american-pie92

Lately especially with Paramount we've been getting these crappy bland Grey DVD's and I really hate them. Why do they make them like these for example I seen it on the 1-Disc Transformers Copy I rented so I was pretty much sure there would be a lot nicer one on the 2-Disc but when I bought it I was so Disappointed because it was the same with the added Disc 1 or Disc 2 at the bottom. Why do these keep getting put on our DVD 's when they could be so much better?

calhoun07

I was just thinking about this topic the other day. People can make home made CDs with thermal printing that look far better than these new factory made DVDs coming out. I guess it's to cut costs.

american-pie92

Thats Major Film Companies for you... Even the low-budget companies are getting more creative. Damn you The Ayslum!!!!!!!!!!!

Defiant1

Is anyone else doing it other than Paramount? Cloverfield has a gray disc, only with some "rough" lines on it to make the disk look edgy and raw.

shyguy1083

well, i know universal has the sort of "clear/no-coating" (i dunno how else to describe) DVDs where all that's on the disc would be the title and text in black.

i'm guessing they're trying to cut costs wherever is at all possible. which sucks. first it was the lack of inserts, now the lack of disc art, and now the insistence on adding digital copies... probably just another way to get customers to try and go straight for digital downloads... they probably figure that customers will eventually do so if they know they get nothing really useful when they buy the dvd. that's why i generally wait for titles to drop in price unless it's a well-designed, substantial set.

Tarantino

Really? This is what we're complaining about now?

The art on the actual DVD?

= J

tylergfoster

I think it's lamer that the booklet has practically gone the way of the dodo, and when Fox does them they're so flimsy and the glue is a little too strong. I've yet to tear one but I always think I will.

I can't say I actively mind that the disc art is gray, but I will agree that it's quite boring. When I'm not looking right at it, though, it doesn't really cross my mind.

Alan Smithee

Seems counter-productive to do that when they don't want people making bootlegs.

I also hate the trend of 2-sided discs having a label only on side A, side B has NOTHING so when you play it, it looks like you're putting a 1-sided DVD in your player the wrong way. My home-made 2-sided discs have a label on both sides!

Gunde

I really don't care what the disc looks like at all. I can't see it on the shelf and I can't see it in the player

visitor Q

^^^ Yeah, that.

I all about excellent packaging, but I've rarely ever paid any attention to the disc art itself.

american-pie92

I suspose

calhoun07

But is it complaining or just a point to make for discussion? For the sake of discussion, I'd say, yeah, it looks cheaper than cheap. If I was making a home made project on a shoestring budget, that is the printing quality I would go with to cut costs. But I've made home made projects on a shoe string budget and had better looking printing on my discs than what these studios put out.

And you can say it's all about the exterior, but I dare say any person setting out to design a great looking set will design a great looking set outside and IN. Why make the outside look all great and you open it up and you skimped on the printing costs for the DVD itself?

But, at least there is printing on the disc. Nothing bugs me as much as flippers.

jaylerd

I think it's just a bit of slowly-but-surely screwing over people that prefer DVD to Blu-Ray. Iron Man's 2-disc blu-ray has plain blue discs, so I guess it's not much better than the DVD version, but Wall-E's blu-ray has actual art vs the gray scale bs on the DVD. I can't confirm about Dark Knight's blu-ray being any better.

Also seems like blu-rays have more inserts, and sometimes higher quality slipcases: Sleeping Beauty's blu-ray had an flap on the cover, the way Platinum Disney films used to have. The DVD didn't.

QuirkyMovieGirl

Greyscale disc art has always been one of my DVD pet peeves. I really hate it when they do this to tv show box sets mid stream. Seasons 1-3 of Medium have disc art that matches the outer box. I saw the discs for season 4 over Christmas and now they are greyscale.

SPRBD

I'll bite....

1) How do you make two-sided discs?
2) How do get a label on both sides and still have them work?

TheMovieman

Eh, I don't care about it. I either have the disc in the case or in the player. I don't ever just take the disc out to look at it (for disc artwork anyway).

Alan Smithee

Ritek makes 2-sided DVD+Rs which you can order from Meritline.com- I've never seen them in stores, though there's a few 2-sided 3-inch discs you can get now, intended for camcorder use. Their current ones have a white label in the middle on both sides so you can write what's on it, a lot of space gets taken up by their logo and other unnecessary junk though- I've used white-out on some of them to make more label room.

Most 2-sided commercial discs just have printing around the edge of the middle part, and if that wasn't bad enough a lot of the new ones don't have ANY printing on side B, the side A label just says "Additional content on other side." Putting side B into your player looks like you're playing the wrong side, or a bootleg someone was too cheap to make a label for.

While the appearance of the actual disc isn't that big a deal in the great scheme of things, the cheapening out like this and the boring grey labels on 1-siders makes legitimate product look a lot less compelling over someone's homemade disc, legal or not. You'd think the big studios would want to make their discs look as attractive as possible.

Pizza

It doesn't bother me. I'm just happy to get any kind of label. I hate flippers (and not the dolphin) because they can't have any kind of label other than the microscopic one along the bottom ring.

Kory

Both my Wall-E DVD and my Iron Man DVD, 3- and 2-disc respectively, have disc art. My 2-disc for The Dark Knight also has disc art.

TimSaupe

I'll agree with you on this one; seems as if people can't complain about *something* then their lives are incomplete. I've never understood the constant complaints over dvd covers, disc art and insert booklets. Isn't the point to buying the disc whether or not the film/show is of good quality?

milo bloom

I can sympathize with the loss of (good) booklets, the ones that actually had interesting information in them, but the plain inserts with nothing but a picture and the chapter stops? I can live without those.

But the artwork on the disc itself is pretty far down on the list of things to worry about wrt DVDs these days.

Disc-Flipper

My Prince Caspian 3-disc set has boring grey text labels for the movie and special features (discs 1 & 2) but the third disc with the digital copy has colorful fantasy artwork on it.

TheDuke

If you switch over to blu-ray because you don't like the artwork of standard def DVDs, then, well, I don't know what to say to you...

jaylerd

Maybe it's just the one-disc version that NetFlix sent my parents that doesn't have disc art for Dark Knight.

What's the art on Iron Man, what version did you get? I got the regular 2-Disc version from amazon and it's just gray.

I'm not converting to blu-ray for any reason, least of all is the art. I just posited that a difference in art could be one small way that the studios keep making differences in "content" between dvd and blu.

pridesticks06

I don't know about Kory but I have the Iron Man SteelBook 2-Disc and it has red art with a gold-ish center (basically the center of his chest) and Iron Man in gold on it.