Inside Out

[EricJ]

Huh?
There's more than enough space on the discs themselves or to include another disc within the packs for Fantasia, Pocahontas and Lion King!

Well, tell them that. BD-Live was already dying, and streaming wasn't here yet, so it was a last-ditch effort to avoid the disks.

Oz had two issues: the SE flat version (two discs) and the single disc 3D, which was an experiment to see if 3D was selling (answer: no, hence Disney backing off the format in the US at least).

No, fans said they DID want to buy a 3D edition that wasn't the 5-disk Brave set for $45, they just didn't understand A) why Oz was coming out as a solo disk at all and B) why it was still the same $39 price as the packed-disk set--
Most who did want "just" the 3D nagged Disney about wanting the 2D Blu as well (without the unnecessary DVD and the now-obsolete DC disk), to the point that Disney eventually admitted "okay, that didn't work" and offered a mail fix. And angry fans, still in paranoid Disney Is Evil(tm) mode, starting throwing around conspiracy theories that "They want to make us buy BOTH editions to get everything, the money-grubbing weasels! "
Meanwhile, Marvel and Pixar were allowed to put their own releases together, and while Disney grumbled at the "ungrateful" fanboys, Marvel's Guardians and Pixar's Monsters U figured out, aha, maybe if it was just the 2+3D at $24-29! Sayyyy...
The industry's picked up on this thump-on-the-head ever since, but Disney-proper's still been sulking in a corner, trying to tell us that "3D is dead!" while every other studio continues to release disks.

Pixar having no such tantrums, however, managed a perfectly nice 4-disk (3 + 2 + DVD + Bonus, with DC on a slip of paper) IO set selling for $29 on Amazon, even if, okay, they could have quit trying to promote the streaming site with exclusive "perks".

[Dacey]

Going by how Eric keeps spelling the word, I must assume that Disney is insisting on releasing their movies on floppy disks for some reason.

[Ben]

I gave up a while back going in and correcting his disks to discs, Dacey...

Disk is short-hand for diskette, as in, like you said, floppy disks. A videodisc takes its cue more from the orIginal word for a flat round thing, where the LP format and later LaserDisc coined it to describe their formats.

The word "disk" shouldn't really exist: it is a shortened slang version of diskette, which itself was invented to convey a smaller size disc to what we were (then) used to calling LPs and LDs (and later Compact Disc - not "audio diskette"!). The k was used so that the emphasis of the word is clear, as opposed to the possible soft c of discette.

Of course, we know that DVD is Digital Versatile Disc (not actually video as most believe) and BD is Blu-ray Disc, so even if one wanted to be obstinate about it, they should still observe the correct format spelling of the word!

[James]

All the studios have dropped the ball on BD-specific special features. All we have now are basically DVDs with pop up menus being the only differentiator. Maybe that's all people want, but it seems odd that no one is experimenting at all anymore with the things a BD can do. This DMA only special feature thing is a great example. Disney could include a DMA player on each disc that would stream the online only special features to the disc without taking hardly any space.

[Ben]

True, but you get the DMA content anyway with the digital code in the box right?

Just not that fair to the rest of us who find that Disney Movies Anywhere does not mean Anywhere!

[James]

Yes you do. And I assume that's the point. They're trying to get more people to sign up for DMA by keeping it off the disc. My complaint was more about the wasted potential of the BD format. Once of the biggest hyped features was online content being seamless with disc features. Seems like making a DMA portal on the disc itself might be better at getting newbies to sign up for DMA rather than making them leave their TV and go to a computer. Again, that's not an issue for us tech happy people though.

[Ben]

As a tech happy person, I would still rather all the content on the physical disc.

But this is what they do...supplements were held back from DVD to go on the BDs and, now that that format has plateaued, they're not going to fulfil the promise of that (or either) format when there's a new one waiting in the wings that won't need those kind of pesky "making of" expenditures when they can just get away with some deleted scenes as an extra (and, just you wait, probably start charging for making ofs and specials and the like down the line).

And, either way, the bigger frustration is for those that have the codes and can't use them!

[Dacey]

There's also the chance that Disney will end the service if it doesn't work out for them. Meaning that all of the "extras" that you "own" could go ka-put.

[Ben]

I can't see Disney ending DMA. It's their digital download/streaming format of choice, which is sadly the way things are going. If it doesn't work out for them it will get folded (along with any content) into iTunes or whatever vendor they want to partner with.

But you're right, and this is one of the things I don't like about "invisible" digital formats, is that they could theoretically delete, remove or switch out content even when someone "owns" it, as Disney has already done with The Sword In The Stone on iTunes (apparently swapping a perfectly good HD print of an unrestored transfer for the awful DVNR-scrubbed atrocity that was released to Blu-ray, therefore overriding someone's preference for what transfer they could watch).

At least with disc I can choose to watch the muted true colors of the Bambi LaserDisc over the DTV-brightened Platinum DVD (though the BD did address this issue too, the image is still too bright and not "earthy" enough).

[Vernadyn]

There's also the chance that Disney will end the service if it doesn't work out for them. Meaning that all of the "extras" that you "own" could go ka-put.

That's what annoys me a bit about digital, too. If you're streaming the content, you don't actually own it. Plus, if the Internet goes down, then you can't access it at all. (Yes, I know the electricity goes out too, but far less frequently than the Internet does.) DMA doesn't allow you to download on the computer--only on mobile devices. Maybe you can download if you link your account to iTunes, but I can't get that to work.

Plus, the codes have an expiration date, so if you buy the movie a few years after it's released, you won't have access to the digital copy or content.

Just not that fair to the rest of us who find that Disney Movies Anywhere does not mean Anywhere!

That sucks. Talk about a misnomer.

[Dan]

DMA doesn't allow you to download on the computer--only on mobile devices. Maybe you can download if you link your account to iTunes, but I can't get that to work.

While this is true, link your DMA account with your iTunes account and you'll be able to download the movies through iTunes. In fact, once you redeem a code the download copy is ready to retrieve on iTunes and some of the recent films do include the iTunes bonus features.

You can also download if you're linked through Amazon, but from what I can see so far you only get the movie and not the special features.

[James]

...Maybe you can download if you link your account to iTunes, but I can't get that to work...

If you've linked tour DMA account successfully to iTunes you can download the films by going to the "Movies" section of the store, clicking the "Purchased" link on the right side of the page, then clicking the "Not in my Library" tab at the top of the page. This will show you what films you can download that haven't got yet, which should include any DMA films.

[Vernadyn]

The problem is I can't link the accounts successfully. I start the process on the Disney Movies Anywhere site, which opens iTunes, but then nothing happens in iTunes itself (and the movies don't appear in the "Purchased" tab). But that's my own personal tech issue, and I don't really care that much about it. I'm just happy to be able to access the content from the DMA site, but I do wish they were on the disc. First world problems, and all that.

[Dacey]

Funnily enough, the Oscar campaign that Disney has launched for this film online is pushing for Picture, Screenplay, and Original Score...but makes no mention of the Animated Feature category.

Now, it seems impossible to imagine this not getting a nod there (or winning, for that matter), but is there any chance of this inadvertently backfiring?

[EricJ]

No. None.
Recently it was announced that ( ) the Picture nominations will not be going back to five as originally announced after the Boyhood of Birdman, they'll be staying at eight for this year at least...And that the reason for that is a complicated loophole of voter-quota rules limiting animated nominees that allowed Up and TS3 to get into Picture when the nominations were opened up in the first place. If they go back to five, Pixar gets shut out again on the same technicality that kept out Wall-E. (I don't have time to look up whether the TAG Blog went into detail about this, but I'm sure one of the regulars can dig it up.)
The entire race among the committee at the moment seems to be hanging on the question of A) will Inside Out win Best Picture, or B) will some rule keep it from being nominated? There IS no C.

(Under that mentality, Disney's likely to be campaigning for Good Dinosaur to be the studio representative for Best Animated--"Okay, so it's not Inside Out, give it a break, it's still better than Home!")