The Bourne Identity – Blu-ray

We picked up a new copy of The Bourne Identity at Costco the other day.

I wasn’t pleased to find a dual disc in the box. There was NO indication of this being the case on the outside of the disc’s box or sleeve.

To be clear it says this on the top of the sleeve:

BLU-RAY + DVD + DIGITAL COPY

Universal 100th Anniversary

There is an “OPEN FOR MORE” thumb hole on the right side, which opens to a full spread about the movie and Universal’s timeline for 2002.

There’s a sticker on the front too:

“Digitally Remastered For HDTV’s

BLU-RAY
DVD
DIGITAL COPY”

And “Celebrate 100 Years …”
——————————

I have purchased many movies as DVD, and as combo’s of Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy. I have never encountered this flipper disc in any of those packages before. I have had Dual Layer discs, like LoTR long ago, and some other movie that had two versions of a movie, one on each side.

I noticed the packaging, when it says things like this one does, it very well should have a separate DVD inside, but it doesn’t. I had The Thing (2011) still in it’s unopened state (oops) it is also from Universal and has the same wording on the sleeve. The Blu-ray box shows “Blu-ray + DVD” at the top, same as the Bourne Identity does.

I took the shrink wrap off of The Thing case just a few minutes ago, inside I found the digital copy code, expired 6/27/2012 … Itunes and ultraviolet. Forget the Ultraviolet, just get the Itunes version directly. Yes, it still works. July 31, 2012, I redeemed it.

Inside the box on one side the DVD and the other Blu-ray. 2-discs. Universal portrays this on the box the same as the flipper disc version does. There’s no way of knowing before opening the package up, which in the store isn’t going to happen. Anyhow, seeing as The Bourne Identity in new packaging, one might think it’s a flipper disc if they’d encoutered it before. I hadn’t. It’s new 2012 packaging, so one might think they’d learned from the last few years, as I easily find comments about problems with these flipper discs, like I am having with this brand new one.

Here’s how it went:
—————————–

Tried it last night, and again this morning. Bad in both machines I have tried it in, but differently in each.

1. In the PS3 last night we watched it from the beginning, the PS3 was connected to the internet, it gave us previews, including a nice preview for the upcoming Bourne Legacy movie. I skipped through the other preview things. I played the movie from the main pop up menu. It was beautiful! Gorgeous colors and crisp, very natural and life-like compared to the old DVD copy we have.

All went well until Chapter 11, near the end after the assassin jumps through the window, the movie froze for awhile, then jumped into the car chase somewhere, then jumped to near the end of the car chase.

I know this movie well, it skipped a lot of material.

I took the disc out and looked at it, it was fine to look at. So back in, it performed similarly when I started it in that 11th Chapter from the Chapter menu.

I took the disc out again, looked at it, fine, so back in and I tried something else, and came up with more skipping and freezing and gave up and found a movie on Netflix to watch.

2. This morning I took the same disc and put it into our other PS3, the one that is in my office. It wasn’t connected to the internet and when I started the disc it went right to the Bluray disc screen, to the pop up menu. I went to the Chapters and started it in Chapter 11. It played great, I had high hopes … then in the middle of the chase scene, somewhere between 53 and 55 minutes it freezes and skips a couple of times.

Pooh.

I tried various scan and skip combinations and did get to the skipped part, but started from 53 minutes it won’t play through that section. Period.

3. I have the disc in the first machine now. I’ll try it later, not connected to the internet on that machine. All I want to know at this point is, does it act like the disc  with no internet in my office when in the first machine that did have internet but now doesn’t. Glitch where it did last night, or where it did this morning.