BLU-RAY NEWS: Best Blu-rays of 2008
2008 started off great for Blu-ray backers when they won the non-war with HD-DVD. We consumers expected this fight to last awhile but was surprised when it barely lasted a year. I was firmly on the HD-DVD side of the fence. They had clear standards, when you purchased an HD-DVD disk you knew what to expect in terms of features. I also thought that competition would be good for consumers. Plus the the Blu-ray group still didn’t have a handle on what should be standard and what shouldn’t be. Then they finally released the profile 1.1 spec which included picture in picture and Ethernet ports as standard features on all players. Later in the year they issued the 2.0 spec which brought along BD-Live.
At the time of the announcement I wrote one of my patented screeds saying how it would be bad for consumers, that prices of Blu-ray disks were way too high and that, without competition, there was no way they would come down. Of course my screed made the Internet rounds and I was ridiculed and lambasted on popular websites like the AV-Forums, but guess what – I was right. Exactly what I predicted would happen, did happen. The price of players didn’t go down, the cost of movies actually went up and you have Netflix charging an extra buck to cover their Blu-ray costs. I mean really, $39 for Superbad?
Even though they released a lot of new feature enhancements, most of the major Hollywood studios are content to just release HD catalogue films with very little additional features that take advantage of the format. It amounts to nothing more than double dipping and for this privilege they are charging $10 – $15 more and they wonder why consumers aren’t jumping on the BD Bandwagon.
One of the worst offenders of this is Paramount Pictures. They just give you the film and maybe if you are lucky they’ll throw in a couple of featurettes in Standard Definition. They clearly don’t get or aren’t’ comfortable enough with the format to invest in special features for reissues. Then again, Paramount did a beautiful job with the Iron Man set. The studio that gets the format – Disney, almost all of their releases this holiday season have been amazing and have managed to utilize the format to it’s fullest.
Surprisingly, Columbia Pictures support of Blu-ray seems to be pretty spotty, this considering that parent company Sony are the folks behind Blu-ray. I would and did expect more from them. But enough rambling, here are my picks for the best DVDs of 2008, all of these Blu-rays are showcase titles that really show what makes you go wow about Blu-ray – from Pristine Picture Quality, HD Features, to BD-Live, to Digital Copy, these disks have it all.
17) The X-Files: I Want to Believe and Fight The Future Box Set
16) Tropic Thunder
15) Supernatural Season 3
(just because WB gives you the entire season as a Digital Copy. Very cool bonus that I wish more TV Box sets would do)
14) The Day the Earth Stood Still
13) Wanted
12) Event Horizon
11) James Bond Blu-ray Collection
10) Planet of the Apes Collection
9) Wall E
8)) Iron Man
7) Starship Troopers Trilogy
6) Lost Season 4
5) Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy Set
4) Speed Racer
3) Death Race
2) Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
1) The Dark Knight
The two most disappointing releases of the year – Paramount’s Godfather Collection. How could you go wrong, put the greatest trilogy of all time (according to most, not me) on Blu-ray, pack it with HD Extras and it’s money in the bank. The problem is, on my set up the picture was so grainy and dark that it was almost unwatchable. The day scenes are beautiful, but anything shot in shadows and at night – awful. The HD Extras are really beautiful.
The worst Blu-ray release of the year: The Die Hard Set from Fox Home Video. The greatest action film of all time just screamed for the Blu treatment. Instead all they did was repackage the extras from their many previous DVD double and triple dips – didn’t even up convert those to HD and then the kicker is Die Hard 1 and 2 are so grainy, with a harsh aspect ratio, that after 15 minutes I couldn’t stomach it and had to turn it off. To make matters worse they didn’t include the R – Rated version of Die Hard 4 in the set, just the theatrical release. And they have the gall to charge $139 for this janked up package.