Thor: The Dark World Eliminates Combo Pack Option

Out today is Thor: The Dark World on home video. (It’s been available for digital purchase since the beginning of the month, February 4.) Your options for purchase are as follows:

Thor: The Dark World 3-D version cover Thor: The Dark World Blu-ray cover Thor: The Dark World DVD cover
Thor: The Dark World 3-D combo pack Thor: The Dark World Blu-ray Thor: The Dark World DVD

The only multi-disc pack is the 3-D version, which comes with two Blu-rays, one standard, one 3-D, and a digital copy. The other versions are single discs, either Blu-ray or DVD. Which means that there’s no way to get a Blu-ray/DVD combo without paying twice. And the Blu-ray version is widely available at roughly $20, the same price as the previous movie’s Blu-ray + DVD + digital copy edition. So customers are being asked to pay more for less.

Clearly, Disney seems to think that doubling up is either something fans no longer care about (not the case, judging from Amazon review comments, where people talk about how handy the DVD is for car players, loaning out, or other purposes) or something we should be required to pay for. After all, they’re the company that for a while was charging $5 more for a digital copy with its combo packs.

I’m no longer qualified for Marvel’s review copy list, so I was expecting to buy the movie today. But when I realized this was the situation, I passed. I’ll wait until the price goes down, since for a single Blu-ray that isn’t a must-have-immediately, I aim to pay about $10. If I could have gotten a combo pack (a format that matched the previous film), I would have paid the $20 on release day.

It’ll be interesting to see if more of Disney’s releases follow this pattern.



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