I only buy the new versions if they include a better video or audio transfer than the previous versions. For example, I bought the re-release of A Few Good Men, because it featured a 5.1 audio track, lacking in the original. As for video transfers, I hardly ever buy anything that's not widescreen, unless it's a TV series, so I'm pretty much an audio guy. As far as extras are concerned, I think of them as a one-time amusement - it's the film itself that I'm after.
What I'm more concerned about is the possible effect that Blockbuster's purchasing scheme will have on the DVD's available to us a few years down the road. If you go into a Blockbuster Store tomorrow, you'll see that almost all of the new releases from the last two weeks are available in PAN & SCAN only - no widescreen. This is going to be a continuing trend, too - just today, I saw over 100 copies of The Bourne Identity delivered to my store, and every one of them was in P/S.
The theory behind this is that the people who are just now jumping on the DVD bandwagon aren't big fans of Widescreen video - they probably don't even know it exists, in most cases - so they want their movies to fill their whole screen, whether that screen contains the whole FRAME of the film or not. In the short term, Blockbuster is going to make a lot of money off of these people, and in response, they'll expand their P/S-only practices. But what about those of us who know the advantage of Widescreen? Eventually, the studios will start making less of their films available in widescreen, to pander to the masses who don't know what they're missing, and those of us who made the format successful in the first place will be screwed.
I only hope that the filmmakers themselves start to push for the WS rental releases of their films...
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