marketing terms they are going to get tossed at them by the HD DVD generation before the old ones?

I certainly won't argue the perceived value of anything that is inherently a "set," though: miniseries, TV seasons, etc. There people are automatically dividing the cost of the set by the number of disks/episodes, and anything that helps get below their mental "acceptable dollar-per-disk" level will add to sales. But for single movies, more people just have a "dollar-per-movie" level; they may add to it for certain special features--and said features may prompt them to pick up a re-release--but I don't see the diskiness being as large a factor anymore. That, in and of itself, is no longer very "special"--so what else are they looking at, and how much is it weighed in comparison?

 

[rabidrabbit]

I'm too lazy to find any linkies I'm afraid, but I've read comments from movie exec types saying that actually "people" do think they're getting something special with multi disk packs, to the point where publishers will sometimes put out on 2 DVDs content that could fit onto 1 DVD 9.

Most people have no idea about disk capcity, number of layers on the disk, codecs or any of that stuff. They naturally, however, appreciate that more disks = better even when maybe it doesn't.

DVD collectors/special editions are ace.

Person 1: "I gots me the 2 disk copy of [TOP TEN MOVIE XX]!!"
Person 2: "What's actually on the second disk?"
Person 1: "It's got ... I don't know."

The point is, today with DVD's they DO get something extra with two discs.
Show me a title that had more content when it was released on one disc, than it had when it had the 2 or more disc "Special Edition" available.
It's not whether they actually ever watch that extra content, they want it because of the content, not the extra disc.

It's the "Special Edition", "Collector's Edition", "Extended Director's Cut With Unseen Footage" etc... that the customer looks first on the disc cover, then he looks at the back and what that extra content is. With DVD's that has gone hand in hand with the quantity of discs, buth with high capacity discs, and with two different formats, one with more, other with less capacity, they pretty much have to educate themselves of the differencies of these formats anyway before purchase. So they will know two discs won't no more automatically equal better and more content when it comes to comparing the two competing formats.
When single and multi disc editions inside that format eventually start to appear, it'll be again the same situation as now, multidisc is more content, but between two different formats, the consumers will learn as they go.

I refuse to believe the majority of movie buying people would be that easily fooled with the more discs = better, if the actual content reads the same on bothe BD and HD-DVD disc case.

Maybe those who are buying from TV-Shops, but they should be extinct by natural selection anyway

 

[LunchBox]

Hehehe.
I like the commercial.
It's very simple but it gets to the point!

 

[function]

People get suckered by anything that says "Special Edition," though, no matter how many disks it has. Same thing with "Remastered," "Unrated," and "14 seconds of never-before seen footage!" Just how many extra people do you nab if the same thing comes on two disks instead of one? That is the question. If "more = better," how come 3-disk releases for single movies are basically unheard of? I mean... more value!

There's probably something about diminsishing returns and symmetry in there. Having more extras disks than movie disks - now that would seem like they were cramming stuff in!

It's interesting that the mega successful Lord of the Rings Directors Cut Extended Big Super Editions came with both the move and the extras on two disks apiece. The percieved value of the box set, with six extras disks, was no doubt very high (and designed to be so).

Bonus "Special Features" disks are certainly expected, but I question at this point whether it adds very much to sales value since it is the norm. (Plus, I question how many people actually watch those damn disks at this point. Certainly I know of few. Commentary, deleted scenes... the important stuff people seem to have interest in are all on the movie disk.) Now that everyone is used to it, are they actually more affected by the number of disks, or by the other marketing/feature/featurette terms they expect to see? And how many are going to be paying attention to whatever NEW marketing terms they are going to get tossed at them by the HD DVD generation before the old ones?

It's an interesting question. Even after months of the new features of HD-DVD being pushed at people, I bet that if you released the same movie plus same extras on a "ONE DISK EDITION" and "TWO DISK EDITION", more people would automatically pick up the two disk option. Even if the one disk option had, say, a better menu system, more commentry tracks or better interactive features it might be the case - I have to say I don't check what the special features are a lot of the time!

... But for single movies, more people just have a "dollar-per-movie" level; they may add to it for certain special features--and said features may prompt them to pick up a re-release--but I don't see the diskiness being as large a factor anymore. That, in and of itself, is no longer very "special"--so what else are they looking at, and how much is it weighed in comparison?

It's probably a large and complex issue, so I'll cut through it and go straight to my assumptions and use anecdotal evidence where possible.

I guess that people always like to think they are getting something special. Even if it's only a bit more special, and even if they won't use that special thing. Most people won't research the movie, and how good its special features are, but they will assume that if the movie package comes on more than one disk that it must be because it needs the space and so they're getting extra stuff that the original release (if there was one) didn't have.

I think there's a certain expectation also, that a good or full price movie should come on more than one disk. That's how much stuff you should expect to get.

Once the price of HD disks drop and the mainstram (less educated and/or less bothered) market adopts one or both of these formats, I'm pretty sure we'll start to see two disk packages appearing again (even when they don't need to). I'd bet you a TWO DISK COLLECTORS EDITION (a.k.a. standard edition) copy of Van Helsing on it, but I don't own it and I probably couldn't afford to buy it if I lose.

 

[function]

Exactly. The studios have spent many many years conditioning the consumers about the "value" of a multi disc set. What you said is true and has been discussed at lenght and confirmed by insiders on avsforum many times. Ofcourse, people outside of the industry somehow know better

Value's a funny thing - sometimes you don't realise you're getting it until you have to unnecessarily change a disk (because you put the unused but desireable "extras" disk in the drive instead of the actual movie disk).

I hate it when people put the extras disk on top.

 

[function]

The point is, today with DVD's they DO get something extra with two discs.

Not always, as some two disk, single layer DVDs are supposed to show (I'm taking some "industry insiders" at their word).

Show me a title that had more content when it was released on one disc, than it had when it had the 2 or more disc "Special Edition" available.

Who was talking about 1 disk having more content than two? Not I, or anyone else that I can see in this thread!

It's not whether they actually ever watch that extra content, they want it because of the content, not the extra disc.

... and the extra disk makes them feel they're getting extra content even if they don't bother to add up the minutes or megabytes. Potentially the extra disk might not be required, but that perception would still be there none the less. It's about packaging, marketing.

It's the "Special Edition", "Collector's Edition", "Extended Director's Cut With Unseen Footage" etc... that the customer looks first on the disc cover, then he looks at the back and what that extra content is. With DVD's that has gone hand in hand with the quantity of discs...

Well, apparently not always!

To turn this back to the Xbox and games for a moment, Dead Or Alive Ultimate came on 2 DVDs - one for DoA2 and one for DoA1. That wasn't even remotely neccessery, but from a marketing perspective they obviously felt it was worthwhile.

 

[Farid]

I did like the slogan at the end though letting consumers know this is the official successor to DVD. "DVD has evolved". And then the shot with the Xbox 360 looked nice.

The advertisement should have been just that, the slogan and the small sequence with the HDTV + X360 + Add-on.

So, are Blue Ray movies using any other codec besides Mpeg-2? Why are they using Mpeg-2 anyway. Wouldn't it be possible to fit more stuff at an even higher quality using an advaced codec on a 50G BR disc, or am I missing something really important here?

Blue Ray drives support MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.246 AVC High Profile.
Some studios keep on using MPEG-2 on BRDs, even on the one layer discs (All the first BRDs released were one layer and using MPEG2...), because of technical reasons (they didn't update their authoring tools, etc...) or, more importantly, political ones-- the why of that is anyone's guess.
But the common reason expressed is that the only MPEG-4 based codec with stable authoring tools is VC-1, Microsoft's codec, and Some of the BRD group members, include, obviously Sony, prefer to use MPEG-2 at a high bitrate (with two layer disks) or wait for better H.264 AVC tools instead of using Microsoft's products (hence the political).