I rented one recently and as it was the first one i had seen i wondered why they are not more common? It seems a far better idea than having movies as 2 disc sets surely or am i missing something?
I think these things were originally used before they invented the dual layer format. This meant that you could watch an entire long film without flipping. It is possible however to produce a dual layer dual sided disc but it's pretty much frowned upon due to failur rates in production. The T2 special edition American disc was apparently like this but then they started to make two disc versions later on.
The only flipper I've seen is the South Park Movie which had a widescreen version on one side and 4:3 version of the film on the other.
Ah, you should have known that. It's one of my favourite films, but I ain't buying that! I think there's a 'proper' version coming out soon with extras though
The only other dual sided disk I have is Trainspotting, which has the 16:9 version on one side and the 4:3 version on the other. It's quite a good idea in that situation - as you can imagine, the 16:9 version of Trainspotting appears to be a crop of the 4:3 matt, and on the other side of the disk, you get the 'full frame' version...
Both Payback and The Whole Nine YarRAB are double sided, with full screen on one side and widescreen on the other. They are the only ones in my collection.
Analyse That is another 16:9/4:3 flipper. Love the idea of having the movie soundtrack on the flip side, the Shrek special edition contains 2 DVD's and a soundtrack CD, I'd like to see that more often.
I was just saying that im not sure why a company would put EXACTLY the same film in EXACTLY the same format on both sides of the disk. If they really want to put something on both sides of the disc, why not use the money it costs to put something different on the flip side?
I really hate double sided discs. One side always has to face up and tenRAB to get covered in muck however carefully it is treated. They tend to have a higher failure rate too (double sided double layered do anyway).
Some of the earlier Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD's had the uncut version of the movie on the other side. They were also kind enough to include instructions on how to flip the disc over as you can see.