Your DVD comes with one, or more if you're lucky, Audio Commentaries. Wouldn't it be great if you could download new Commentaries to go along with the film you bought ages ago? It could rejuvinate your favourite DVD. Well now you can download free Audio Commentaries and listen to them along with the film.

Film fans are recording their own Audio Commentaries for their favourite (and not so favourite) movies and making them available on the Internet. The exciting thing is that you can even make your own commentary and publish it for all to hear. The story comes from Pan and Scan:

There is a world of alternative commentaries out there waiting for you. Made by fans, scholars and movie aficionados with a lot of time on their hands, alternative commentaries may be the special feature your DVD is missing.

You can see a fair list of them over at such sites as Listology, or hosted at Commentary Central or Renegade Commentaries, with everything from Star Wars to Bugsy Malone, or from Predator to War Games. (P&S have a few more similar sites).

Okay, so they aren't strictly official commentaries from the actual filmmakers, but here's the exciting opportunity. If the filmmakers thought about this they could make new Audio Commentaries and indeed new features to compliment your DVD and sell them directly to you. Imagine the senario...

I buy a DVD with some extras and watch it. Six months later the Special Edition comes out, then the Directors Cut, then...and it goes on. Why couldn't I just connect to the Net and download the new features for a small fee rather than buy a whole new disc?

In fact, why not take this a step further. I buy the plain DVD, or purchase the film to download. It has the full film and a DD\DTS soundtrack, that's it. When I watch it on the computer I get the option to connect to the distributor to view additional extras for the film. I could select from featurettes, trailers, documentaries, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, etc, etc. If they were clever they could create new extras that fans could purchase and download, and they could save a bundle on printing new DVD's.

...ah dreams...What do you think though, would you download one of these audio commentaries from fans? Would you even consider doing one yourself for your favourite film? I think it might be a laugh to do a couple with a group of your friends.

What about the selling of extras? If copy protection was sorted for the distributors could you see the model above working? Would you buy additional extras this way?