Here’s a look at the opening packaging for the set (the image links to Criterion’s pre-order page)…

Very nice indeed!

Now then… you may have seen this when we shared the link on all our social media, and when we posted the text for free on The Digital Bits Patreon page on Saturday (we didn’t post it here on The Bits website then because we were having technical issues). But on Saturday, the Blu-ray Disc format celebrated its 20th anniversary!

It was on June 20, 2006 that the Sony-backed format first reached consumers with seven titles from Sony, MGM, and Lionsgate (for the record, they were 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, xXx, Underworld: Evolution, and The Terminator). And the first actual Blu-ray player—Samsung’s BD-P1000 (SRP $999) arrived in stores the day before.

We wrote in extensive detail about all of this here at The Bits back in 2016, on the occasion of the format’s 10th anniversary—you can find our coverage of that here. It’s worth reading, because I included a ton of detail about the launch of the format and the final days of the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war.

I have another story about how that format war ended—and specifically the final month of the format war—which I’ll share soon on our Patreon page for subscribers. (That too is pretty interesting.)

Now, I could wax philosophic on the meaning of the anniversary, but instead what I want to do here is to give you a sense of what exactly was happening on The Digital Bits website at this point back in 2006. There’s no better way to give you all a sense of the context for the Blu-ray format’s launch than to read what we were reporting at the time.

So take a trip in the Wayback Machine with us, as I share that with you now!

Here of course is what The Bits logo looked like twenty years ago…

And now I’m going to give you three days’ worth of my original My Two Cents posts, starting with 6/19/06, the day before launch…

Now here’s the Blu-ray Day One—6/20/06—which we spent getting our hands on the player and discs, and kicking the tires on the format (read the Early Update first, then the Late Update)…

So that’s a slice of what was going on that day in release news.

And finally, here are my in-depth comments the next day—6/21/06—after spending launch day watching discs and playing with the hardware…

It’s easy to forget that this was also the first real day of the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray format war. And as you can see if you read my comments, I wasn’t terribly impressed with either format:

“What all of this goes to prove, of course, is just what I've been saying all along: These formats are being rushed to market before they're ready. And it also proves that the best option for the vast majority of you out there is just to save your money. Don't even bother with Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD for at least a year, because there are significant bugs to be worked out yet. Wait until better hardware and software is available at a better price, and the early adopter types have dealt with the problems and getting the manufacturers and studios to fix them. Anyway, I'll have more to say about Blu-ray Disc and the Samsung player in the next few days, as I spend a little more time with it. But so far, I'm less than impressed.”

Of course, those of you who were there will know that we eventually picked a side: All of the evidence of our reporting, experience, and direct contact with those actually working with both formats told us that Blu-ray was not only superior technically, it was ultimately going to win. HD-DVD fans weren’t happy about that, but we’ve always called the truth as we see it on The Bits, popularity be damned.

And indeed, we told the industry this as well. (That’s the story I’ll save for Patreon soon.) But in early December of 2007, Warner Bros. announced that it would use the holiday sales numbers of both formats to determine which single format it would ultimately support, and on January 4th, 2008—on the eve of that year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas—Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer and Home Entertainment President Kevin Tsujihara announced that, going forward, the studio would support Blu-ray only.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Again... if you want to read a more detailed report by yours truly on that history, you can find much of it here at The Bits in my column back in 2016:

The Blu-ray Disc Format Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

As I said, there’s a LOT there, and I think many of you will find it worth checking out, especially if you’re new to The Digital Bits.

But here we are, a decade later. Blu-ray is still going strong, and 4K Ultra HD is holding its own—in fact, more 4K discs are being released today than ever before—even as the overall health of the physical media industry seems to grow more economically tenuous. Discs are a niche product now—streaming dominates.

But we’ll keep on fighting for discs and physical media as long as you want us to. And maybe we’ll all still be here in 2036, when Blu-ray celebrates its 30th anniversary!

In the meantime... keep spinning those discs!

- Bill Hunt

(You can follow Bill on social media on Twitter/X, BlueSky, and Facebook, and also here on Patreon)