I rotate between being a physical media snob and a guy who wants to grab everything, no matter how cheap. There are a number of boutique Blu-ray labels (Criterion, Arrow, etc.) that put out these really nice discs. They restore the audio/video, load them with extras including making-of featurettes, audio commentaries, and more, and put them in attractive-looking boxes and include lovely little booklets to go with them.
They are awesome. They are also expensive. I love them, but I ain’t exactly rich.
Then there are companies who put out lots of cheap sets. They don’t do any type of restoration to the video, they come in cheap plastic, and they include very few extras. Often they’ll bundle multiple movies into a single set.
The snob in me prefers the fancy sets, but my budget often tells me to just buy the cheap stuff. It depends on the day on which part of me I listen to.
Truth be told I don’t care that much about audio/video presentation. I mean there are limits, I don’t like grainy images projected with poor lighting, etc. I want things to look as good as they can, but at the end of the day, I’m not upset if I’m watching something on the lower end of the spectrum instead of ultra-high-quality 4K productions.
I don’t love the way those mult-movie sets look on my shelf, but for the right price, I’ll get down with it.
That’s a long-winded introduction to this set featuring five cinematic adaptations of British literature/drama. It is a nice, if rather bare-boned set. This is actually the kind of thing this sort of set is good for. On their own, I don’t know that I would purchase any of these movies. They are mostly made-for-TV type deals, with not incredible production volumes. But they are still good movies and bundled up like this makes it a good purchase.
Anyway, you can read my review of it here.
themidnightcafe.org 