20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced that they will be creating two classes of DVDs for now on, a “premium” version with extras and digital copies and a “rental” version which removes all extras and will be available for rental only.
Beginning March 31st with the release of Slumdog Millionaire, “wholesalers will be authorized to sell rental accounts only the rental SKUs and to sell retail accounts only the retail SKUs,” said Fox senior VP of sales Don Jeffries.
As an example, the Slumdog rental DVD only has the movie and trailers while the premium disc included special features such as deleted scenes and director and actor commentary.
There will be variations however, as the upcoming Marley and Me DVD will have special features on both the rental and the retail version.
“We have developed product variations to feed different consumer consumption models and behaviors,” read a Fox statement. “For rental customers, we’re delivering a theatrical experience in the home while promoting upcoming releases; for retail [or sell-through] customers, we’re offering a premium product that expands the entertainment experience of that particular property to further enhance ownership.”
Result for: special features
PC giant Dell has announced that it will begin pre-loading movies on some of its new PCs.
Beginning with the blockbuster hit Iron Man, Inspiron 1525 notebooks and XPS 420/630 can optionally have a digital copy already installed on the PC when you purchase it. The digital copy will also come with bonus special features.
The company says you cannot burn the copies to DVD but you can share them around a network using a Windows Media Extender such as the Xbox 360.
Dell says it will have titles from all studios but will focus only on blockbusters or classic movies rather than offer an entire catalog. The optional digital copy will be priced at $20 USD like its DVD counterpart but there was no word on whether that is standard pricing.
There was no technical details available about the digital copy but it will most likely have over 4000Kbs video bitrate and at least 192Kbs audio bitrate, just as most digital copies have now.
