I’ll have to send you the link to this guy I watch! This exact subject is his bread and butter! Lemme just pull up his name…. ….you’re never gonna believe this
I feel like vinyl is an interesting case study into ownership. There's no DRM, no region locks, you don't need an account or internet. It's just pure sound physically embedded into a plastic disk. Something about that scratches an itch that people constantly frustrated with not being able to find a song or movie have because the license changed and netflix or hulu doesn't own the rights anymore. The current digital ownership landscape is one company failing away from having a ton of lost media. And you now need 6 different streaming accounts to ensure you'll be able to watch whatever movie or show just came out. Physical media, expecially games, is such a great thing that I really miss. And special media with behind the scenes and storyboard art just adds an extra layer to that. When was the last time anyone saw a behind the scenes for a movie that *wasn't* from a disk?
I collect my favorite graphic novels and now, within the last year or two, I've started acticely collecting my favorite movies (I think I'm at 65 movies). Places like second-hand stores like Half-Price Books are a gold mine for cheap Blu-rays, and now I recently started purchasing from the Criterion Collection. As of right now, my Criterion library consists of 12 films I greatly enjoy. I have 4K copies of The Seventh Seal, Night of the Living Dead, Blood Simple, The Princess Bride, and Citizen Kane, and Blu-ray copies of The Breakfast Club, On the Waterfront, The Silence of the Lambs, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Killing, Paths of Glory, and last but certainly not least, Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb. I was windering what other boutique labels are out there, and this video was a very useful guide, so thank you! The only media I love that I don't collect are video games. Unfortunately, aside from the physical aspect of it, gamers lost that war for ownership well before most people even recognized there was a battle to be fought. The disc is just the middle man, the key to access the digital license which can still be taken from you any time they want. They don't even put full games on the disc anymore, so even if they couldn't take it from us, buying "physical games" is still just buying the digital product with extra steps. The only bemefit to physical games anymore is the ability to let people borrow them (for now) and to resell them for what little you'll get for them in return (but I don't buy anything I couldn't see myself coming back to more than once). Sadly, I think only government action to protect peoples' digital property rights might be the only way we can make physical games worthwhile again.
If there's a person who likes to rewatch a particular set of movies/TV shows, then I see no reason not to own a physical copy of it. It might work out cheaper than multiple subscriptions. Players and discs are now super cheap. It's only expensive when it comes to certain boutique releases or anything 4K related.
The other thing to mention when you buy from someone like Vinegar Syndrome, you’re not only supporting that company - but your supporting film conservation. As VS tracks down and saves films that have been lost, and preserves them for future generations.
If Pharaohs were still around today I’m sure they would be buried with some steel books in their tombs. If you’re going to watch a movie forever in the afterlife, wouldn’t you want it to be in the best quality available?
dude, it was way too short. i wanted more! missed the videos, so glad we got a new one today. if the Godzilla's pink dvd cover is yours, I am eternally jealous. that aside, I was only familiar with Criterion previous to this video, so big thanks for showing us other curator-style companies. i will deff take a look into them.
Thank you friend! I wanted it longer but some of the bits either didn’t fit or not so funny jokes 😬 The Godzilly is mine, yes and it doesn’t fit anywhere lol
Honestly I've been buying a lot more boutique blu rays and 4K UHD releases recently. I mean Amazon will routinely sell 4Ks for like $9 a pop which is just soooo cheap for the quality you're getting on that disc.
I'm hearing new 4Ks are using AI to upscale things, and a lot of it is not good. Figures AI would ruin something like this. I wish we could get labels on this letting us know when a product was made or tampered with by AI.
Just ordered a Steelbook of Perfect Blue the other day. My physical media collection is small, couple movies and a few CDs, but I want to grow it with time. I really hate the direction media consumption is going in these days, I can't stand streaming services. If physical dies, and a DRM free digital download alternative isn't offered, it's piracy time for me.
I love physical media, and these boutique labels are awesome. While I don't think physical media is dying necessarily, I do think it's becoming more niche and collector-orientated like vinyl. One sort of boutique label you forgot to mention is the Warner Archive Collection - a subdivision of WB Home Entertainment that releases the more obscure older titles in the WB library. While they do tend to be pretty bare bones in terms of extras (if there's any extras at all, it usually just ported over from a previous release), but the visual presentation is always top-notch, and they give exposure to classic films that don't get as much attention. Hell they've even extended into animation, putting out classic Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons previously unavailable on DVD or Blu-Ray.
You showed both the arrow video and shout factory releases of Big Trouble in Little China. Both would be considered boutique. Heck the shout factory release has more special features!
Also in the DVD age when it comes to silent films and other public domain movies, you basically have a choice of crummy public domain copies from beat up prints although sometimes they do have decent stuff from on occasion (e.g. Alpha, the old GoodTimes, Digiview, Echo Bridge, Mill Creek, etc.) or you buy a boutique issue such as Kino, Image Entertainment (in the 1990s-2000s), Eureka in the UK, Criterion Collection, Flicker Alley, etc. where they go through film archives and obtain the most complete print possible and restore it. The best Lost World silent film disc is the Flicker Alley release, 2nd place being Image Entertainment. Kino and Image have the best D.W. Griffith releases. Flicker Alley has the best A Trip To The Moon release.
Region lock doesnt really exist for me, I dont know if the disc player I attach to my laptop is magic or whatever but all the dvds I have with all different region codes can play just fine for me.
Absolutely Amazing video! I've been starting to get more into more boutique releases, especially Discotek for anime. I also prefer my other niche formats like Laserdisc and UMD. The latter, i'm trying to bring more attention to. Have started fully sharing this video around places because people need to see it!
In Germany pretty much any horror film that isnt recent mainstream slop tends to only be carried by specializty labels only releasing special collectors edition for alot of money. My meatball machine bluray cost me 40€ and its just a regular bluray with a very thin interview booklet as only bonus. Only way to even buy the movie without import though. Those labels usually are also nly way to know the movie will be uncut, though it has exceptions
About the preview image: was there ever a "normal" Blu-Ray release of Bottle Rocket in North America? The Criterion Blu-Ray is the only one I'm aware of. I also have the old Sony DVD release of Bottle Rocket which I think was all there was on disk for a decade or so until Criterion finally got around to releasing their version of it, by which time Blu-Ray was already well-established as a format so obviously I chose to buy it on Blu-Ray over DVD. The old DVD is very bare-bones but one "extra" I value is that it has the unmatted version on the "Fullscreen" side of the flipper disk.
Honestly, though, while I did buy some boutique releases in the DVD era, in the Blu-Ray era, I just buy the movies/TV shows/anime I like and I don't really care about whether it's a boutique release or just a regular studio release. Of course, with studios scaling drastically back on the amount of films that they release themselves on to physical media and Disney in particular already beginning to outsource their physical media releases to other labels, eventually, if you want a Blu-Ray/4K of any movie, it'll be from a smaller label, and most of the anime I have, even dating back to the VHS and Laserdisc era, was already "boutique" in terms of being from a small publisher since they were the only ones distributing anime on physical media in North America in the first place aside from a handful of big movies that were licensed by major distributors like Disney and Sony.
Great video. I invested a lot in my sound system and noticed sound quality on netflix was terrible (at least last time i used it). It doesn't seem as bothersome on amazon, but last time i got netflix to finish last season of ozark- i had to watch it on my workout room setup. I think they artificially enhanced the bass and the scenes where ruth drives around angry listening to rap music were miserable to hear.
I loved that you showed Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace when discussing region locking because when I bought a Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace DVD it was region locked and I had to get a region free dvd player😭😭😭
The fact that there is a video on RU-vid that is only THREE WEEKS OLD explaining the difference between a bare bones DVD and a boutique label edition makes me feel so so so sooooooo old. I’ve known about Criterion, Anchor Bay, Shout!, Rhino, etc since like 2000.
Also not only do I not buy boutique blurays, I dont even buy blurays. I only do dvds. Maybe if I was rich Id bother collecting each movie in dvd, bluray and boutique bluray format/all formats available (but Im not)? Also, I dont really get it, do people buy from Criterion just because they want the special edition stuff? Cause I just buy all my dvds from Amazon.
Pretty much. Aside from restoration of older movies, boutique is mainly seen as a hobby imo. Some people are just really into the format. I enjoy both.
