Page 1 of "Why does Only fools and horses flip?" Nah,na,na,na,na!

Just got Only Fools series three and couldn`t believe that you have to flip the disc to play four of the eight episodes! Series 2 was OK, why is this so?
There are no extras, so surely they could have got 200 mins on 1 side - this seems a real step back by the BBC.
It`s a shame it wasn`t big in the states, then we could get a copy on region 1 packed with extras I`m sure!
Really p***ed off with this one!
Aaron.

A DVD-10 (as used with series 3) holds about 650MB more data than a dual layer disc (DVD-9), this can give upto 30 minutes of extra runtime.

So it`s either been done for the run time or they for cost reasons (dual sided is the cheaper option)

Yeah, but series 2 had all episodes on 1 side, and it was only 3 minutes shorter! I don`t understand it. I thought flippers were dead!

You call that a flipper!! When one episode runs out you probably go to make a cuppa or in my case go to the fridge for a beer. When you get back swap the disc over before you sit down. A flipper is a film eg. Face Off is stopped at a random point in the film ( usually when a certain scene has finished) and a big hand pops up on screen to tell you turn your disc over. See when watching a film you would have all your beers next to you, so you wouldn`t Have to get up.

When I watch Only fools, I don`t have beer, I either have a pinas colada, or grand marnier and babycham. Lovely jubbly!

>Yeah, but series 2 had all episodes on 1 side, and it was only 3 minutes shorter! I don`t understand it. I thought flippers were dead!

Not really anything to do with runtime, it`s down to the bitrate used and how much disc space thats uses.

If you look closely enough, you`ll probably notice that there are far fewer encoding artefacts on series 3 video than on series 2. That`s because a double sided disc allows video to be encoded at a higher bit rate on each side, thus increasing the video quality for your viewing pleasure. Thats pretty essential for something like Only fools, where the original first few series were shot on Beta sp/film thats suffered over the years. As for extras - yes, it would be nice to have a retrospective documentary on one of the discs, but if you ask me the episodes are so great they speak for themselves.