James "AVGN" Rolfe top 10 reasons Blu Ray sucks

[ben6543]

Top 10 Reasons Blu-ray Sucks - Cinemassacre - YouTube

[Dailyan]

[Show spoiler]

[-shadow-]

I can absolutely get behind some of his reasons, but most aren't related to the format. The encryption key though, that's some absolute bollocks and I'll entirely give him that one.

[MasterChief3624]

I actually agree with him about a few of those. I was watching a DVD the other day and the menu was so interesting. There's so much more effort put into the menus on DVD, at least from what I have experienced. Yes, there are some menus that are boring, but most of my experience shows menus that are memorable and interesting, whereas Blu-ray seems to have static menus with no bells or whistles.

It does also seem like extras have gone down in availability with Blu-ray. Maybe I'm just comparing to the wrong DVDs, but there are far less commentaries, way less behind the scenes featurettes, almost no fun digital games... a lot less extras nowadays.

The Blu-rays that don't let you skip right to the movie/menu from the trailers are frustrating. As someone that purchased this product, I think it's a real headache to be required to watch the same trailers over and over.

Updates haven't been too bad lately, but I remember back in the day firmware updates did stop me from watching something immediately. Even if the update takes only a minute or so, it's still another barrier, sometimes unforeseeable.

That's about where my agreements end, though. His issue with the Blu-ray cases seems to be specific to special-edition releases. He talks about the oversized special edition cases, which is fair... but there are plenty of DVD special editions that had that issue, too. His issue with the sleeve holders is not widely found on regular releases. In fact it's always on compilation sets, from what I've seen. His example of Back to the Future's bad holder? You can find it on DVDs as well. In fact the Brady Bunch complete series DVD set has arguably the worst holder I've ever seen on home media... and it's DVD!

Sony being the owner? It's not like they have bias that precludes companies from releasing their movies. His discussion about less movies on Blu-ray than DVD, less on DVD than VHS, I thought came down to licensing issues and companies being more frugal about what they put out. They're not going to distribute something on a wide scale if there's no interest. Maybe I'm wrong with that, though.

[Mister_Kidd]

Paying to rent a movie on Amazon that you already own on BD? That's some high-level stupidity right there.

[eledoremassis02]

I agree with a few points, such as updates (which are super annoying when you try to play Blu-rays on your computer) and case sizes. Some of his issues I do feel bleed in from DVDs tho (commercials and disc holders). And while I do agree with the convenience of streaming, I do see a lot of stuff getting removed for platform originals (good or bad depending).


One thing he forgot to mention was not on Blu but HD on stream specifics for older films or even the fact alot of DVDs used to use original poster art where bluray uses 5 second photoshops.

But my main for Blu-ray/physical media is that I own it. If I get bored with it or dont watch anymore, I can sell it. I have movies on Movies Anywhere and I dont even watch them. Tho on the flip side, I have sold physcial copies because I'll just watch the digital if I feel the need too.. so I guess in the end, I think both are good to co-exist

Edit: I want to mention one that's kind of important (depending on your tastes). Variety! Online streaming is basically binocular vision for media, you could make the same argument for rental stores. But with physical media, I can but a movie from Hong Kong thats not released elsewhere and watch it hassle-free, where if I want to have it digitally (if its available) I'd have to track it down, get a VPN and try and find a payment method that allows me to access HK content (I tried to rent a film on Youtube using a VPN and my PayPal was set to the U.S so I couldt, so I just bought the bluray)

Originally Posted by Mister_Kidd

Paying to rent a movie on Amazon that you already own on BD? That's some high-level stupidity right there.

Yea that was kinda funny lol. It's kind of ironic because a plus to Bluray is included digital copies lol

[DukeTogo84]

James is normally a pretty reasonable guy, but I'm not a fan of some of his comments here. He's complained to having to pay Sony for some of his profits from his Blu-ray titles in the past, so that could be one of stems here.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Mister_Kidd

Paying to rent a movie on Amazon that you already own on BD? That's some high-level stupidity right there.

He’d rather pay $4 to rent a movie he already owns movie instead of having to find it and sit through the trailers on the discs. It’s more convenient.

[-shadow-]

Is it really that common on US releases that you can't skip/fast forward the trailers and warnings? I can't think of any of the UK/NL/DE releases I have, on which I can't do so or even just press the top menu button.

[DukeTogo84]

Originally Posted by -shadow-

Is it really that common on US releases that you can't skip/fast forward the trailers and warnings? I can't think of any of the UK/NL/DE releases I have, on which I can't do so or even just press the top menu button.

I would say 99% of my discs I'm able to skip the trailers. The FBI warnings are a bit more tricky. I always go to scene select and start at scene 2 to skip most of the FBI warnings, but sometimes even that doesn't work.

[HD Goofnut]

A few of his points are minor annoyances and the rest are exaggerated beyond belief, but hey if he's fine with 240 and 480 when 1080 and 2160 w/ HDR are available then let him live with that.

[Talal86]

“Boring” menu’s and lack of extras aren’t a format problem, studios just stopped giving a ****

[dig311dug]

I've never seen this encryption message on ps3?
...and the system hasn't been updated in ages.

[CinemaScope]

Well anyone who has copies of Cinefantastique, The Castle Of Frankenstein & Famous Monsters Of Filmland magazines in his mancave has to be taken seriously. He does really struggle to make it up to ten, & most of the complaints have to do with the studios & not the format. Discs that are hard to remove & discs with the opposite problem, so they just fall out, are a tiny minority, most are in good old reliable cases. And as disinterested studios are licensing out titles to small niche companies, interesting extras are coming back (just look at the UK company Indicator, their releases are jam packed with extras). If only Blu-rays sold in the quantities that VHS & DVD did, but they don't, so we are where we are.

[meremortal]

I like James and am not surprised by his comments. He's never really seemed like much of a videophile/audiophile and that's OK. Even though he's an amateur filmmaker, he's always put a lot more into the storytelling and writing side of his videos over a fancy production. He's always seemed like a guy who appreciates the process and the behind the scenes stuff and added a whole lot of bonus features to his movie's release on blu at the sacrifice of a/v quality. And I can get on board with some of his reasons. The earlier dvd days did seem to really have some fun and creative interactive menus and major studio releases often did come pretty loaded with supplements. Forced trailers are also pretty annoying. But I definitely prefer blu cases now to save space; the issue with packaging can sometimes be an issue with box sets or when discs are stacked and I'll agree with him there as well. He's a busy guy now with a family and his YT channel and the video editing and so he probably doesn't have much free time for his hobbies these days unless it's somehow tied into his work for an upcoming video, etc

[The Geek]

I haven't been a fan of Rolfe's stuff since he started doing those rental reviews with his annoying gang of friends. His recent solo review of The Maltese Falcon was fantastic. He needs to do more solo stuff.

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by -shadow-

Is it really that common on US releases that you can't skip/fast forward the trailers and warnings? I can't think of any of the UK/NL/DE releases I have, on which I can't do so or even just press the top menu button.

I would say the main annoyance is that so many discs use different systems trying to force you to watch them. Like, some discs (Disney is actually good about this) you can hit top menu or pop-up menu to bypass them, some discs you can use the chapter skip to skip past them one at a time, but then other discs block both of those functions so you just have to forward seek through them at top speed. There might be more methods that I forgot about. People that aren't used to having to figure out how to bypass that stuff probably just hit forward skip and when it doesn't work give up. It really IS annoying.

[eledoremassis02]

Originally Posted by meremortal

I like James and am not surprised by his comments. He's never really seemed like much of a videophile/audiophile and that's OK. Even though he's an amateur filmmaker, he's always put a lot more into the storytelling and writing side of his videos over a fancy production. He's always seemed like a guy who appreciates the process and the behind the scenes stuff and added a whole lot of bonus features to his movie's release on blu at the sacrifice of a/v quality. And I can get on board with some of his reasons. The earlier dvd days did seem to really have some fun and creative interactive menus and major studio releases often did come pretty loaded with supplements. Forced trailers are also pretty annoying. But I definitely prefer blu cases now to save space; the issue with packaging can sometimes be an issue with box sets or when discs are stacked and I'll agree with him there as well. He's a busy guy now with a family and his YT channel and the video editing and so he probably doesn't have much free time for his hobbies these days unless it's somehow tied into his work for an upcoming video, etc

Definitely a fan on the size of Bluray cases, tho I think the best space saver is still CD/VCD cases. I would love to do see those make a comeback. They even did try that with DVD

[captveg]

Originally Posted by Talal86

“Boring” menu’s and lack of extras aren’t a format problem, studios just stopped giving a ****

It wasn't worth the expense.

[thatguamguy]

This is just a stupid collection of selective memory, contradictions, outright nonsense, and anecdotes instead of data.

#10 is boring menus, where he only brings up examples of cool menu designs, but completely ignores examples of awful loud ones where the images are spoilers and a 20-second sound clip plays on an endless loop. #9 is fewer bonus features, which he claims but offers no statistical evidence to prove. #8 is oversized cases, which is frankly absurd since blu-rays have smaller cases than DVDs overall, so he jumps straight to selective memory and pretends there were no DVD box sets which were larger than normal DVDs. #7 is the disc holder, where he pretends that DVD had some sort of uniformity despite showing several examples, none of which match. (Though I will say, at least in this case, I agree with his individual examples as bad, I just don't see how it has anything to do with the format.) #6 is the remotes, where he says the only good remote he ever had is a blu-ray remote. #4 is "Sony owns blu-ray, meaning fewer movies get released on blu-ray". Which might be a fair point if he didn't immediately undercut it by pointing out that no company owned "DVD" and yet it still didn't catch up to VHS, which suggests a lack of causation. #3 I can't even pretend is a real point for the purposes of debunking it. #2 is bookmarks, which again seems like selective memory. And #1 is forced ads, which he acknowledges are constant across all formats, and during which he contradicts #10 by saying that he just wants to put the disc in and have the movie start. Just put the movie in the player 10 minutes before you're ready to start, instead of being a childish junkie requiring immediate gratification (but also really fancy menus to distract you).

#5 is software updates. I will acknowledge that this is new, and I guess could be viewed as negative if you are obsessed with immediate gratification, but personally speaking, I prefer that the player I have receive updates so that it continues to work, rather than having to buy a new one.