Yeah, the biggest downside to Blu-Ray is you often need to check out and see if the picture quality is any good before you buy.
This is where I check:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/ (just search the general reviews)
And a good user-ranked tier system of highest to lowest quality titles:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/blu-ray-software-general-discussion/8749-tier-system-blu-ray.html
(Sometimes the system can be a bit out of date since newer movies will almost always look better than older movies but the older movies were ranked at the time using the same system.)
(Not to mention reviewers tend to be a little bit more generous with older titles simply because it is hard for them to look as good as a modern day digital movie like Wall-E or something.)
I'm not saying it should be this complicated, but you run into the exact same problems on DVD once you become a picture quality nut. Some DVD's look just plain awful. Horrible source print, little to no removal of scratches and other defects, among other things.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
