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Pricing

New DVDs and blu-rays have skyrocketed in price. Between scarcity, tariffs, and boutique labels, it’s not unusual to see a new 4K disc of a middle of the road movie priced at $40. This is the same price I was paying when DVDs first came out. Older movies and series can go for obscene prices. Recently, I saw that Mill Creek’s release of Roseanne, which I paid $30 for just a few years ago, sells for around $130 these days. Mill Creek, for those who do not know, is a budget label, who would cram as many episodes on a disc as possible and then ship it in the cheapest container they could get away with. This set is now discontinued, so the market has adjusted for demand, which is out of control. 

Quality

A quick YouTube search will give you a richer explanation than I’m going to, but anyone who buys new DVDs and blu-rays can tell the quality is not what it once was. With the exception of the boutique labels, the care and craftsmanship that was put into designing a great movie experience is just not there. The menus are dull, special features are absent, and the quality of the discs leave a lot to be desired. Which leads me to what really pushed me over the edge.

Disc Rot/Discs Not Working

A few months ago, word leaked out that a factory in the mid 2000s, cut some corners and quite a few Warner Brothers titles were experiencing disc rot and were no longer working.

Manufacturing issues affect all industries, so this shouldn’t be too surprising, but this is just proof that just because you own something, doesn’t mean it’s going to last forever. Very few blu-ray players are being manufactured to this day, and even video game consoles are pushing to remove the drives as digital sales out pace physical sales. It’s not unreasonable to think that in just a decade, finding high quality players may be a challenge, (although if sales continue to trend upward, there is always a chance a major company may increase production). Right now, the only major brands who produce blu-ray players are Panasonic and Sony.

In the past year, I’ve experienced issues with a few blu-rays I’ve purchased. One was from a new set of King of Queens I purchased. I got to the second to last blu-ray, when I found it wouldn’t work. Thankfully, I was able to locate my receipt (from three years earlier) and I was able to get a replacement disc. However, had I not been able to locate my receipt, I would have been screwed. 

A month ago, I purchased the complete series of Weeds off of eBay. I got to the second disc for season two, which is in immaculate shape, but the episodes freeze and skip. Since this was a used set, I have no recourse, so I had to use other means to acquire copies of the remaining episodes of season two. Now, this complete set of Weeds, that I thought I would “own forever” feels less special since it doesn’t all work, and I have no idea what other problems I’ll encounter in the future.

Availability

This touches on my point earlier about the skyrocketing prices of older DVD sets, but there are actually a lot of series that never got full releases. For example, Cougar Town, is a show I recently began watching. It was never fully released on DVD, so there is no way to purchase it physically. A show like Burn Notice was released on DVD, but only in DVD quality. Like Cougar Town, Burn Notice was shot in HD, so it really sucks to see a great show reduced in quality just so you can own it on DVD, when other methods can be used to “own” the series.

Convenience

I own the complete series of Smallville. The first five seasons are on DVD, the last five on blu-ray, but I don’t bother putting my discs. Why? Because that means I have to get up and take out whatever video game is in my console. Why should I do this when I own Smallville on iTunes, and it’s also streaming on Hulu? Sure, you can call me lazy, and I’ll own that, but convenience does play a factor.

I’m not trying to convince anyone physical media is bad. I mean, I love it. I truly do, but I’m starting to think the trouble and investment just isn’t worth it for me. Not only is it taking up a lot of physical space, I also find myself investing in discs that I really don’t want, but I purchase because they are a good price. I also don’t have the means to buy quite a few series that I would like, nor can I keep up with the new releases, so it’s beginning to feel like a hobby that it’s time for me to step away from and focus my attention elsewhere. I’m thinking I should put more time into my Plex, since I can obtain shows in the highest quality and I don’t have to worry about discs not working. 

Cougartown

I’m sure down the road this show is going to get its own post, but wow… what an awful name for a TV show that is actually great! Created by Bill Lawrence, the mind behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Shrinking this Courtney Cox led sitcom is about a group of friends in Florida. Heck, if the name Friends wasn’t already taken, that would have been a great name for this show.

My knowledge of Cougartown was limited to the gushing that Abed did in the TV show Community. I didn’t think it was a show for me, since I’m not the biggest Courtney Cox fan, but I decided to give it a try after finishing the second season of Shrinking a few weeks ago. Once you get past those first five or six episodes, where every sitcom has to find its legs, the show really takes off and it’s very funny and a little touching at times, a lot like Bill Lawrence’s other shows.

Scream 7

I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the next Scream movie, after the disappointment that was Scream 6. With Kevin Williamson at the helm, I feel we will have a much tighter story and one that doesn’t try to do too much, like the last film. Well, the trailer was released and it looks REALLY GOOD. Better than I was expecting.

Cerakote Ceramic Headlight Restoration Kit

My wife and I drive older cars, and like all old cars, the headlights have oxidized over. The other morning, I was driving in the rain before the sun came up, and I could barely see the road so I made it a priority to upgrade our headlight bulbs and the headlights themselves. This led me to Cerakote’s headlight restoration kit, which guarantees clarity of the headlight for the life of the headlight and didn’t require any fancy tools to get the job done.

It took me about twenty minutes (and a little elbow grease), but the results were way better than I was expecting. Not bad for $17.

I Don’t Care by Blain Smith

Jon recommended this post recently, and I absolutely love it: I Don’t Care. While Blain’s post is tech related, and I do agree with his points about tech, I’m really embodying his sentiment with most things online these days, I don’t care.

When every day there is a new outrage, it’s hard to be happy. Our minds and bodies weren’t designed to be in a constant triggered state, and I’m sick of being angry and frustrated. As much as I love blogging, it seems that a lot of bloggers like to talk about how great blogging was in the old days, but don’t actually blog like we did back then. They don’t share fun stories or show us their hobbies. Instead, they use their blog as a platform to bitch and tells us how much they hate the internet/society/the world. I just can’t be part of this anymore. If someone stood in the library and said they hated books, you’d wonder why they were in the library.

There are plenty of places to go online to read Battlefield 6 reviews and impressions, so that’s not what this post is about. Instead, I wanted to talk a little about my history with Battlefield.

I wanted to play the original Battlefield and Battlefield Vietnam, but I didn’t have a PC that could run those games. Instead, my introduction to the series was 2005’s Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on the original Xbox. Next to Star Wars Battlefront 2, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was an eye-opening experience for online game play. The graphics were cutting edge and the sound design was unmatched at that time. Call of Duty was still making World War II games, and this felt so incredibly refreshing.

I was working at GameStop at the time of release, and after popping the Xbox 360 disc in to see the graphic upgrade, I immediately bought an Xbox 360 so I could play Battlefield 2: Modern Combat at the highest possible level.

Oddly enough, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat had no connection to Battlefield 2 on PC. In fact, there was no Battlefield: Modern Combat, they simply titled the game Battlefield 2: Modern Combat to try and loosely connect it to the PC game, despite it being an entirely different experience.

In 2008, Battlefield: Bad Company made its debut on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and with it came an almost light-hearted war story, and fully destructible environments. I was skeptical of the somewhat goofy storyline, but it really worked, and seeing buildings crumble when blown up was something to behold. It really separated the game from other shooters of the era.

Surprisingly, one of the Battlefield games I played the most was Battlefield 1943, released in 2009. This stripped down Xbox Live Arcade title (it was released on PS3 as well) featured only three classes and four maps. It was made with the Frostbite engine, so it featured destructible environments, but the game was basically Battlefield lite.

I appreciated the limited options, and found twenty-four person maps to be exciting to play. It was fun to start on ships or jumping into airplanes to make it to Wake Island or Guadalcanal, and me and a co-worker of mine spent countless hours late at night playing this discounted title. The servers were finally shut down in late 2023, but I would still boot it up every now and again, although finding a game became increasingly difficult over the years.

In 2010, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was released, and they upped both the ability to destroy objects and the storyline. The humor was dialed back a little and the gameplay intensity increased. Unfortunately for Battlefield, this was also the time that Call of Duty was in its prime, so it got less and less play from me as I played Call of Duty most of the time.

Most folks point to 2011-2015 as Battlefield’s prime. Battlefield 3 and 4 came onto the scene and dropped the Bad Company storyline and instead focused on intense gameplay on massive maps. Hardline was also released, a sort of police spinoff, which I really enjoyed. In fact, I played it just as much as Battlefield 3 and 4, which might surprise some folks. I enjoyed all of these games, and I definitely logged the hours, but this was also the same time Call of Duty Black Ops II was released and each year Call of Duty was upping their game. So, I split my time between the two franchises, but since most of my friends played Call of Duty, that’s what I ended up playing the most.

After Call of Duty Advanced Warfare in 2014, I was pretty much done with the franchise. I was burned out on the yearly releases and I disliked 2013’s Ghosts, and although I purchased Black Ops III, it just wasn’t the same. It also didn’t help that the group I played with had moved onto other things, and so I thought my time playing online first-person shooters had come to an end. But then Battlefield One was announced… a World War I Battlefield. Both Battlefield and Call of Duty originated as World War II shooters, but had since embraced modern warfare (and even into the future for Call of Duty), so this suddenly shift to the past tickled my history loving bone and I bought the game day one. It was one of the best video game purchases I made.

For the past nine years, I’ve played Battlefield 1 countless hours. It’s one of those games I can boot up at any given time and enjoy. I love the balance of the maps, the music, and the gun play. It’s nice to see things zeppelins being used in battle and as much as I enjoyed Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, 1943, and Bad Company, Battlefield 1 is my favorite Battlefield game.

This brings us to Battlefield 6. EA spent a lot of time and money to try and compete with Call of Duty, and sadly, this meant making Battlefield a bit more Call of Duty like. The gameplay is faster and deaths come quicker, and while it’s hard not to be impressed by the visuals on Battlefield 6, the gameplay seems to be just a little off. I wish EA would have worried less about stealing players from Call of Duty, and focused more on making a game that represents the best of what Battlefield has to offer.

With that being said, I’m still enjoying my time playing Battlefield 6, but I don’t pick it up exclusively, and I don’t quite get the same charge I got from older titles. In fact, when I get done playing, often, I feel like booting up Call of Duty, because the fast-twitch gameplay works better on smaller, tighter maps than the larger maps Battlefield has.

I think the one thing I wish the most is that DICE take this engine and make a Star Wars Battlefront III. I don’t see it happening, but I love the Battlefront series (basically Battlefield but in Star Wars) and I’d love to see how amazing it would look with modern console graphics.