With some video on demand services still in their infancy and not everyone having the luxury of fast broadband, you'd be forgiven for wondering about the future of the optical disc format.
But Blu-Ray is anything but going away. A reported 1.5 million copies of Avatar were reportedly sold on Blu-Ray, while in the US there were reports of retail shortages.
If there's one reason to invest money into a Blu-Ray collection it's the box set. The latest major Blu-Ray release will be the arrival of the Alien Anthology on November 10, the first time the sci-fi movies have been seen on the format.
Publicity representative Jordan Bradley calls it the "biggest undertaking for Blu-Ray that 20th Century Fox has ever done". The collection includes 60 hours of special features and 12,000 images over six discs.
For movie buffs, the Alien series is a good example of the sheer amount of extras that can be crammed onto the larger capacity Blu-Ray discs. Alien aficionados will recognise many of the behind the scenes featurettes and commentaries, but there is also four hours of extras material. Standouts include screen test footage of Sigourney Weaver, a behind the scenes documentary about Alien 3. Disc six also contains parodies.
In an effort to play up the extras capabilities of the Blu-Ray format, the Alien Anthology comes with a new method for navigating all this extra material. A sidebar menu can be turned on, which highlights extra features available for any particular scene you're watching. This includes commentaries, behind the scenes featurettes and text trivia. If you want, it's possible to watch the movie with just Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack.
Expect the Blu-Ray marketing machine to step into even higher gear with the arrival of Avatar. Though not in 3D, an "extended" edition will arrive in November.
Meanwhile, sci-fi fans await more news of the Alien "prequel" movie in the works.
