And WHY oh WHY do the movies these days have to be 2, 3, and 4 DVD sets? Does the industry realize how much they can fit on a DVD?

Yes, but do you realize what is being sacrificed to fit the extra features onto a DVD along with the movie?

Many times, the movie on the DVD is over-compressed. Visible MPEG artifacting plagues many DVD releases. I prefer to see companies use as much of the disc1 surface as possible for the movie itself, and relegate the extras to disc2.

Sure, on a small television screen, most people don't see the artifacts. But when you use a big screen high-def television to get the "movie experience" in your home, the artifacts are magnified and noticeable.

There is one studio that releases "Superbit" DVDs. These are movies where they've gone to extra trouble to make sure that the film is mastered and data-compressed in such a way as to take advantage of every possible megabyte of data available on the disc. Disc1 has as few "extras" as possible. The result is a much more detailed version of the movie with less artifacting, which pleases us big-screen owners.

I've only seen one of these Superbit releases (I have others on my wish list), and I can say that it's definitely better than your average DVD release. No visible MPEG artifacts. It's like the difference between listening to a 128kbps MP3 and a 320kbps MP3.