So the other day at Best Buy I picked up the Blade Runner 1 disc blu-ray for $5 with U&S. Before I opened the plastic (which appeared to be re-wrapped) I noticed that the artwork looked to be very low quality. From a distance you wouldn't notice it, but looking at it close up, the white text on the back cover (among other things) is not as crisp as I would expect. The paper used also doesn't appear to have the same finish that most professional blu-ray artwork has.

I'll probably just go back to the store and see if the other copies match what I'm seeing, but before I do that, I wonder if anyone who owns this disc can tell me if their copy is similar to what I'm describing? I'd post pictures, but I don't think that it would translate. Thanks for any help.

Bought at Best Buy? Doubtful.

Can you post a photo?

Ditto.

How are we supposed to know if this disc is guilty or not?

Send it to me and I'll tell you. You need to pay return shipping though.

It's $5. Look at the back of the disc. Does it look like other ones you own?

seriously. only hot people can get help in these parts.

A BD-R (which is what a bootlegged BD would be) looks quite different on its playing surface from a real Blu-ray. A BD-Rom drive or the PS3 would also identify it as a BD-R, even though it would play correctly. There are no replicated bootleg Blu-rays, at least in the U.S. The studios locked the pressing machinery for Blu-ray down pretty tightly with traceable ID numbers.

I guess I should have been more specific...

I have not opened the plastic wrap because I want to be able to return the thing if necessary. I don't know what the disc looks like but I would know the difference between a b-dr and a pressed disc. Like I said before, the package looks like it was re-shrinkwrapped at some point. The artwork, from what I could tell, seems very low quality and I thought maybe someone had either returned a bootleg to the store or had stolen the original art for some reason and replaced it with a poor copy. I was just hoping someone who owned this could confirm whether or not this release just had poor quality, blurry artwork in comparison to other big studio releases. Maybe I'll try posting a picture later, but as I said before, I don't think the poor quality of the printing will be noticeable in a photograph.

Some studios use "cheap" shrinkwrap. The cost of Blus are low enough where studios don't use so many methods of deterring theft.

Unless you open it you'll never know. Gamble.

I assure you very few if the members here are "hot".

I doubt you would get a bootleg at Best Buy unless it somehow slipped in at the distribution level.

If you thought that the shrinkwrap looks funny, it could be because it's what they use. Sometimes, the studios or distributors will "refresh" old stock by rewrapping it.

Or, someone at Best Buy rewrapped it. The disc may have come in with ripped shrinkwrap and the stores have a machine that does that. Used to happen in the store I worked at all the time. Nothing is wrong with the disc, but by having it open, it's too easy for it to get stolen, so you just redo it.

A lot of current packaging and disc labeling is so crappy, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish legitimate product from bootlegs!

That is true, especially for Warner Bros. Their budget releases under $10 these days often eschews security stickers and definitely uses a cheaper form of shrinkwrapping. It hasn't affected new releases yet, but give it time.

Now that catalog titles are regularly selling for under $10, expect to see every single penny of production costs squeezed out of BDs. It's only a matter of time before they resort to thin cardboard packaging in stores.

I'd honestly rather have miniature laserdisc sleeves than those stupid Eco-Cases!

So in other words, no one here owns this release and can confirm whether or not the official artwork is really low quality (like it was printed on a crappy inkjet printer)? That's fine. Maybe I'm just over-sensitive to what I consider to be really low printing quality because I work in the book printing/binding industry. I'll stop at Best Buy on the way home from work today and see what the other copies look like. I'll let you know what I find.

I get why you can't post a picture (since the quality won't show anyway), but yeah, very slim chance it's fake. Crappy shrinkwrap is norm now for budget releases and I doubt someone would return/slip a $10 bootleg into the system.

What? There's been bootleg blu-rays for years in the US. They've had the drives for computers you can buy for years.

I remember when I bought Dark Knight Rises, the printing on the Blu-ray disc looked soft and bootleggish. Many of Warner's discs look this way, so I don't think you've got a bootleg based on that. I tend to think disc artwork is a low priority for Warner Bros.

That would be a BD-R bootleg that someone makes on a computer, PhantomStranger was saying there aren't replicated bootlegs, meaning professional-type pressed BDs.

Blu-ray.com has a scan of the back cover for the single-disc edition:
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Blade-...Blu-ray/18392/

Now, it's hard to say if certain text is blurry because of the scan or because of the original image, but it looks like the text above the picture, to the left of the barcode, is blurry because of some effect applied to them to make them look like they're "glowing" so to speak.


Like the others in this thread, I think it's highly unlikely you got a bootleg from Best Buy, and the cheap packaging is just an indication of WB going cheap for this budget version of the film (in contrast with their extensive 5 and 4 disc Blu-ray releases of the film).

I think your guess that someone may have switched the artwork is the only other possible alternative, but pretty unlikely.

Best buy stores don't have those machines. They send them out for rewrap.

Anyway I doubt it's a boot but its easy enough for someone who has that machine to reseal a disc with different contents and return it to a store where it ends up back on the shelf.

Correct, sir.

It's just Warner Bros. being cheap.