Dear Blu-ray,
All your stuff has been in OAR and that's good enough for me.

Actually it hasn't. There have been some movies like Shaun of the Dead where they change the ratio of the image. Looks so weird too.

Unless the goal is to make streaming the only option.

From a business standpoint, they'd probably love it if everybody would embrace streaming. The distribution costs are much lower, they don't have to worry about print runs not selling, they can control the availability, they can get away with lower quality, they can get all kinds of data about who is watching and when, etc.

Huh? What's wrong with Shaun of the Dead?

Dear Randy Miller III,

I've never even heard of CinemaSins. And isn't willy-nilly accusing someone of plagiarism without sufficient proof fall in the realm of "thread crapping"? Have a good day.

I'll take basic packaging and monochrome disc labels any day of the week if it means more/cheaper discs. I mean I get why people like nice packaging, but has anyone ever said anything more than "huh, that's cool looking disc art" before promptly forgetting about even the coolest of disc art?

Edit to add: And another thing, since when is streaming a competitor to physical discs? Aren't the studios pushing us towards streaming?

The studios love the business model streaming provides because it cuts out the retailer as middleman. Hollywood is obsessed like most businesses with squeezing out every single dollar from the value chain of their product. But they are also scared to death the same thing that happened to the music industry will happen to their revenues. Once the entire market shifts to digital downloads, a good chunk of your customer base likely decides purchasing Hollywood content is a poor value compared to cheap streaming options.

It's slightly windowboxed. It's like some old anime DVD's that would shrink the image to counteract the overscan on most TV's. This isn't necessary on newer HDTV's (though many are set to overscan by default).

But likely some studio people would lose their jobs if that happened, so they should be doing their best to keep making physical media attractive. Of course every time I watch a rented movie on Vudu, I'm reminded why I will never switch to buying movies that way.

Studios hate physical media, but they tolerate it because it's a viable revenue stream (that they're trying to phase out).

Damn, that's disturbing to think about .

The hidden outtake reel from Boogie Nights IS on the Blu-ray.

Dear Blu-Ray,
Can you lend me $50?

Just give me the best picture quality and great sound quality - and I'm good to go.
With all the movies/shows/music/books available for me to watch/listen/read and the increasing ways for me to obtain and consume them - I don't have time for supplements.

"Digital" is the new version of this:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ed-p9NSwqbw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

where?!

With streaming there's still a retailer as middleman. Apple, Amazon, Vudu, Netflix or whoever.

What made Circuit City's divx absolutely evil, was its use of triple-DES encryption.

In contrast, dvd's css encryption was so poorly designed that it only takes seconds to crack the key with a "known plaintext attack".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known-plaintext_attack

Yes and no.

Studios provide the content, the services at that point act as the distributor. The money made from streaming rentals and sales ends up going mostly to the studio, with some studios making upwards of 70%. The middle man of the companies that replicate the discs, create packaging, distribute the discs to retailers, and so on and so on is entirely eliminated within the streaming model.

A movie that sells at $20 on iTunes makes a studio far more than a Blu-ray selling at $20.

And how many are buying new movies for $20 online only? I have no idea, but that idea seems stupid.

Dear blu-ray,

I am sorry that studios keep putting your perfection in shitty cardboard sleeves. You deserve better.

White people problems? Regardless, this is a forum and site built on collecting movies. Of course it's first world problems.

So yes, there's still middlemen. I don't see where the 'no' applies.

First world problems? Some one needs to bring this shit up at the UN.

After further search, I appear to be mistaken.

Apart from the cost of pressing discs this differs from the retail model for physical media how? With physical media the lion's share of the money goes to the studio. In fact, on release week some retailers sell major titles barely at cost, or even as loss leaders.
Exactly. If you're spending $20 or whatever, you're going to spend it on physical media. If you're streaming, you're renting.

Says the guy who watches movies on VHS and laserdisc. Give me a fucking break. VUDU looks 1,000 times better than those any day of the week.

Now, if it's between watching a film I already own on Blu-ray versus Netflix, obviously I'm going with BD. But if it's a movie I'm only going to watch once, and it's on Netflix, then Netflix is fine.

As for the complaints in the OP, I agree with them to a point. I think bitching about eco cases or labels is pretty silly. How long do you hold a case in your hands or look at the top of the disc? Less than a minute, I would imagine. As someone who lives in an apartment, giant boxes for media are the bane of my existence. I do agree that we should be getting all the special features ported over. That stuff is just inexcusable.