Blu-ray Lingo and Definitions

[Atari Charles]

Blu-Ray Lingo

Floaters: Loose Blu-ray discs not firmly put in their holder. Will make a clunk clunk sound when you shake the case. May have scratches.

Wrinklers: Blu-ray cases with the clear plastic wrinkled, creased, melted due to overheating of the case when case sealed in plastic.

Slip Cover Blues: When a Blu-ray slip cover is damaged. Usually caused by clumsy employees and customers ramming the case in the shelf.

HMV Heart Attack: When a Blu-ray sells or over $30 at HMV whereas anywhere else the Blu-ray is much less expensive. HMV does not price-match. Boo!

Allianced:
1. Resizing of the screen ratio different to what the director had intended losing relevant image data on top and bottom of screen. Also can mean a stripped down Blu-ray release with no extras. Also a quirky Canadian term for a Blu-ray release that has been stripped of all extra features usually released by Alliance on Blu-Ray. This may also mean a resizing of the format size of the film for no apparent reason such the Alliance release of Blade 3.

2. Where a company takes a transfer made for broadcast HDTV and puts it on a Blu-ray. Video should be 1080i, lossy audio and cropped to 1.78. This is done about 6 months before a US release so they can get the double dip when they piggy back on top of the superior release.

Optimumized: Cropped to hell movie as first seen in Optimum's release of Night of the Living Dead.

The Item Free Scanner Policy: 1.1 On a claim being presented by the customer, where the scanned price of a product at checkout is higher than the price displayed in the store or than advertised by the store, the lower price will be honoured; and

(a) if the correct price of the product is $10 or less, the retailer will give the product to the customer free of charge; or
(b) if the correct price of the product is higher than $10, the retailer will give the customer a discount of $10 off the corrected price.

See: http://www.retailcouncil.org/members...price-accuracy


ECO CRAP: A cheap blu-ray case with big holes in it to use less plastic and mess up your cover art by getting rips in it.

Dinger: Box sets, digi-paks, steelbooks etc. that are dented or damaged.

Disc Lock: When a disc seems fused to its holder and will break in half before it finally snaps off.

Skint: No money; spending to much on buying blu's.........

Wax Job: A movie whose grain structure has been wiped away with excessive digital noise reduction (DNR), robbing it of detail and making actor's faces look like wax.

TROJAN: A Blu-ray release that sneaks in the standard def. special features disc of a previous DVD release.

Digital Copy - Completely worthless format.

Roadshow Round-about: Faulty discs due to manufacturing problems and the subsequent battle between consumer and distributor to receive a replacement.

Blu-Blocker: When the one other guy standing next to the Blu-Ray shelves at your local store is after the same movie, in which there is only one copy left, and he finds it first.

Blu-ray Battle: A very dramatic, often violent struggle to obtain a single copy of a blu-ray from the hands of a Blu-Blocker.

Box-O-Junk: A typical $19.99 Blu-ray placed inside a big box with knick-knacks, posters, inserts, flyers, little toys, widgets and a 00:15 second video clip not available anywhere else - all bundled together for $99.00.

McDonald's Happy Meal Special Edition: A Blu-ray release with "special packaging" that looks like metal or ceramic but turns out to be cheap Happy Meal Toy plastic...

50HZ Blues/50HZ blu-s: A blu-ray encoded in 50HZ/50i which will not play in most North American Blu-ray players and TVs. Considered by some an obsolete format used when Fred Flintstone was a baby.

Region Lockers: Moronic greedy film/studio/manufacturing execs that region lock films so that customers can only buy releases from their region. Invented to stop piracy on the blu-ray seas, this simply cause customers to buy expensive hard to get equipment to play their preferred release of said movie as often times the domestic release is either a stripped down barebones release or the film transfer was done by Barney Rubble in his basement.

Australian Freedom: Australia's illegalization of Region-locking thus giving the customer a real choice of what films to buy or not to buy. Freedom for all Blu-Rays!!!

HMV Shrug: The uncomfortable shrug the HMV employee gives when the customer wants him to price match but he cannot due to HMVs archaic policies.

Criterion: Meaning golden or holy in ancient Greek, films released by Criterion are by most blu-ray collectors deemed as the holy grail of a particular release. Criterion releases are highly sought after. The exact opposite term for Criterion is Alliance.

Alliance: Meaning fools-gold in ancient Greek, tin in ancient Latin, and donkey dung in ancient Mesopotanian. It is also a film company that releases popular films in blu-ray that usually do not have extra features and/or may be reformatted in screen size for some unknown reason.

Gladiated: After coming home after buying your copy of Gladiator or another blu-ray release, you notice that the film transfer is poor. This causes a stabbing feeling in your hip pocket where your wallet is.

The George Lucus Remix: Any film that has been changed from its original theatrical release.

Bare Bones: A blu-ray completely devoid of special features. Can be synonymous with Alliance or Woody Allen releases.

Window effect: Crystal clear picture quality making it appear as if you are looking through a window.

Skinned: When blu-ray case is skinned, scraped, or otherwise scuffed. Usually this happens on the corners of the cases by rough handling by store staff or customers. Sometimes, this damage can occur at the manufacturing/packaging plant, so the scrape is actually under the plastic wrapping.

Skinned Wrapped: A release that has been damaged(skinned) at the store and is re-shrinkwrapped at the store. Futureshop is notorious at doing this for their discounted movies.

Binded: When a blu-ray case is scrapped along its binding by careless staff and/or customers. The damage looks like a tear in the clear plastic binding and will often damage the label as well.

The Spider Crunch: Any bluray box set that was crunched and destroyed by store security spiders.

Rental Reboot: Various blu-ray releases that were once rental stock now being sold as previously watched. Often times this stock is discounted and will usually have scratched discs.

Imaged: An odd term for a blu-ray release that is subpar, the looks like a dvd upconvert, and that has no extras. The term originated from the time of Hellraiser I and Hellraiser II's release by Image Entertainment.

Roommate Packaging: A bullsh!t attempt by Disney to store 3 discs in a 2-disc case. They stack 2 discs on top of each other, creating not only an inconvenience but the possibility of scratching. Side effects include: pissed off customers. See The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II.

Re-decorating: When a company re-releases a title and the only thing that changes is the cover art.

Echo Bridged: A subpar release featuring poor film color, poor audio quality, film damage, and VHS video quality.

Echo Bridge Echo: A scream and the continuing reverberation and echo made by the screams of the buyer of an Echo Bridge movie product once the buyer releases what he/she has purchased and that the item cannot be returned for refund as it has been opened. The sound can be compared to the wail of banshees in ancient mythology.

Fans: People who will buy a movie on Blu-ray regardless of the quality of said Blu-ray because they like the movie/because the Blu-ray looks better than DVD. See The Terminator, Terminator 2, Predator, the Back to the Future trilogy, Gladiator, the Jurassic Park trilogy, Patton, and many, many others.

Yellow Submarining: The act of publicly tolerating a doomed and completely unnecessary studio nostalgia reboot/remake/sequel/etc. in theaters, in the sole mercenary hope that the marketing will inspire the studio to finally release the original movie on Blu-ray to cash in.

Total Recalled: A vague and distant memories of having purchased the same movie on blu-ray previously, only to have it re-released again on blu-ray with some form of perceived(real or not) improvement. Named after the re-release of Total Recall on blu-ray.

Total Recaller: The doomed blu-ray collector who must buy the blu-ray re-release of a movie previously re-releases on blu-ray due to the percieved(real or not) notion that the re-release is an improvement. Named after the re-release Total Recall on blu-ray.

Recall Dump: The act of dumping a blu-ray movie(much like how Arnold found out his original memory got dumped in the movie Total Recall), because the perception(real of not) that the blu-ray re-release is of better quality and/or has more extras. Named after the re-release of Total Recall on Blu-ray and how Arnold's original memory was wiped in Total Recall).

Cover juggle: The reason why, due to design copyrights, no two edition covers can ever be the same, despite your fervent pleas to the studio to put the original movie poster on the front.

El' Cheapo: The discovery of any BD title that can be purchased for $5.00 or less....brand new, not used!

Stealth Exclusives: Any blu title that shelves in under the release news radar and is found at your local Best Buy, Target or Walmart.

Slip-pers; Slip-knuts: People who care more about cardboard than movies.

Men of Steel: People who care more about steel packaging than movies.

Iron-Men: Like Men of Steel, except they will even (shock horror!) degrade themselves to the point of buying an Ironpack.

Play.com: The Men of Steel's personal dealer.

Silverado Collector: A person who collects the illusive Silverado(Sterling 92.5% Pure or Fine Silver 99.9% Pure) Case blu-ray releases. Such cases are manufactured in Mexico under strict guidelines for commissioned releases and sold in boutique shops in North America and Europe. For a Silveradio Collector, such an addition to ones collection is possible but costly.

Goldario Collector: A person who collects the even more rare Goldario(18k, 22k Crown Gold, or 24k Pure Gold) Case blu-ray releases. Such cases are manufactured in the Arab Emirates under strict guidelines and for a very limited production and very specific releases, and are usually given to visiting dignitaries and film stars. For Goldario Collectors, this is almost impossible to get, except through private auctions at a very steep price.

Platarium Collector: A person who collects the ultra rare and equally exclusive Platarium(99.9% Pure Platimum) Case blu-ray releases. Such cases are manufactured in Russia under strict guidelines by specific studios as a one-off for a studio exec or a specific director of said movie. For Platarium Collectors, this is an impossibility to get. A Platarium Collector would have a better chance of flying to the moon with his/her arms than to get one of these releases.

Twilighters: No, not fans of sparkling 'vampires', but instead people who are prepared to pay a Criterion price for a bare-bones release of an average movie, just because it's a limited edition.

Slip-tossers: People who just throw away their slipcovers as soon as they're purchased.

Paper Loser: A collector who cannot afford or is too cheap to buy legit releases, buys bootleg blu-rays in a paper envelope for 50 cents to $2 a disc.

Purists: Someone who is looking for a very specific version of a film, that if it's not included on the blu-ray, they will boycott the release while avoiding it like the plague and bash it on amazon months before its own release date.

Grabbies: Name for the people who helped perpetuate the DVD Copy in the early days: The Blu fans who "grabbed" the DVD disk and thought it was for their car and laptop, rather than help DVD fans understand that they could buy Blu-rays early.

PD Vulture: Any company you haven't heard of that suddenly releases a Blu-ray of Reefer Madness, House on Haunted Hill, Night of the Living Dead, or five Three Stooges shorts.

Crite-Acolyte: Any fan who believes in the omnipotent, godlike power of Criterion to spread its acquisition to any corner of the world and snap up any title lost or found, and goes running to Criterion the minute it looks like a studio is dragging its feet or holding back a vault title for a certain number of years.

Grover's Rovers: Groupies of Sony's Grover Crisp because of his consistently high mastering standards for Columbia/TriStar/Sony titles. NOTE: Twilighters are often both.

Francophobe*: In its most extreme manifestation, if the afflicted individual detects even a trace of French on a Canadian Blu-ray package that alone will justify importing a more expensive all-English edition, even of inferior quality with fewer features, and covered with 'Hazmat'-style U.K. warning symbols. * not exclusive to Blu-ray.

Cutters: A blu-ray case that has been cut usually by an employee with a box cutter as they open the shipping box. The cut in the blu-ray case usually appears somewhere on the surrounding border of the case.

Case Switchers: People who are or the act of switching blu-ray cases either due to damage to the original case or due to the much disliked Eco Crap Case.

Scratcher Nomads: People who borrow blu-ray movies only to return them scratched.

OCD Scanners: People who look for every imperfection in the case, cover label, and disc(see floaters) before purchasing a blu-ray movie.

Carvers: People in stores who for whatever reason use their thumbnail to carve into the from or back of the blu-ray case, which often makes a line in the plastic cover and the cover label itself.

Crop Junkies: Employees of various movie companies that take artistic choice by cropping releases differently than was originally intended by the director. The Dimension transfer of Night of the Living Dead is an example of this.

Aspect Ratio Rejects: Employees of various movie companies that take artistic choice by changing the aspect ratio from OAR(Original Aspect Ratio) to BAR(Bullsh#t Aspect Ratio). Alliance has many of these employees.

Blu-ray Meal: This occurs when a person spends all their available money on a blu-ray movie(s), and thus forgoes eating lunch or dinner. This usually occurs at shopping malls.

BS Blu-ray: A blu-ray disc which either uses a dvd or vhs transfer or has more than one film on a single blu-ray disc. In either case, the movies look like crap as they are upconverted or compressed to hell.

Alphabet Killer: Insists that their blu-rays must be in alphabetical order no matter what, and goes berserk when one is put in the wrong place.

Predatorized: Overly dnr'ed and processed to look like wax shit. Similar to wax job, but a verb. For example: I wanted to buy Weird Science until the reviews showed it was predatorized.

Case Cannibals: the blu-ray collectors who will cannibalize a case from a double or another release's case to use to replace a damaged or enviro case for a valued release in their collection.

Case Harvesting: the act of harvesting a good case from a non-valued or double to use to replace a damaged or enviro case for a valued release.

Black-ray: an Ultra High Definition disc.

**PLEASE ADD YOUR OWN BELOW AND THEY WILL BE ADDED TO THE LIST**