Did you know you may be missing out with the Rental?

I experienced something this week which I felt I had to share with the community to see if it was a widely known fact or not. I joined the many of you anxious to see "The Hangover" finally be released on Blu-ray disc and quickly headed to my local Hollywood Video to rent a copy on Tuesday while I waited for my Amazon copy to arrive in the mail. I opened the disc and saw printed on it "RENTAL" and did not think much of it. When I played the disc however, I was greeted to a terrible experience–the movie would not let me skip past the movie previews and then went directly into playing the movie. No title menu. No bonus features. No behind the scenes. Nothing except for pause and language selection.

So how common practice is this? I received the Blu-ray and of course the actual retail copy of "The Hangover" has a wealth of bonus features and extras included with it. From a customer perspective, this is pretty ridiculous. I usually use my rental experience to guage whether I plan to purchase the disc or not. I can somewhat understand the perspective of studios–prevent rent and copiers from being able to obtain the full movie and extras….but at the same point I wonder if there is truly anyone out there who will purchase a movie that they normally would just have ripped via the rental. Extras are a nice to have but there are just some movies I will only want to watch once and never again. Why cripple the rental experience even further than it already is? What are your thoughts?