Blu-ray: The Dual-Sided Flipper Disc Makes an Unwelcome Return.

Universal Studios are ready to introduce the Blu-ray and DVD buying public to the dual-sided flipper disc, where one side of the disc will contain the Blu-ray HD version of a movie and the reverse side will feature a standard definition DVD copy. The first films to receive the flipping treatment will be the Bourne trilogy - Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum - when they're released on the 19th January 2010 in the USA.

Price-wise it looks likely they'll retail for around the $30 mark, keeping them in-line with current new release titles. The benefits being suggested include flexibility to use the disc in Blu-ray and DVD players and the most obvious, future-proofing your collection if you plan on upgrading to Blu-ray in the future.

The Flipper disc is hardly a new innovation. Think back to the early days of DVD, where some films would be spread over both sides of a single layer disc - Goodfellas and The Wild Bunch for example - or a 16:9 version on one side and a 4:3 on the other being both surprisingly common back then. Fast forward to various TV series releases which would contain four episodes per side - Friends was guilty of this - and most recently HD-DVD did the exact same thing as Universal have done, offering the HD and DVD versions on the same discs, the remastered Star Trek Season One being a popular release.

The one problem with all of these? Finger prints, scratches and dirt! While we like the idea, we hate dual-sided discs, and would much prefer everyone stick to the Combi sets containing a single sided disc for the Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy. We also like to easily identify a disc if it gets separated from its case, rather than squinting at the tiny print around the centre, which rarely says anything helpful anyway! So, nice idea, but there is already a better solution in use.

The Dual-Sided Flipper Disc Makes an Unwelcome Return.

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