2023’s best Blu-ray and 4K UHD box sets: John Wick, Star Trek: Picard, Jurassic World, and more
Also collector's editions of Titanic and JFK, plus genre collections from Warner Bros. and Paramount
Aux Features Star Trek
Physical media may be devalued by some in our streaming-dominated world, but you’d be surprised how many great titles are only available on disc. Also, some titles can be so much more rewarding on DVD, Blu-ray, or 4K UHD, especially when they’re loaded with special packaging and bonus features. 2023 saw the release of some impressive box sets, from genre collections by Warner Bros. and Paramount to complete sets of movie franchises such as John Wick, Jurassic World, Fast & Furious, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy. There were also complete TV collections of fan favorites such as Westworld, The Walking Dead, and Star Trek: Picard. Plus, special collector’s and anniversary editions of Titanic and JFK remind us that packaged media offers something extra—something tangible—that streaming never will.
29 Comments
I was under the impression that Jacksons AI upscaling company had boofed the Cameron 4k releases hard, specifically including Titanic.While I didn’t watch the Titanic clips, the long comparisons I saw of True Lies was enough to break my heart.
Hot take: I think physical media is great. I own plenty of physical media. But I’m really not a fan of the fearmongering that so many Champions of Physical Media employ to make the argument for physical media. Like so many others, I started to get back into buying physical media once I saw the trend of streamers take down shows and movies once billed as their permanent home. ISP data caps were a big motivator for me too. I even had a movie vanish from my iTunes library because some licensing agreement expired. And after a couple years of collecting, I remember why I stopped in the first place. I hate seeing my living space get swallowed up by plastic cases and furniture to display them. It’s the same problem I have with books, except movies/TV shows tend to be a lot lighter. There’s no reason for me to believe I’m going to stop collecting, so my brain freaks out when it thinks about how much space I will one day need to store all of my “stuff.”It ultimately comes down to my fear that one day, maybe, a movie I liked 20 years ago will be complete unavailable digitally on the random day I want to rewatch it, so I better buy it! And now I’ve gone from only buying shows and movies that I love deeply and rewatch regularly to anything I mildly enjoy that might be in danger of being unavailable one day. And soon my collection, which of course I display because look at all the hard work some artist put into designing the box art, gets filled up with a lot of mid entertainment, so I have to buy authentic “cinema” to signal that I’m a Killa of true taste. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and I can’t see the bottom. And I can’t get rid of anything because I previously got rid of several DVDs and Blu-Rays for shows and movies that have since become unavailable. And even though I rip everything to my Plex server, I don’t have off-site back-up’s or a RAID config, so if something catastrophic were to happen to my hard drive, my discs are the back-up. So I can’t get rid of them!This capitalist hellscape we’re living in is awful. I wish we were just honest about physical media being the best workaround for consumers, not a true “solution,” and certainly not the best option, which would be to break up the media conglomerates. Consumers are not responsible for film and media preservation. We as a society are, and there are far better ways to preserve media than guilting people into buying a less convenient media storage format.
Agreed, all the way around.
In contrast to what I see in comment sections and Internet forums, the people I know in real life have, begrudgingly or enthusiastically, pivoted away from physical media. The only person I know who still insists on maintaining a massive DVD collection is now complaining that she can no longer play some of her older ones.TL;DR nothing lasts forever.
So you don’t agree with the “Fearmongering”, but you 100% agree with the reasons why people fearmonger in the first place?
Correct.
You’re missing the most important property of a physical media library: the ability to spot a Hextable.Hextable (n): the record you find in someone else’s collection which instantly tells you you could never go out with them.~Douglas Adams, “The Meaning Of Life”
The Meaning Of *Liff*. Damn phone autocorrect.
I wasn’t trying to list all of the properties of a physical media library, but I find that social media profiles are great places to find Hextables.
I’m doing the Plex route while minimizing the space my physical collection takes up. No more big special editions or collections for me unless they take up less space than individual releases. I’m already committed to steelbooks for some franchises (MCU, Star Wars, DCEU, Mission Impossible, Fast&Furious, Pixar) but I just don’t have the space for those elaborate editions with helmets/statues and such anymore. It’s saved me a lot of money as well. All my remaining dvds are going into a dvd storage binder that’ll keep their inserts but toss their cases. As for the fear mongering… I did go through old DVDs and find a few with disc rot but those are ones I purchased second hand and old anime releases from back when ADV and Manga Entertainment were the only real sources. Luckily I’ve replaced most of them with Blu-ray releases which supposedly will last longer (RIP Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran).
When I say “fearmongering,” I’m talking about the implication that the media industry, specifically streaming, is so dystopian, and so corrupted that if you don’t own a physical copy of a piece of media, you may never see that piece of entertainment ever again. So not only does that imply that discs don’t rot and will last forever, it also – IMHO – encourages mindless consumerism. I can’t be the only person who has started buying copies of shows & movies that I ordinarily wouldn’t have, but now am paranoid that I might want to rewatch it in five years and maybe won’t be able to.Like I said before, I like physical media, and I’ve happily bought lots of discs. I’m not anti-physical media by any means. I’ve just seen some of the most ardent proponents of physical media argue that it’s the solution, and I think it’s a band-aid at best. There’s a real danger of companies discontinuing physical media releases on the horizon, and I don’t think AV diehards accept that the vast majority of consumers would rather keep paying for cheap subscription services than pay more for a less convenient format. Hell, plenty of consumers don’t even own a way to play physical media anymore. The sun is setting on discs.Random tangent: the other day I watch a YouTube video titled something along the lines of “Don’t throw out these DVDs!” and the intro was basically saying if you own any of these 10 movies on DVDs, hold on to them because there’s no other way to watch them. And then half the list were movies that, by the YouTuber’s own admission, were absolutely available on digital somehow.
Things becoming unavailable anywhere except in out-of-print physical media is a real thing today. I am a fan of the late A.S. Byatt, who died last November. The 1995 movie Angels & Insects, based on a novella of hers, is absent from steaming services and even the DVD isn’t for sale new. I wanted to see it and had to splurge $30 in a hotly-bid auction on eBay for it.
I know it’s a real thing, and it sucks when that happens. What I’m saying is that IMO it shouldn’t motivate consumers to buy shows and movies because they might become unavailable digitally in the future. This slideshow’s entry for Westworld is an example of the fear mongering I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Westworld, then you may be tempted to pick up the Blu-Ray box set before it becomes unavailable digitally again and the Blu-Rays go out of print. But if you’re like most viewers, you’re going to feel buyer’s remorse by the time you finish season 2.This slideshow also conveniently fails to mention that yes, the show was yanked off Max (which FWIW wasn’t even its original home) but we already know that it’s coming to Roku and Tubi:https://deadline.com/2023/01/westworld-gets-new-home-as-warner-bros-discovery-strikes-roku-tubi-fast-channel-deals-1235245347/amp/
Picking up the Picard box soon. S01&02 are terrible, but having all three still seems sensible.
I’m still waiting for BBC Home Video to put all of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who run into a single blu-ray box (just a box, any box. It doesn’t even have to be a fancy box like Smith and Capaldi got. It just has to be a single BR box I can hold in one hand). It’s been over a year, BBC. Let’s f-n do this!I kove physical media- sorting it, curating it,and haveing total access. But I don’t love trying to store it, and I hate trying to move it. Ah, well, first-world problems.
“S01&02 are terrible, but having all three still seems sensible.”*Thor squinting at Banner.gif*
Does it, though?…
And, follow-up question: why?…
🙂
Go with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Picard-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B0C87DFHNY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=M7IVQ7TAWUG4&keywords=star+trek+picard+legacy+collection+blu+ray&qid=1704073730&sprefix=picard+legacy+collection%2Caps%2C267&sr=8-1It ain’t cheap, but here’s what you get. All 3 seasons of Picard. All 7 seasons of TNG. The 4 TNG movies on blu-ray. A book of Picard quotes, a set of Federation playing cards and some Chateau Picard coasters
I know what you’re saying, but i have TNG on blu (replacing the DVD set) and the movies on blu and blu+4k (also replacing DVDs).Just gonna get the Picard seasons this time around.
Oh yeah, if you have the rest on BR, then yeah, it makes sense to just get the Picard sets on it.
The problem with the Jurassic World collection is that you end up having the Jurassic World movies. Just get the original Jurassic Park and you’re set with really the only good movie in the franchise.
Yeah, and even the original Jurassic Park isn’t even all that good!
Right!?!I know JP is notable for it’s use of CG, but 80+% of the dino FX are still practical.
Picard was total dogshit.That said, I still want to buy the TNG blu rays if only because of the wealth of deleted scenes which still never managed to wind up on Youtube or anywhere else to my continued frustration.
Picard had its moments. Unfortunately most of those moments didn’t actually involve Picard.
The guy was totally unlikable most of the time in his own show.
It had no moments. But I agree with your second point.
Jesus, what a bland, super fucking BORING set of choices in a field rife with INCREDIBLE recent releases packed with archival strangeness and handmade weirdness.
The Ormond Family box set pisses all over these.
The problem with these franchise collections is that you know a lot of them will get sequels and ruin the whole box set. I mean, Fast X specifically ended as a cliffhanger. The same with Mission Impossible, which has already done the ‘collection without space for the next film’ twice.
Best Buy had a nice John Wick 1-3 collection that looked like some of the books in the library from the start of the third film. I refused to buy it because John Wick 4 was a known upcoming release. The same with this collection and John Wick 5/The Ballerina and The Continental show.
Similarly, or maybe as opposed to, James Bond still has yet to see a full 25 movie box (let alone a 27 movie box).
Oddly enough, back when there was only 23 ‘official’ Bond films, the ‘complete’ collection box did include a spot for Spectre’s blu ray when it came out. I think they just started rereleasing that same box with Spectre added rather than changing the set to include No Time To Die.
I have the 50th anniv set, with the empty slot for Skyfall, and the final 2 Craig films as singletons (+ NSNA and CR’67, naturally).The Star Trek films come in a dozen different combo boxes, but James Bond still doesn’t come pkg’d in one box yet.