At a time when many are debating whether HD-DVD / Bluray will achieve mass-market penetration or whether physical formats’ days are numbered, especially in an age where people routinely choose to download mp3s over their physical, better quality cd equivalent, the studios have invested heavily in this new premium packaging - perhaps in an attempt to add a ‘perceived value’ to DVD releases and these are already becoming very collectable, fetching inflated prices on Ebay for out of stock / deleted releases.
For us of a certain vintage (38 if you must ask) who witnessed the tail end of vinyl, and the fledgling days of home cinema formats like betamax, vhs and laserdisc - all formats which required a certain degree of routine and care to use and store safely, physical formats are entrenched in us - it’s what we are used to; the satisfaction of hearing the plop of a new arrival on the hall floor; opening the package with that oh so important tear strip (I HATE it when they don’t have one!); checking the artwork; opening the case and logging the dvd in profiler. Then the routine of firing up the a/v amp, the plasma and the dvd player, opening the tray, inserting the disc, carefully and waiting for it to load. Bliss! I’m even sad enough to enjoy a decent ‘menu.
So, steel books then: I adore them. They are so tactile, and the studios cannot be lazy in selecting their artwork for the case - it HAS to be clean, crisp and they tend to go for the original poster artwork or a variant thereof. They feel solid and expensive to hold and just, well valuable.
I only have a couple in my collection at present (Sin City Recut & the 4-disc Flags of Our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima set) but have Kingdom of Heaven 4-discer on the way along with The Day The Earth Stood Still (a bargain £4.98 at Amazon.co.uk). I also have my eye on a nice copy of Ridley Scott’s latest film American Gangster (a controlled, languid film with excellent performances from Washington & Crowe and a more ’street’ version of Scott’s trademark cinematography).
I’ve just realised whilst writing this that I’ve turned into my Dad - clinging onto, nay extolling the virtues of crusty old formats! My son, on the other hand, puts his discs into a multi-insert disc wallet and stuffs the cases into a cupboard.
So, if I do hang onto my physical formats, shiny steel books and tins - am I going to end up like one of these old curmudgeons who still had a quad tape player in their car well into the 1980’s and rattled on about it’s fidelity and it’s superiority over cassettes to everyone who would listen?
See Ono’s blog here: Downloading teh films for his article which inspired mine. 
I love Steelbooks too — the more the merrier! I have about 12 or so now, I believe, and was recently very disappointed when I order the Silence of the Lambs Definitive Edition and it turned up in a plain old Amaray (so disappointed, in fact, that I returned it and went off and bought the Ultimate Edition instead. No Steelbook, but it has a nicer-than-Amaray boxy thing).
I’m wary of hard formats dying out, and I’m only 21. I think they appeal not only to collectors (of which you do find examples among young people) but also to general people who like to know they have something. I mean, there’re few technological things worse than a harddrive or piece of equipment dying and everything stored on it being lost.
Obviously the music industry is an example of how download sales can become vital. But there’s still no sign of CDs disappearing; and take, for example, Radiohead’s latest, where the initial digital version still ‘had’ to be supplemented by a proper CD release later on. If that’s still the case with music — always, and still, so much easier & convenient to download than film — then I can’t see the industry taking a truly noteworthy (as in, to the total exclusion of hard formats) shift in that direction any time soon.
badblokebob
February 13th, 2008
Some great points badblokebob - thx for commenting.
Good to see the point of view of someone a bit (ok a fair bit) younger, and your point re CD’s still selling is valid. Perhaps you are correct that we will end up with both physical and download formats for movies. I still like the idea of a NAS with raid holding all my media but I wouldn’t want to swap DVDs for a lower quality download variant.
gizmo
February 13th, 2008
Well, despite the amazon page for Definitive Edition of The Day The Earth Stood Still clearly showing a steelbook in all it’s glory - guess what popped through the letterbox to my dismay - a sodding amaray in a cardboard sleeve! Bah!
gizmo
February 14th, 2008
I’m a big fan of the alternative packaging for DVDs and have been known to obsess over even the small things - like finding a slipcase version of Sideways where the cardboard didn’t look like it had been to war, or hunting down the digipack version of The Usual Suspects that disappeared off the face of the earth to the point where I thought I had dreamt it.
In fact, I still really like a good digipack despite many dispelling their virtues due to a lack of robustness in the cardboard which forms them. Some of the favourites in my collection are digipacks, or variants thereof: R1 Fight Club 2-disc, R1 Memento LE, R1 Eternal Sunshine LE, R3 Danny The Dog SE etc. Further still are the cardboard outer-cases that often feature alternative designs, like the Batman Begins LE with the holographic image, of the rather delicious HMV exclusive version of Brick.
But it’s on steel books where I falter, having never taken to them in the same way - maybe it’s because I don’t own any, but I just don’t get the same vibe off them. That’s not to say I wouldn’t prefer them over a standard amaray though, and while eBay continues to sideline the need for Indiana Jones inspired exploration for searching out even the hardest to locate editions, I’m sure my collection will acquire a few steelbooks before we ditch solid media altogether and have video data transmitted directly into our brains.
gproject
February 14th, 2008
I agree that digipacks can be very nicely done - the R2 Pixar box is - as you’d expect from Pixar - superb, as is the Batman Begins you’ve mentioned.
It also remains to be seen how robust steelbooks are compared to tins and cardboard - my T2 tin, sitting on the shelf minding it’s on business, has some rust spots on it (a-ha - that’s how to defeat the T1000 - wait for it to rust!) , and the edges of some carefully cared for digipacks are a little rubbed. The missus found it rather strange when I recoloured the corners of a slightly tattered Alien boxset which someone didn’t want (weird eh?) and passed on to me!
The other issue with steelbooks is that they probably cannot be placed back to back for fear of them rubbing the designs of each other when removed from the shelf.
PS Some rather good films in that list.
gizmo
February 14th, 2008