Multiple Sets of Same Movie-Good or Bad Thing?

[JON9000]

DVD can hold more than enough data to put P&S and Widescreen , DTS (which I prefer) and Dolby Digital, and Theatrical and extended cuts on the same disc. Look at the T2 disc. I was interested in seeing the extended cut (as I am with LOTR) but I prefer the shorter film. Lots of things that go on the cutting room floor belong there. I think people who buy multiple copies of movies are the reasons studios pull this crap. I love Star Trek 2, but I refuse to buy another edition. They should have put this one out originally. I do appreciate the fact that studios are packing rebate slips for upgrades, however. The worst travesty was the release of TPM on video- if you wanted widescreen on video, you had to pay $40 bucks and get the stupid box set. Ugh.

[Beast]

JON9000, you are vastly overstating the capacity for DVD's. The T2 disc was a DVD 18, which are very very delicate and hard to make. Plus it was double sided, which most people hate.

That's why when T2 was originally released, it was a 2-disc set, because they were having problems duplicating the discs. That is why DVD 18's are hardly used. They have only ever been used on a handful of releases.

DTS tracks also take up alot of room, that is also why they are the first thing dropped when DVD's are made. I need to find the site I have bookmarked that explains the different DVD's.

There are DVD 5's, DVD 9's, DVD 10's, and DVD 18's. All of them have their good points, but the higher you get, the harder they are to make. Here is the info that I was looking for.

http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technol...vd_formats.htm

MTFBWY and HH!!

Jar Jar Binks

[Beast]

Here's a bit more info about disc capacity. This is from TheDigitalBits, and Jim Taylor's Official DVD FAQ's. You can view them at the following addy.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/officialfaq.html

[3.3] What are the sizes and capacities of DVD?

There are many variations on the DVD theme. There are two physical sizes: 12 cm (4.7 inches) and 8 cm (3.1 inches), both 1.2 mm thick, made of two 0.6mm substrates glued together. These are the same form factors as CD. A DVD disc can be single-sided or double-sided. Each side can have one or two layers of data. The amount of video a disc can hold depends on how much audio accompanies it and how heavily the video and audio are compressed. The oft-quoted figure of 133 minutes is apocryphal: a DVD with only one audio track easily holds over 160 minutes, and a single layer can actually hold up to 9 hours of video and audio if it's compressed to VHS quality.

At a rough average rate of 4.7 Mbps (3.5 Mbps for video, 1.2 Mbps for three 5.1-channel soundtracks), a single-layer DVD can hold a little over two hours. A two-hour movie with two soundtracks can average 5.2 Mbps (with 4 Mbps for video). A dual-layer disc can hold a two-hour movie at an average of 9.5 Mbps (close to the 10.08 Mbps limit).

A DVD-Video disc containing mostly audio can play for 13 hours (24 hours with dual layers) using 48/16 PCM (slightly better than CD quality). It can play 160 hours of audio (or a whopping 295 hours with dual layers) using Dolby Digital 64 kbps compression of monophonic audio, which is perfect for audio books.

Capacities of DVD:
For reference, a CD-ROM holds about 650 megabytes, which is 0.64 gigabytes or 0.68 billion bytes. In the list below, SS/DS means single-/double-sided, SL/DL/ML means single-/dual-/mixed-layer (mixed means single layer on one side, double layer on the other side), gig means gigabytes (2^30), BB means billions of bytes (10^9). See note about giga vs. billion in section 7.2.

DVD-5 (12 cm, SS/SL) 4.37 gig (4.70 BB) of data, over 2 hours of video
DVD-9 (12 cm, SS/DL) 7.95 gig (8.54 BB), about 4 hours
DVD-10 (12 cm, DS/SL) 8.74 gig (9.40 BB), about 4.5 hours
DVD-14 (12 cm, DS/ML) 12.32 gig (13.24 BB), about 6.5 hours
DVD-18 (12 cm, DS/DL) 15.90 gig (17.08 BB), over 8 hours

MTFBWY and HH!!

Jar Jar Binks

[JON9000]

Well, that is interesting stuff. I wonder why the T2 DVD costs the same if it is so much more difficult to use a dual layer, dual sided disc? MAybe as the technology improves, we will see more like it. Anyway, it doesn't really cost much more to put 2 discs in a box. It seems almost every DVD i get these days has 2 discs! That would take away the need for dual sided, anyway. I mainly want the theatrical and extended cuts in the same disc, since I do not care for P&S. What I hate more than anything is changing discs, but Lawrence of Arabia is the only one I have that does that. Oh, and I hate discs that do not use 5.1 as the default setting (LOA does that too.)

[scruffziller]

Yep they are definately milking us. But I don't buy into it.

[derek]

i was at best buy today, and noticed a film released as a single disc with no extras. this happens all the time, you say? well, this film is "fight club", which was released a while back as a super 2 disc set. it's funny how they did this one kinda backwards.

[Beast]

That's happening to alot of 2-disc sets, Derek. The idea is that alot of people care less about extras, so they drop the 2nd disc out and charge almost the same price for the new inferior single disc release.

MTFBWY and HH!!

Jar Jar Binks