In an effort to spur sales, Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced it will being offering movies in both Blu-ray and DVD formats on a single disc starting in January 2010. The company stated that these dual-format discs, which they’re calling “Flipper” Discs, will allow consumers to upgrade their media collection at their own pace.

At first I really didn’t understand this decision. I mean, if studios plan on offering both formats of the same media as one package why would they start by releasing a movie based on a 60’s television show about a charismatic porpoise that’s essentially a poor man’s Lassie set in the ocean. I wasn’t ever crazy about the classic series and the feature film must have been absolutely horrid because I don’t even remember it.

Then I read paragraph No. 2 of the press release and realized “Flipper” was just the wildly creative marketing team’s name for the new media disc format.

The first films to get the “Flipper” Disc treatment are actually The Bourne Trilogy* (Matt Damon). Each individually packaged film in the series will have a Blu-ray format on one side and a DVD format on the other. Both sides will still contain bonus features and extras like you’d expect to find in single-format discs.

While I poke fun about the company naming the discs “Flipper,” to their credit they did give perhaps the best term in describing why this new initiative should get people interested in buying more movies: consumers are future-proofing their collections.

And at least for the foreseeable future, Universal is correct. The likelihood of a more advanced (higher quality) media format is a good decade away. Also, with the snail’s pace universal broadband Internet connectivity is going in America, streaming media is no where near being able to match the picture quality offered from Blu-ray players. DVDs packaged with a Digital Video Disc even offer advantages over downloaded media sales since they don’t come laced with annoying DRM encryption, which prevents them from being transferred across multiple devices **AHEMBestBuyAHEM**.

Largely, the Blu-ray versions of films have often been able to offer incentives in the form of deleted footage, production commentary, behind-the-scenes features, etc. More recently, companies have started tapping into the Blu-ray player’s Internet connectivity and ability to interact with Bluetooth-enabled devices. [Read: New “˜Fast & Furious’ Blu-Ray Disc Has Its Own iPhone App?]

The only real thing that would defer consumers from “future-proofing” their collections by buying “Flipper” Discs, will be if the price is significantly higher than the much less costly DVD formats.

*NOTE: The “Bourne” Flipper Discs won’t be sold as a trilogy pack as illustrated in the picture and linked in the article. Each movie in the trilogy will be packaged as a separate flipper disc. No price or box art is available at this time, and these products have not been pre listed on any of the online retail sites yet.