DVD Caveat Emptors 1

Again shamelessly modifying an older e-mail, but there's lots of new content. Unfortunately, yes the "1" does mean I expect there will be a part 2, etc.

Most of this post relates to Wal-Mart, but there's some non-Wal-Mart material at the end.

Wal-Mart has taken to offering exclusive bonuses on DVDs, but only for the single disk versions, even if double-disk versions exist. I'll expand on this below using three examples currently for sale: Sex and the City, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk.

Sex and the City:
Wal-Mart is including T-shirts with select single-disks (as the T-shirts have the names of characters from the show, they're probably of limited appeal to men, but it's still a nice gesture, or would be if it was attached to the double-disk version). So...
You can get disk 1 with disk 2 OR
You can get disk 1 with Wal-Mart's T-shirt(s) BUT
If you want both disks and the t-shirts you have to buy them separately, meaning you'll have two disk-one's (plus a t-shirt with a fictional character's name across the breast area).

Iron Man
Wal-Mart is offering an exclusive bonus disk with the single disk version of the movie. :( So...
You can get disk 1 with disk 2 OR
You can get disk 1 with Wal-Mart's bonus disc (which has completely different material from the non-exclusive disk 2) BUT
If you want all three disks you have to buy both 2-disk versions separately, meaning you'll have two disk 1's (as well as a disk 2 plus an exclusive 2nd disk which isn't disk 2).

Incredible Hulk
Pretty similar to Iron Man, albeit with a slight (very slight, as I'll discuss at the end of this post) extra wrinkle. Wal-Mart is offering an exclusive bonus disk with the single disc version of the movie. :( So...
You can get disk 1 with disk 2 and 3 (more on this below) OR
You can get disk 1 with Wal-Mart's bonus disc (which has completely different material from the non-exclusive disk 2 and the non-exclusive disk 3) BUT
If you want all four disks you have to buy the 3-disk version and the single plus Wal-Mart disk version separately, meaning you'll have two disk 1's (as well as a disk 2 & 3 plus an exclusive 2nd disk which isn't disk 2 nor 3).

In all three cases I plan to wait for them to drop in price and then get the more common 2-disk versions. Wal-Mart's Iron Man & Incredible Hulk bonus disks are likely to have some scarcity appeal and I would be happy to have the extras but the "real" disk 2s have more interesting extras given that I'm forced to make a choice.

Pretty bone-headed in my opinion. An exclusive bonus disk is of greater interest to the DVD consumers who want everything. Connecting an exclusive disk to a single-disk version when a 2-disk version exists is nonsensical because the single disk buyers are generally the people who don't want to look at bonus material.

But I said I would tackle something that wasn't Wal-Mart, didn't I? Well, let’s revisit The Incredible Hulk. I said that with the non-single-disk version there are 3-disk, didn't I? It certainly announces it on the front cover. Sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? Exciting enough that I might have bought it at over $20. Only one problem: I read the back cover.

Once you read the back cover you discover that the 3rd disk is simply a copy of the movie that you can download into your pc or iPod and... nothing else. If you'd rather just play the movie on your disk it has nothing that the first disk doesn't offer, and the first disk has additional extras (commentary and deleted scenes).

Now don't get me wrong, I'll still get this at some point. The second disk sounds like it's chock full of extras. My point is, if you're considering getting this, ask yourself if you'd buy it at the price listed if it had only 2 disks. If so, then go ahead and buy it; you'll probably be quite happy with your purchase. But if you would only buy it at the price offered if it had 3 disks, then wait until the price reaches 2-disk levels.