I recently received The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy in a new "flipper" disc version that Universal trotting out in the DVD market. The selling point of this edition is that you got both Blu-Ray and standard definition combined on one DVD. It's like getting your chocolate in your peanut butter, or you peanut butter in your chocolate. Or something like that.

Before delving into the Why, let's look at the What and How. The Blu-Ray side of things looks awesome. Incredible picture, sound, everything. In this package, it's everything that you hear about when Blu-Ray gets touted as the next big thing. As for the movies themselves, I love The Bourne Trilogy. It's one of my favorite movie series of all time. The action, the intrigue, solid acting from all parties involved..it holds up very well and looks fantastic in Blu-Ray. In many ways, Bourne was what I always wanted the James Bond films to be, with all the goofiness and completely unbelieveable gadgets stripped away (ironic of course, given how much this series has influenced the most recent Daniel Craig incarnations).

These discs also feature a ton of extras: behind-the-scenes, trivia, deleted scenes, alternate scenes...the whole shebang. And then you've got the standard def side. It is what it is. One side is the Blu-Ray, flip it over, the other side is the SD.

Which leads back to the Why: why release something like this? To be honest, I'm really not sure. I don't know what the big selling point is for something like this. If you have a Blu-Ray player, why would you want something in SD (especially since it'll look rather crappy on an HDTV)? If you have a regular DVD player, why spend extra money on a split disc like this? Buy the regular version instead. If anything, I suppose these flipper discs would be helpful in some sort of a home and travel situation. For instance: say I have Blu-Ray player at home, but I'm traveling somewhere that doesn't (a family member's house, business trip, whatever). If there were some film that I just had to watch while on the trip, something that was my all-time favorite, I guess I could see the value in these flipper discs. Buy it in a version that works at home and on the road. Or at home and in the computer. But beyond that, where else would I need both versions?

Perhaps I'm missing some glaring problem or opportunity that these flipper discs solve. If so, please jump in the comments below and add to the conversation. As it stands now, I'll just stick to my Blu-Rays (and SD discs when BR isn't available).