Fox & Disney no-frills titles on dvd and Blu

[George Bellefontaine]

First Fox, then Disney have announced they will be releasing full featured and no-frills dvd and Blu-ray titles for rental, and hopefully for retail as well. That's the good news for some of us ( like me ) that are only interested in the movie. The bad news is that Fox will be pricing the no frill and full featured titles the same, while Disney will have lower prices for the stripped down versions ( movie only ). But Fox doesn't surprise me. They gotta be the greediest studio out there with their Blu-ray titles consistently priced $4 to $5 higher than other studios. But hopefully other studios will follow Disney's lead and release stripped down versions especially in Blu-ray at lower prices. This will really help get improved acceptance of the format.

The other plus for stripped down Blu-rays will be faster loading. Can't wait.

[1oldguy]

Couldn't have said it better myself George.

[audioqueso]

But Fox doesn't surprise me. They gotta be the greediest studio out there with their Blu-ray titles consistently priced $4 to $5 higher than other studios.

Oh yeah, I never noticed that. I started looking up prices just now, and you're right.. Fox does charge more. Sneaky company.

[David Meek]

The newer players won't benefit as much with regard to faster load times. The earlier versions of BD players that aren't as optimized for the large Java loads on the full-featured discs will definitely benefit from having only the movie on the disc. I don't know if that was part of the decision process (doubtful - money rules) or an unintended consequence (probably), but stripped down is still a good option to offer.

[George Bellefontaine]

I have a Panasonic BD30 and BD35 and both are unusually fast loaders as long as the titles don't have a pile of Java junk on them. Then they load as slow as those earlier players. So I'm thinking that any stripped down movie would load fairly fast in my Pannys.

[Ovation]

Hah! My PS3 eats all that Java stuff in seconds. I've never had a movie take longer to load than 45 seconds (was a rental and I don't remember what it was, I just remember timing BDs early on).

However, one of my buddies has a Sony BDP-300 and it i........s s.....l.....o......w. This should help him out. (we timed a movie--a Disney live action thing called Enchanted something or other--at over 3 MINUTES. Convinced me to buy a PS3 right there, just about).

[George Bellefontaine]

Yeah hard to beat those PS3s.

[1oldguy]

Wow that is slow......as in too slow for me.

[Chris D]

Interesting, George.

I got excited that yesterday "Monsters Inc" went on pre-sale for BD. Gotta have all the Pixar movies on BD for sure.

[Hammie]

I'll be real interested when The Incredibles is released. My whole family really enjoys that movie.

Thanks for the info, George.

[David Meek]

Let's not forget A Bug's Life. That and The Incredibles will be the first two I get.