An alternate explanation for the multi-pack deliver is that DVD was so popular that there are a bazillion DVD drives still around, so studios can't ignore them, Blu-ray is the emerging high-end format, so studios can't ignore it, and some ubergeeks want a portable digital copy...
Sure, there's opportunities to sell products here. However, when a DVD sells for
$X and the BD sells for
$Y, consumers are tempted by any deals that are less than
($X + $Y).
Continuing with the prior example (Amazon/Alice in Wonderland; rounded up by one penny), DVD=$13.50 and BD=$26 yields an (X+Y) of $39.50 before any "deal" discounting.
For example, consider a price point of ($X/2 + $Y) = $32.75. The BD centric customer sees it as a $6.75 markup to get a spare DVD +DC copy for his 'lesser' applications, and the DVD centric customer knows that he was in for at least $13.50 to begin with, so his 'futureproofing' consideration is that he gets the BD for $19 instead of $26 (a 25% discount), plus whatever he thinks that the DC copy is worth to him.
Yet the Combo goes for only $27, which is a mere one dollar more than the bare BD.
... and since the DVD and portable copy cost them a negligible amount over the production costs of the packaging and creation of the Blu-ray disc they throw them in to cover all the bases. It would cost them a heck of a lot more to package Blu-ray and DVD separately - outside of content licensing, packaging is probably 90% of the cost of hard media distribution. DVDs are probably under a penny a piece for them. Why not drop one in every Blu-ray box? In fact, I bet this is great for them because they can nail folks that don't own Blu-ray players for a higher price than they could charge for the DVD alone by talking up the value-add of the Blu-ray disc inside.
Yes, there's an upsell potential, but upselling so as to realize a lower profit percentages isn't particularly conventional wisdom.
Thus, my point is that ...
regardless of what other manufacturing economies they may have in lower packaging & distribution costs... there must be a very good reason why the Studios are cutting consumers a break, since this effectively is leaving money (profits) behind on the table.
You're completely missing the point behind these Blu-Ray combo packs. It's got nothing to do with hedging bets against the format. Quite the opposite.
They still offer the films on DVD-only packages (so much for your strawman)...
Sure, DVDs still exist, but they've have seen their retail prices effectively depressed some by the advent of BD: the Studios tried, but weren't really able to raise the market's price acceptance for a BD disk, so where we are today is that BDs are selling for roughly where DVDs used to, and DVDs get squeezed in below them, with a price separation.
Further, the triple combo pack only occurs with child films and big budget blockbusters like Iron Man 2. You don't see it with Seven Samauri or Dr. Zhivago.
My observation is that the combo packs are occurring with modern films, where the expenses of producing the different resolutions were all already planned & budgeted; its merely a modification to the already-paid-for end product's distribution packaging. Classics would have to go back into the studio for re-sampling to create the new & higher resolution BD format, so there is no existing product to repackage.
The digital copy is a parallel effort to prevent people from ripping by giving them a legal portable version of the movie.
Its an interesting attempt to perhaps avoid falling into the Apple iTunes ecosystem. Or it may actually facilitate it.
Really, by offering all three discs it shows the movie studios understand the point of Blu-Ray (the best possible presentation) while acknowledging that, at least with certain kinds of movies, the kiddies are going to need a DVD and they spare the Blu-Ray buyer from buying multiple copies of the same movie or pirating the Blu-Ray.
Additionally, it encourages people who don't have Blu-Ray players yet to buy the Blu-Ray version because they can watch the DVD until they have a Blu-Ray player.
All true, but it doesn't explain the price points that the Studios have chosen; as I've said before, buying the Combo is only a buck more than just the bare BD disk alone. As such, there's an element in their business model that we here aren't generally seeing (accounting for).
Yes, there is the remote possibility that the Studios have somehow changed to become altruistic and are thus willing to turn away easy profits.
YMMV, but I don't buy that...
-hh
