Dear, Blu ray...
 

Dear Blu Ray,

I love your picture quality. Your sharp, detailed images are hard to beat (until the next format-that-will-eventually-require-me-to-upgrade comes along).

That being said, in building my collection of you and replacing my once proud DVD collection that was ravaged years ago, I've been underwhelmed oftentimes by you. I mean, when I collected The Twilight Zone Complete Series sets on DVD, they came in large tome-like sets with artwork that was appropriate to the content. I was proud to display them in my collection! But, my Blu ray versions of you, while they have some nice extras the DVD didn't, the whole series completely "meh" on my shelf. Sometimes large is nice. Ditto for the Superman Movie Collection.

And when rebuilding my catalog movie collection--GOD! Why can't you carry ALL the special features from the DVD sets? Does it really cost that much? Couldn't you just up the price? (You'll accuse me that I'd complain about your price. But, money is no object when it comes to fine home video!) What about the easter eggs? They were a fun little treat to so many DVDs, but rarely you don't even bother! The secret deleted scene from Bedazzled DVD carried over to the Blu ray version? Nuh uh. The gag reel from Magnolia or Boogie Nights? No dice. (In fairness, you did carry over the easter eggs to the Star Trek Movie sets so: thanks!)

And the menu selection! Oftentimes, you just don't even try to make if fun to access material with animated menus! And as far as your outward appearance goes: unless it's a special occasion like Criterion, you don't feel the need to spruce yourself up with a booklet!

I don't hate you Blu ray, your picture quality is great and I wouldn't trade you for all the streaming in the world. Sometimes you'll surprise me with something wonderful like the upcoming Halloween Collection or including Terror in the Aisles with the 30th Anniversary Edition of Halloween II. But, collecting you has been such a drag sometimes. I just wish you'd try harder and help me rekindle my love of collecting movies…

Your pal,

PatD

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Sounds like you're bitching cuz of your white people problems. Assuming you're a gringo. If not... Let us call them first world problems.

My issue with this is about what you're lovingly saying about its image quality. For new releases it seems to be fine... For the most part. But let us not be blinded by how they fuck up a lot in the presentation given to you in the image and audio. This tends to hit older catalog titles. The list is long and massive. I love Blu-ray but she ain't sucking my dick at 100%. Also sometimes I like my asshole to be eaten out. Blu-ray should go all the way in its work or just put its clothes back on and go back to her shitty working corner.

Also you're little thing about booklets? No. Fuck that. So little films in the pantheon of film deserve something like that. It is where it is and it is fine.

Also you should care more about the disc itself than the packaging. Fuck the visual appeal of some large set. Yeah, I get it. You want something pretty to jerk off to but who should give a real shit about BD packaging when we've greater issues about the BD itself? I want solid presentation at the very least. And at the prices some things hit? They better be worth the generic standardish pricing. Put in some features. I don't think paying full price for a catalog or a new release is worth most people's money.

Though sometimes something is such a miracle to appear on the format that that ugly pricing doesn't matter anymore to us. In that case I'd support such a thing.

I could go on but... First world problems, man.

You want to get into real shit about BD you get into the technical. You barely hit the cusp of an actual BD problem.

Menu design wise? Sure. Some films could benefit for some fun ones. But also think of the culture that BD has to us. It's about quality. Universal has the same format menu on US BD. WB had a basic template want and it worked until they just got lazy and gave the same menu design for EVERYTHING at some point. It's ugly and boring. Some stationary film related image, music in the background, and that boring template now that is carried over to everything. For the most part you just need to click for the film, a scene select, audio, and features.

And I'm just pissing around for the most part but seriously? Get your BD priorities straight, bro. *drinks Long Island*

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Wait. Solid Snake is... Blu-ray? :eek:

Blu Ray has a foul mouth then.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Blu Ray's kinda hot now. :eyebrow:

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Blu Ray's been nailing a cute redhead?

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

So the vibe I'm getting is that Solid Blu-ray Snake is none other than Sarah Silverman and she's been nailing Jane Levy. Am I getting this right?

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

DVD's peak hit the market at the right time, when the economy was still riding high off the Internet bubble years. The studios were flush with cash and spending outrageous sums on special editions for every movie they could acquire or release. That will never happen again, it was a unique time for home video unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes. The home video departments in 2014 are shells of their former DVD glory, they don't have the staff anymore capable of churning out loaded editions.

Blu-ray has had to evolve due to the changing retail market for all physical media. The streaming market arrived a bit sooner than expected due to Netflix, catching the studios off-guard.

Everyfuckingbody's getting laid around here....

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Dear Blu-ray,

Your occasional slow load times and sometimes inability to resume playback seem to be a distinct step backward in technological advancement and I find it frustrating.

Later,
story

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

P.S.--

Your lack of ubiquity (as opposed to DVD) is a little frustrating. I can count on one hand how many brands of desktop and laptop play you. Please do better.

PatD

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

That actually is one aspect of Blu-ray that's a tad frustrating. That it hasn't become more standard on laptops or desktops yet. Granted I may not use it a lot but it would be nice if more manufacturers incorporated it into hardware without having to pay such a premium to get it.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

i like em.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

I bought a high end Dell desktop last weekend and the only option they offered in terms of a BD optical drive was a standard BD player -- not even a R/W option. That, and it was a $100 add-on.

I opted for the standard DVD-R/W drive and found a Pioneer BD burner on Amazon for $60. I'm just going to connect to one of the additional SATA ports. I don't understand why it's not the industry standard in 2014.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

I don't like animated menus. I would love it if all Blu Rays had a plain text menu that loaded instantly, and responded instantly to my selection. The disks I've watched lately are slower than VHS clunk-a-vision.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

I think it's just lack of demand. Playing movie discs on computers was always kind of a niche thing, and people still tend to use DVD for things like home videos. With digital distribution taking over for games and other software, and the general desire for smaller computers, people don't have much use for optical drives these days (I'm speaking for them, not me).

Writers are in even less demand as most people use hard drives or online services for backups these days.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

When I first purchased my computer bd-r drive, I used it frequently for watching my blurays. (Mainly with the computer connected to the largescreen tv through the graphics card's hdmi jack).

After awhile, I found it was easier to just watch my bluray discs on my old standalone bluray player.

These days I mainly use my computer bd-r drive to check for bad sectors on every new bluray disc I purchase. Assuming bluray discs are not using any deliberate 'bad sectors' style drm protection schemes, the undecrypted iso from a bluray can be extracted in its entirety without any problems. A sign of a manufacturing defect is if there exists bad sectors which cannot be extracted. I usually return such defective bluray discs to the store in exchange for another copy. (It only takes 30 to 45+ minutes to extract the entire undecrypted iso from most bluray discs).

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Is there a blu-ray player that always skips the menu and previews and goes straight to the movie? Would love that.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

A computer with the "appropriate" playback software.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

I think they've realized that people are running out of shelf space and have been making packaging at least not take up as much space as it used to. My main gripe however is how minimal the packaging is, especially the Eco-Cases and plain monochrome disc labels. You'd think with streaming being a competitor, they'd want to make media look more attractive, not less.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

The studios are responding to retailers' desire for smaller packages. The studios don't sell directly to the consumer in most cases, which is why they've never been incredibly consumer-oriented.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Yes, that's part of the issue. The physical quality of the cases and the aesthetics of cover art have diminished considerably.

It sucks it's not like this to begin with, but you can buy better quality cases online and custom printing has gotten to a point that you can get near studio quality in terms of paper used for custom cover art.

Fans of films put far more effort in to the cover art and disc art that studios take the easy way out on.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

Dear PatD,

Congratulations on being a CinemaSins fan and, more recently, subscribing to Jeremy's separate YouTube channel and watching his "Dear Hollywood" videos. But don't just rip of their conversational tone and overall format for a thread that just cobbles together at least five different existing threads created during the past several years.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

"Everybody knows the dice are loaded, everybody knows the fight was fixed. That's the way it goes. Everybody knows."
Leonard Cohen

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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?

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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).

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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 :(.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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

Re: Dear, 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.

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

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

Re: Dear, Blu ray...
 

where?!