Why I might finally start buying Blu-ray movies

One of the reasons I have been slow to adopt Blu-ray is that I can only play the discs in Blu-ray players. So if I buy a Blu-ray movie for my kids, they can only watch it in the room with the Blu-ray player, not in any other room or on the built-in DVD player in our minivan.

But the increasing popularity of DVD bundles might help. I’m referring to movie bundles that now come with the Blu-ray version, the standard DVD version and a digital copy of the movie.

Despicable Me

Last month I got a great deal from Best Buy on the Despicable Me bundle. And by great deal I mean GREAT deal. The bundle, normally priced at $29.99, was reduced to $19.99 and Best Buy gave me a $20 gift certificate just for being a Reward Zone member.

I’ll let you do the math on how much I paid for the bundle.

So now I have the Blu-ray version of Despicable Me when I want to watch it in high definition, the standard version of the movie when I’m watching on any other DVD player (including in the minivan) and the digital copy for watching on a computer or iPod.

Play it on your iPod too

Let’s talk about that digital copy for a minute. This is one of the best ideas to come to purchased DVDs in a long time. To use the digital copy, all I had to do was insert a bonus disc into my computer, enter a code and within a few seconds, the movie was downloading to my computer in iTunes (Windows Media Player and Mac versions were also available).

I say my computer but I really did all of this on my kids’ computer. I knew my 9-year-old son would enjoy watching Despicable Me more on his newly acquired iPod Touch than I would on my iPhone.

And I have to say, the entire process was painless. It took about 5 minutes and my son now has the full version of Despicable Me on his iPod Touch.

Buy once, watch everywhere

I wrote a while back that I like how Amazon is moving towards a buy once, read everywhere format. It’s good to see the movie industry doing the same.

My only issue is that the Despicable Me bundle normally costs $29.99 and I would never pay that for all of the formats. I want to pay the “normal” price and get every format. And I think if enough people start buying the bundles, this might just happen.