Displaying items by tag: Geek Magazine

While all the talk about digital and the implosion of some of the most high-profile streamers purging content from their services faster than Stalin and his politburo, it’s worth spotlighting the fact that it was still a fairly impressive year for physical media whose death, much like Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated.

While there’s still too many A-list titles that are MIA that haven’t migrated to 4K Ultra HD yet and other films in desperate need of upgraded hi-def masters (including, self-promotion alert, Free Enterprise), several labels have stepped up their games in a big way ranging from Shout to Arrow and, most impressively, Kino-Lorber.

And, of course, as always, Warner Bros has brought it with their classic titles (although I still have to wonder where the hell North By Northwest is). So even though it’s almost March 2023, these are some of the stellar titles of 2022 that will undoubtedly stand the test of time.

If there’s only one vexing trend in the home entertainment market today, it’s how rare it is to find many re-issues featuring compelling new bonus material instead consistently relying on re-purposing old VAM. [Read on here...]

Recently, like many of you I made the plunge into 4K. As a veteran of the home video wars for the last several decades; I’ve gone from Fotonovels to Viewmasters to Selectavision to Beta to VHS to laserdisc to HD-DVD to Blu-ray and now UHD Blu-ray. There’s no question that UHD is the finest home video format to hit the consumer market yet, but with the ubiquitousness and ease of use that streaming offers, it’s no secret 4K is going to have an uphill climb. Let’s face it, even those of us who care about getting the very best quality out of our home A-V systems will occasionally fall prey to the demonic lure of Netflix, Hulu Plus or iTunes over discs we might have stashed away because of the simple convenience of pressing a button on the remote rather than searching through racks of thousands of Blu-ray’s or rifling through closets for a certain disc. [Read on here…]

While physical media may be dying the death of a thousand cuts in some people’s minds (and on studio bean counters spreadsheets) and there aren’t as many truly special editions as there once was with movies getting dropped on disc with a few chintzy self-aggrandizing EPKs, that doesn’t mean there still aren’t a few treats to still be discovered on Blu-ray.

2016 boasted an ever dwindling but no less exceptional myriad of fantastic new releases that I would deem must-owns. Here are some, but by no means all of the releases that will leave you anything but blue. [Read on here…]

With the week’s welcome release of Universal finally bringing Double Indemnity and Touch of Evil to Blu, two more classic must-own titles are finally making at long last to disc. But even with these essential titles finally coming to Blu-ray, there are still so many other wonderful titles that remain stubbornly M.I.A.

Here’s a few; some classics, some guilty pleasures, but all very most wanted. [Read on here…]

The Digital Bits’ Mark A. Altman weighs in on the Top 25 best Blu-ray and DVD releases of the last year… because 10 just wasn’t enough

As a longtime discophile (and, I’m not talking about Donna Summer), nothing upsets me more to hear about the so-called end of days for physical media. Cries that the streaming Visigoths are at the gates ready to crush our silver platters into dust in the process make me shudder.  [Read on here…]