I'm going to rant here briefly about something that's really starting to annoy the crap out of me. I know that triple or multi dipping on DVD releases has been going on for some time, but the current bout of misadvertising or misrepresenting what your actually getting in a release is taking things to a new level.

Firstly, I purchase Watchmen when it came out. All the info floating around had said there was a Theatrical Release and the Director's Cut with the additional footage, and amazing new commentary technology. So I went out and bought the Two-Disc Special Edition, thinking that this was the Director's Cut here in Oz, as they sometimes put different labels on releases over here. Special my ass! It was the standard theatrical release, with no special extras and no amazing commentary.

Quite a few people seem to have been sucked in by this, and the only response from the company distributing it was "The Director's Cut is not being released in Australia". Why?? I'll tell you, so they can suck in the early adopters, who'll then have to re-buy it when they do another release down the track. It's already bad enough that we get ripped off with what we're charged for DVD's here, vs what it costs in the US. But this intentional obfuscation of the facts, followed by re-releases later down the track is really starting to chaff.

Now I'm hearing Watchmen Director's Cut might be out here in December, and who knows when the Ultimate Edition is going to show up after that.

The latest one this week that really got on my wick was the release of Monsters vs Aliens. It was a movie released to theatre's in 3D, and it comes with 4x 3D glasses in the packaging, yet they don't upfront tell you that the movie release isn't in 3D, only the 15 minute short additional Bob's Big Adventure is. So your mislead into buying it, only to be disappointed, and what's to bet a 3D release will come out later??

So basically, now I'm stuck avoiding first releases of things, and I'll have to pay even more later for the subsequent releases because they won't come out with special first-release pricing, and I'll have to wait even longer.

Why can't they just release all the versions at once and you can choose which one you want to buy at the time? I mean Watchmen must have come out with at least 8-10 variations - I've seen the DVD, Bluray, lenticular pacakaging, Rorschach packaging, tins, steelbook, etc. Hell with Bluray why do they even bother with re-releases since I'm pretty sure most current releases probably don't fill the discs to their capacity?

You can't tell me people are going to go out and keep buying all the different variations and releases of these things? So what's in it for the movie companies?? Surely this has got to eventually be hurting their bottom line?