Jeez, am I gonna HAVE to buy a Blu-ray disc finally?!

I have not been a big supporter of Blu-ray, pretty much since it's inception. Yes, the picture is incredible, amazing, and vibrant. The only problem is most movies I've seen on Blu-ray look like they were shot on a digital home video camera. In other words the frame rate looks like 30 as opposed to 24, causing the picture to loose that slight softness that makes movies what they've always been; not so immediate looking and almost of a different world or reality. I've also not liked the idea of buying my entire DVD collection, which took more than a considerable amount of time and effort, once again! I've always maintained that I want to skip over Blu-ray and hold out for downloading.

One advance that's been under my nose for some time had me realize that I don't have to wait for the technology to catch up to my desires. That solution is here right now!

I recently (and finally) experimented with a software alternative called Mac The Ripper. Someone I worked with a couple of years ago introduced me to this wonder, which allows you to rip studio DVDs and store them on your computer or external hard drive. I didn't really take it seriously until about a month ago when I decided to check it out....and was very, VERY impressed!!! Why didn't I do this before?!

Here's the process; you put a DVD into your computer or laptop, tell Mac The Ripper how you want to import the information on the disc, then hit download. All of the contents on the disc, which includes ALL the menus and supplemental features(!), will transfer to your hard drive. Then pop the disc and you're done. The thing that I found amazing about those files I now had on my computer is that I could still navigate through everything as though I had the actual disc in a player! No degrading or compression lose. Just the actual files from the disc, 1 to 1. Size: about 8 GB. Basically one 400 GB drive could hold my entire collection!

This is the reality that I've been dreaming about recently. No more discs, no more horribly designed boxes, no more storage issues! Just a thumbnail icon of the DVD box art that you click on and BOOM, you're movie or special feature begins. And by horrible designed boxes I mean the ones with the clear plastic tray where you can't even remove the disc without practically breaking it, all because the studios and manufacturers don't want the disc to become dislodged during shipping. HOW ABOUT BECOMING DISLODGED DURING CONSUMER USE, YOU FUCK!!! Then there are the giant unweilding box sets that are so hard to maneuver while trying to open and remove discs, that you end up not bothering in the first place after a while because it's just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with! As many of you know, I actually broke one of the discs from the "Three" and "Four Musketeers" double disc set because of those damned plastic trays. Ended up buying another one and keeping the discs in separate slimline cases. Two of my favorite movies of all time that I waited years to come out as a special edition, so you can imagine the Tyrannosaurus Rex yell I let out when that happened!

Big screen, home theater quality...this has been my biggest gripe about downloading movies as it exists now. Sure you can get the feature through online stores such as iTunes or stream them through Netflix. The quality is really only good enough for your computer, iPod, and iPhone. I'm not bashing iTunes or Netflix at all because as you know I'm a BIG proponent. This is just the standard quality they're outputing at the moment. But what if you want to view the entire contents of something like Deckard's briefcase, the "Blade Runner" complete DVD set, in full quality on at least a regular 16x9 television? Nope, you're out of luck.

With Mac The Ripper it's COMPLETELY possible!

Coming back to the discussion of Blu-ray, probably the best use of the format is with movies like "Toy Story" and "Up" where you can absolutely benefit from the awesome picture quality without losing the feel of the film.

Now, on to the reason why I titled this post the way I did.

It's just been announced that the "Back To The Future" Trilogy will be released on Blu-ray on October 26, 2010, the exact date Marty McFly went back in time 25 years ago. Now THAT'S being very savvy about the movie and it's fans!

Click on the box art for a larger image and check out the full specs here at BTTF.net for details as to why I may actually have to break down and buy this. There's just TOO MUCH stuff produced for this set that I really don't want to miss!! I knows the whole purpose of adding these Blu-ray only extras is to woo consumers over to the dark side. I'm still not biting, but this truly might need to be an exception. Particularly since "BTTF" is my favorite movie of all time! Now if they make a DVD / Blue-ray combo-pack with all of these extras included, I'm 'IN' even more so.

On a final note, Samsung actually said in a article from 2008 that Blu-ray will only have a five year life span because at that point the next format will be ready.....downloading! Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!!