The future of special features

[stow123]

Im not interested in special features really but it does make you feel youve got more for your money and havent been over priced like some of the fox titles with only SD trailers.I think all making of featurettes should now be in HD and we should be looking at more interactive features now.There was a real good game on the silver surfer blu-ray i enjoyed it thats what they should be concentrating on and the in move experience thats enjoyable on Terminator 3 .Just having a bog standard making of featurette in SD now dosent interest me we must demand its in HD what do we want SD for when weve bought a blu-ray player? I know theyre looking into games you can play with other people on the internet who have the same blu-ray so i hope theyre going to use the internet access for more than just downloading trailers or something boring like that.If anyone knows anything theyre planning for interactive features please tell all

[patrick99]

The problem is that including lots of special features, especially in HD, risks taking up so much space that the PQ and SQ of the movie itself will suffer as a result.

[zachhar]

Originally Posted by patrick99

The problem is that including lots of special features, especially in HD, risks taking up so much space that the PQ and SQ of the movie itself will suffer as a result.

With 200gb blurays out there and multiple discs i don't think that will happen. We've got to demand better PQ & SQ so the special features don't bog it down.

[stow123]

yeah a dual layer is 50gb isnt it? surely thats enough space for a hd film and features

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm not counting on 200GB 8-layer Blu-ray Discs happening any time soon (if ever). Replicating such discs en masse may turn out to be a nightmare.

We're already seeing a number of special collector's edition releases of different movies spanning more than just one Blu-ray Disc. Bladerunner has three BDs and two DVDs. Close Encounters has two BDs. Superbad has two BDs.

Why are so many people so bent on having everything crammed onto just one disc? Forget about it!

I have absolutely no problem at all with a movie studio putting the movie on one disc (with video and audio pushed to higher quality limits) and then have all the features placed on a 2nd disc.

[patrick99]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

I'm not counting on 200GB 8-layer Blu-ray Discs happening any time soon (if ever). Replicating such discs en masse may turn out to be a nightmare.

We're already seeing a number of special collector's edition releases of different movies spanning more than just one Blu-ray Disc. Bladerunner has three BDs and two DVDs. Close Encounters has two BDs. Superbad has two BDs.

Why are so many people so bent on having everything crammed onto just one disc? Forget about it!

I have absolutely no problem at all with a movie studio putting the movie on one disc (with video and audio pushed to higher quality limits) and then have all the features placed on a 2nd disc.

I have no problem with that either but I suspect the studios will have a problem with it because of the added cost of replicating two discs rather than one. Thus, except for blockbusters (POTC, SM3) I fear they will try to cram everything on one disc in most cases.

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by patrick99

The problem is that including lots of special features, especially in HD, risks taking up so much space that the PQ and SQ of the movie itself will suffer as a result.

The studios are adding more and more special features (SF) because they can use lossless compression formats to take up less space even though they have to pay DD and DTS licensing fees to use them. I agree that PQ and AQ are going to suffer eventually. I have no use for SF and rarely view it. However, being an astronomer, I have to confess that when I bought the BD for Sunshine, I immensely enjoyed playing the movie with the scientific commentary on.

I could easily settle for just lossless LPCM 5.1 with little or no SF. But, already LPCM 5.1+ is an endangered species and will become extinct when Sony and Disney studios finally give in and use only lossless compression in order to make room for more SF and multiple language tracks.

Consumers want BDs loaded up with SF. Now that the cat (lossless compression) is out of the bag, there is no stopping it. Perhaps next to go extinct will be the lossless compression formats themselves when BDs finally run out of space for those. AQ is just a tiny niche in the BD marketplace.

[WickyWoo]

With 200gb blurays out there and multiple discs i don't think that will happen. We've got to demand better PQ & SQ so the special features don't bog it down.

Except that's not going to happen. I'm highly skeptical of Hitachi ever actually producing blank ones even.

It is highly unlikely you will ever see anything over BD-50, or haven't the defect rates of HD combos and DVD-18 taught everyone that lesson yet?