Shop while you watch?
Evan Almighty, the sequel to Bruce Almighty, sees Steve Carell building an ark, kind of like a second Noah, on instructions from God that a massive flood is coming... but all that's just in the film and real story here is what's been added tot he HD-DVD release of Even Almighty.
The problem with Blu-ray and HD-DVD is that really, unless you're a massive cinemaphile, you're not going to see a huge amount of difference in audio and visual quality... at least not with today's panels.
So the hi-def format wars are being dragged into new grounds which look like focusing more on what the hadrware can do and here's where the HD-DVD camp think they have one up on the Blu-ray guys.
Most Toshiba HD-DVD players have a network port, allowing you to hook them up to your network and give the player acces to the internet, whereas few, if any Blu-ray players have any sort of networking built in.
So within the extras section of Evan Almighty you'll find a shopping area that logs you into Universal Studios online shop and gives you access to items related to the film.
In this case, you can buy eco-friendly stuff, which ties in with the film's ecological messaging.
And yes, you'd be right in thinking that this is perhaps a bit lame... but it goes deeper than that. The chance of having a another retail outlet to the consumer is something a lot of studios wouldn't pass up on, especially given the amount of endorsements and associated merchandising that comes with each new release.
Imagine how much more money Star Wars would've made if kids could pester their parents for the latest action figure whilst sitting in the living room?
But worryingly, the creative brains behind this shopping link up are planning to take it further with in-movie pop-ups to let you buy items on the screen at that time. So Nokia ads would fill every one of the Matrix trilogy films, Gatorade would be all through The Waterboy and Heckler and Koch would be all over Lord of War... ok, so I'm taking it to extremes but you get the idea.
To be honest, even at this early stage it looks like nothing more than a gimmick and, depending how it's implemented it could be incredibly annoying... Imagine Mattel and a Barbie film... your kids will be clamouring the whole way through!
As usual, there's no sign of what the future holds for these competing formats but with the studios gradually settling with one format or another it's going to be interesting times ahead. Warner Bros. are now the only studio releasing films on both formats when Paramount went HD-DVD only back in August.
Perhaps it all be decided not on which is the better fomat but which format has the biggest studios and catalogue behind it.
