The reason I ask is because they have Hollowman coming out in Superbit now. WTF? How do they choose which movies are deserving of a superbit release? Hollowman? Give me a break.
Is it only movies from certain companies or something? Whats the deal? I want the straight dope here.
Superbit is a product of Columbia-TriStar, so that’s the first qualification, I guess.
Is it really? I was under the impression that superbit was just a higher bit rate video transfer. Cant all companies do that?
mobo is correct. I don’t know why they choose the movies they do though. Then again, I don’t know if Columbia has a lot of good movies that would also benefit greatly from the better treatment. The only Superbit I could see owning is The Fifth Element… The only reason they’re probably releasing these new versions of crappy movies at all is because they have the technology and they have to justify the expense from aquiring it.
Superbit is just Columbia-Tristar’s snappy marketing name for discs that have a higher bit rate. Whether pushing more data to the screen actually results in a better picture is the subject of some debate.
As for how they choose the movies they’ll release as Superbit titles, my first guess is “movies they’ve already released on DVD, so they can sucker the people who already bought the regular version into buying it again”. Seriously, it’s getting ridiculous how the motion picture production companies are releasing version after version of the same damn title. Each time, we consumers think, “okay, this is the ultimate, I can finally buy this and be satisfied.” Each time, they come up with new stuff to cram onto yet another version and rerelease the same old titles. It’s getting tiresome.
So far, the movies I’ve had to “double up” on to get all the extras I wanted are: Stargate, Night of the Living Dead, Terminator, Terminator 2, Memento, The Mummy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and A Bug’s Life. And I’m having to consider the Die Hard trilogy now. sigh.
Evil Dead is probably the most frequently rereleased series. Right now on Amazon, you can buy four different versions of Evil Dead, three different versions of Evil Dead II, and FIVE different versions of Army of Darkness.