How to gracefully transition my collection to Blu-Ray?

I've been obsessively curating my DVD collection since 2002. I never had much interest in HD. When I bought a new TV in 2015, I got a 720p LG model, going for the lowest resolution I could find since most of what I was watching was old TV shows shot on crappy video formats like the original versions of Doctor Who and MST3K. But then my DVD player crapped out on me last year and I finally got a replacement. Since Sony BluRay players are cheap these days, I got one of those. I borrowed a few BluRays from a friend to see if I could see the difference compared with my DVD copies. I can, particularly in dark night scenes and darkly lit interior scenes. (For reference, my test BluRays for this were The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ghostbusters (1984), and Sherlock Holmes (2009).)

Now, I'm torn as to how far down the upgrade rabbit hole I'm willing to risk going. I'm a completionist by nature but I know that it's impossible for me to upgrade my entire collection since a lot of it is stuff that never came out on BluRay, either because it was shot or edited on a much lower format or because they just decided not to. (Some shows are new enough that they could have easily gotten a BluRay release but didn't for whatever reason, like Burn Notice and Community.) And one of the things I love is organizing all of my DVDs on the shelf in alphabetical order and looking at them. Frustratingly, BluRay cases are so much smaller than DVD cases, so I'd have to either put up with some massive visual irregularities or else separate them into their own section.

I realize that this is a massive First World Problem, but how have you dealt with this situation? Any tips on the aesthetics of it? Are there any particular criteria you use for which titles are worth upgrading? For older FX-heavy movies, is there a point where the higher resolution just starts to emphasize the flaws?

 

My advice, only re-buy the stuff you really love. If you haven't watched the DVD for five years, no need to buy it again.

Full disclosure, I do not follow my own advice. I have re-bought a lot of stuff that I probably didn't need to. But you only live once.

Is actually out on Blu-ray, just FYI.

 

Really? When did Community come out on BluRay?

 

I started out with a massive DVD collection (over 800) and then started slowly replacing my DVDs with Blu-Rays when I got my PS3. Now, the case size difference bugged the shit out of me, so I kept them on separate bookcases. As I was replacing my DVDs, I'd sell them to Hastings for credit and get even more Blu-rays. I've whittled down my collection to only two dozen or so DVDs, mostly DVDs of TV shows not available on Blu-Ray. I'm up to about 400 Blu-rays which I keep on a couple of bookcases, alphabetized (to my chagrin, there is ONE DVD-style case in there, because a Toy Story 2 Blu-ray I got as a gift came in a DVD case. I'm tempted to buy another Blu copy of the movie, keep the gift movie, stick it in the case and throw out the old case/new movie or give it away. I'm that OCD about it)

You ask how deep down the rabbit hole you should go? I bought a 55" LG OLED 4K tv and 4k player and am now in the process of converting my Blu-ray collection to 4k Blu-rays. Once you see some of your favorite movies in 4k, you'll never be able to go back to regular Blu-ray. If this is something you're considering doing, some movies I show to friends/family to convince them to go 4k are Star Trek Into Darkness, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Avengers: Infinity War

 

The fuck? Alphabetical order? DVDs should only be stored in chronological order philistines!

 

Fall of last year I think, maybe 2017 in the USA. <$60 on Amazon. What drives me nuts is I have all 6 seasons on DVD and the complete set is probably only slightly more than season 6 was.

I wouldn't upgrade too much because then you will need to upgrade to 4K 3D Super Duper HD and then upgrade again after that.

 

I'm very selective with what I buy on Blu-ray especially now that there is Blu-ray 4k discs and I now have a TV that can play 4k content. I just need a 4k player (probably a PS4 Pro so the PS4 I have can go to the bedroom).

Despite the call for the end of physical media, at least when the studios shut off their servers or revoke the license to a movie, I can still watch it when I want to.

Yeah, bit of a rant against streaming only purchases.

Anyhow just go with what you absolutely think would be worth the money to upgrade. Blu-ray quality is a definite improvement over DVD but the 4k costs and difference maybe not so much worth it, depending on the movie or television series.

 

Unless you absolutely must have the digital copies that come with a new blu-ray, go for used discs when you can, since you can often find them much cheaper than new retail price. Ebay, Amazon Marketplace, and local used video places are my friends.

Kor

 

Yeah, I saw that. That's annoying. Similarly, last time I was at Barnes & Noble, they had a shelf-friendly copy of the complete Peter Capaldi run on Doctor Who (Seasons 8-10). It cost about $50. On the same shelf, they also had Season 10 individually for $70. WTF?

I'll need to test out some more things but I'm starting to wonder if the big jump in quality is only just a Disney thing. I mean, Back to the Future still looks absolutely gorgeous on DVD and even some of my newer movies like Sherlock Holmes and Spider-Man: Homecoming look pretty good. On the other hand, some of the Disney Marvel stuff like Age of Ultron, Civil War, and Infinity War look pretty mediocre, though it often depends on the scenes. For example, in Infinity War on DVD, the bright daylight scenes in Wakanda look beautiful but the dark stuff inside the various spaceships is pretty dingy with very little color contrast. Makes me wonder if Disney is deliberately making their DVDs inferior to try to push more reluctant adopters over to BluRay. (They also refuse to put any bonus features on their DVDs, whereas Warner Bros. is still pretty generous and is pretty much the only studio still doing 2-disc DVD releases of their big tent pole films.) Next up, I think I'm going to try some non-Disney movies with lots of night scenes like Suicide Squad and Underworld.

I don't expect to ever go to 4K. I only have a 24" TV and don't really have room for anything bigger at present. Besides, I was reading something a while ago saying that 4K is pointless because a 4K TV contains more pixels than there are cones in the human eye.

Thankfully, I do have several used stores in the area like Bookmans and Zia that I can use to more cheaply upgrade at least parts of my collection.

BTW, I've heard that the BluRay releases of The Dark Knight do this annoying thing where it changes aspect ratio every time it comes to a scene that was shot in IMAX. Is that true? Thankfully the DVD release doesn't do the same thing.

 

I guess it depends on your perspective. I love it when movies do that. There was something similar on one particular release of the second Transformers movie, and one release of Star Trek: Into Darkness. I specifically sought out those versions because it makes those scenes really pop out and come to life.

Kor

 

Some catalog titles I find it wasn’t worth buying the Blu-Ray, as the studio just basically presented an upscale standard definition image. When I think of “Amadeus”, “Christmas Vacation”, “The Santa Clause”, “The Santa Clause 2” “Aspen (mini-series)” the Blu-Ray looks as good as the DVD upscale to 1080p in my PS3. And the 2 Santa movies were really disappointing as the didn’t pop like the “Santa Clause 3” popped on Blu-Ray.

 

I really only upgraded to blu-ray on things I really like. I upgraded Lost a few years ago and just recently I upgraded Fringe. Eventually I'll upgrade Battlestar Galactica. I also did that with Firefly and Serenity. If 24 ever comes out on blu-ray I'll definitely upgrade that.

 

I can’t wait until I can just download them into my brain. Am going to clear out junk I don’t need like my birthday or anniversary and address etc.

 

Just to give you a heads up, but the PS4 Pro doesn't play 4K Blu-rays. The XBox One S and X both do, but I have an S and the 4K player is pretty shitty on it too. So, I went with an LG 4K Blu-ray player. They're pretty reasonable now and not super expensive. I think I may have paid $120 for it (also be sure to invest in some good 4K HDMI cables. I bought the Cinnamon cable from Best Buy and it does a good job )

 

To be honest, I love The Dark Knight so much that I get so engaged in it that I don't even notice the aspect ratios changing.

 

I thought the shifting aspect ratios thing sounded like a bad idea when I first heard about it, but like you, I didn't find the changes distracting or even particularly noticeable when I watched either The Dark Knight or Star Trek into Darkness.

Apparently, the Aquaman Blu-ray is going to do the same thing. And given the scale of some of the imagery in that film, I'm happy it will have the additional breathing room on my screen.

 

I have learned from buying the VHS and then the DVDs, so now I am only buying Blu-ray of whatever I enjoy watching not just gathering dust on a shelf. My Blu-ray collection should be about a quarter of the VHS/DVD size.

 

I haven't seen much in-person 4K demonstration or anything, but I think it's mostly a sham. As this random blogger says (because I've looked, and failed to find, much professional writing/arguing in favor of 4K), standard 1080p blu ray pretty much maxes out the detail 35mm film can capture. Take a look at this enlarged portion of a frame from Dunkirk:



Standard blu on the left, 4K blu on the right:


Okay, there may be a tiny difference in quality, but again, this is an enlargement of a frame, meaning the difference is pretty miniscule indeed, and, when one adds in the confusion of motion, are you really going to be able to tell which is which? And, more to the point, is the image on the right worth $10-15 more per movie than the one on the left?

Now, that's a scan of a 35mm frame, and digital photography can of course take higher-resolution footage natively, but if 35mm/1080p was good enough for decades of theatrical projection, I tend to think it's good enough for the vast majority of home consumers. My 1080p projector shoots a razor-sharp image onto a screen seven feet wide and four feet high, which certainly feels like a theatrical experience from the distance of my couch, some 14 feet away.

(I do admit, however, that while DVDs are certainly watchable when upscaled via blu-ray players, especially in cases where HD versions aren't available, I've come to regard DVD cases as fundamentally unsightly and best kept hidden away. Whoever decided blu ray cases, despite delivering genuinely superior picture, should be smaller than DVD ones, made one of the best marketing calls of the millennium, IMHO.)

 

A complete 24 Blu-ray box set is available from Japan for Region A but it's not cheap. Going by what was posted on another site, seasons 1 through Redemption are sourced from the Japan HDTV broadcasts. Seasons 7 through Legacy are the equivalent of the US releases.

 

My dad bought me a 40" 1080p HDTV. It's beautiful, but 99% of my collection is on DVD. Fortunately, to me it still looks great. My parents have a 4K UHD TV, and the DVDs look really good on it, too, because you have to sit about 7 feet away, and at that distance, we can't tell a whole lot of difference, especially once the movie starts.

So I recommend not sweating it. By the ones you would LOVE to see in HD, and leave the rest as they are. I mean, hell, the first time I saw Star Trek VI was when a friend brought over a tape on which he had managed to record the film in SLP mode. It's true we've been spoiled by DVD, and Blu-ray, and now 4K UHD, but if there are no major issues with the quality of the video, then it doesn't really matter. Still, I understand wanting to have the best quality you can have, but yeah, probably pick out the ones you would love to see in HD, and make that happen.