Fox strips special features from rental DVDs

Renting a movie is like a purchase with insurance: If you don't like the movie, at least you paid $4 for it and you don't own it; but if you love it, you get to watch it and all the special features at a fraction of the retail price. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is about to take the insurance away from us. Starting March 31, Fox will begin stripping rental DVDs of their special features in an attempt to increase DVD sales.

There will be two types of discs: premium versions with special features and a digital copy for the retail market and stripped-down offerings for rental. The rental copies will not contain special features such as deleted scenes, commentaries and featurettes with the cast and director.

The new policy may not work as efficiently as they expect because according to the First Sale Doctrine, retailers are allowed to rent legally purchased DVDs. This means customers may still see retail copies at Blockbuster.