iTunes Extras are pathetic. Agree or no?

[AppleMatt]

I've always wondered about why people download movies from iTunes, but have held back from commenting before I'd tried it myself. I just downloaded and watched Star Trek with the girlfriend. I've been thinking about seeing it for a while but haven't been able to justify the cost; I know £10.99 doesn't seem like a lot but it is when you don't have much. Anyway, today Rotten Tomatoes swayed me by giving it 94%. This is the review I posted to iTunes:

If you've ever sat down after a film and thought 'I wonder what the Hungarian trailer for this is like?' then iTunes Extras are for you; the "Extras" include nine trailers (for the film you've just watched!) in multiple languages, taking 700MB of hard-drive space.

You get two videos and some pictures but there's precious little else; the photos and drawings don't even have titles telling you what they are of. The background picture is very nice.

Other "Extras" include exciting adverts for other merchandise you can buy, such as apps from the iTunes store. What's really galling is that they've adjusted the menu order so the 'More' menu item (i.e. adverts) is in the middle of the list, rather than at the end. It should read '1. Play film, 2. Chapters, 3. Features, 4. Gallery and 5. More' but instead they just chuck the adverts in the middle.

The film was quite good; average story but truly excellent visuals. Entertaining. This is the first film I've downloaded with iTunes extras. I'll never let that affect my buying decision again; incredibly poor.

I noticed it included the iTunes extras, apparently some exclusive content not on the DVD:

“None of this content will be on the DVD/BD release,” Paramount spokesperson Kristen Tarnol originally told Ars. “This is the key to the iTunes Extras content—it’s only available on iTunes. www.livelongandprosper.tv/2009/11/star-trek-comes-with-itunes-exclusive-extras/

iTunes doesn't seem to give you any further information on what's included. As she's into all this, we decided to buy it on iTunes instead of the DVD. We got...two videos and a few untitled pictures. That's it. After my disappointment I Googled it. Apparently the DVD includes a shed load of extras not in iTunes (so it's a bit rich to say the iTunes Extras are exclusive), and to make it worse it's £1 cheaper (on play.com).

I'm glad I've experienced extras; I was interested to see how they'd work on the AppleTV, but apart from that I think it was incredibly poor and won't be buying a movie on iTunes again. What do others think?

AppleMatt

 

[JonHimself]

Other than buying the DVD, is there another format/distributor/package that offers something similar to iTunes Extras? I haven't used them, but am wondering how it stacks up against the competition. I have used the iTunes LP, which is basically the same idea, and found that the extras were pretty good for buying the album (2 music videos, 2 behind the scenes video, exclusive interview, and another small featurette about the album cover... plus a bunch of photos).. maybe there is another movie that has better extras and you're complaint wouldn't be so much about the actual format/product but just the actual extras that came with Star Trek weren't good. You could run into a similar situation where the extras on a DVD include a trailer of the movie, a trailer of a different movie and then 3 deleted scenes whereas another DVD has several audio commentaries, alternate endings, interviews, audition clips, deleted scenes, bloopers, a mini-doc about the movie, etc etc... that's not a knock against DVD extras, just that the first movie had poor extras.