This is the exact opposite of Netflix discs, which are actually quite clean, comparatively speaking.

You see, those red sleeves and the delectable range of DVDs they contain are relatively free of any funky viruses or deadly bacteria, this according to an interesting slow news day report out of KLTV 7 East Texas.

As part of the report, six Netflix discs and sleeves were sent to an infectious disease expert at the University of Texas for a good swabbing. After some time in the incubator, the petri dishes were removed, and the samples—thankfully for this Netflix user—were no more covered with bacteria than a sample would have been had the good doctor touched them with his bare hand:

"They were fairly clean," said [Dr. Richard] Wallace [in an interview with KLTV]. "If I took my fingers and laid them on the top of the plates, this is what you'd grow." As for the disks themselves, Wallace said he found nothing that could potentially cause disease.

So keep on using that copy of Benjamin Button as a coaster. You'll be relatively safe in doing so—just don't eat off of it. [KLTV East Texas via Hacking Netflix]

Cranberry's disks are supposed to be so durable and long-lasting because they "contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate." Supposedly data is etched far more deeply into the disks than with traditional DVDs (using Cranberry's special burners, of course). You can either buy one of those burners for five grand or upload your data to the company's website and let them do the hard work for you. Either way, the longevity of these disks seems a little bit too good to be true. [Computer World via Slashdot]

A customer "eventually" notified the manager, and the DVD was removed from the player. "Eventually" as in, "after we all got our fill of the hot action." So that's what this guy was looking at! [swtimes via obscuredrugstore]

According to iSuppli, only 3.6% of PCs sold this year were shipped with a BD drive. And by 2013, that figure is only expected to rise to 16.3%, far from a solid attach rate.

With install discs being replaced more and more often by downloads, movies being downloaded instead of watched on disc and the insanely cheap price of mass storage, it's no wonder people aren't willing to shell out the scratch for a BD drive. They just aren't that useful.

The era of physical media is over, and Blu-ray was just too late to the party to really catch on like past formats. It'll still have a relatively successful life in the home theater world and with enthusiasts, but it'll never come close to touching the saturation level of DVD. And really, that's fine with me. [iSuppli]

When it comes to making personal copies, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel left that totally gray—that is, she chose not to rock the boat on whether or not making personal copies actually falls under the "fair use" doctrine of the DMCA. Lots of "mays" and "whiles" in there:

"So while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."

So DVD ripping is kind of like laws about pot in some places: It's sorta legal to possess in certain circumstances, but not kosher to sell it. Thanks for clearing that up, judge.

What that means for Real, and their long-term plans—a box that archives DVDs—is even murkier. [Wired, NYT]

According to the Video Hits rental agreement, if a movie is not returned within seven days of the due date, the customer will be charged the full retail price for the DVD along with all late fees. For those who failed to pay, the owner filed paperwork with the justice of the peace to have some customers arrested for theft of services. According to Texas law, this is an appropriate course of action so long as the proprietor of the business sends a certified letter to the customer and gives them 10 days to return the movie.

In the end, some customers paid fines of up to $870 while others were arrested by the constable. While I understand that this guy has a right to protect his business, I can't help but wonder how he is still in business in the first place. Needless to say, the folks in Wylie Texas need to look into this little thing called Netflix. [Dallasnews]

Of course, somewhere between three and five people on the face of the planet own anywhere near 400 Blu-ray discs, but lots have old, huge collections that span a few generations of disc technology. Having a giant changer like this would eliminate the need to own a separate BD changer, and if it matches or improves on its predecessor's 500GB HDD and DLNA via Ethernet streaming abilities, could make a solid video control center for a high-end home entertainment system.

Prices are expected to fall well north of two grand, according to a leaked Swiss product page. [SonyInsider via Engadget]

Oh, come on—you can't tell me you don't see where this is going. Even though the format has grown 72% in the last quarter, every Blu-ray player we choose to review has an abundance of features that have nothing to do with Blu-ray. In fact, they all have to do with delivering movies in a different way, with more instant gratification.

The joke is, when we were pushing for Blu-ray 2.0 with BD-Live a year ago, we didn't realize that the ethernet port was really not about enhanced Blu-ray at all, but about video on demand. I own a few Blu-rays, like Wall-E, that have BD-Live components. Never even bothered with them. No point. But you'd be a 'tard to buy a Blu-ray player without an ethernet port, and you'd be a 'tard to buy a Blu-ray player without Netflix on demand, and at this point, another service for new-release movies, like Amazon VOD or CinemaNow.

Netflix gives me back seasons of 30 Rock and The Office in high-def. Pop quiz: Will I ever buy them on Blu-ray, or even DVD? No. I can even get stuff I'd have previously hunted down on disc, like The IT Crowd. I can get lots of the movies I previously owned on DVD instantly on demand for no cost other than the $10 monthly subscription. People don't even bitch about DRM with Netflix, because it's instant and always there, so even the copyright owners should be happy. Time Warner's boss even said he's thinking about offering a Netflix-like VOD distribution channel for HBO—nothing like all-you-can-eat Rome, Wire and Band of Brothers to kill DVD sales, and HBO still gets their mad money.

You want to talk video quality? Fine. I own The Dark Knight on Blu-ray. That movie is freakin' awesome, and I am happy to watch it on a Blu-ray player, while I sit exactly 47 inches from a 50-inch 1080p plasma television. But what about Billy Madison? I love that movie too, but I first owned it on a VHS playing in 4:3 at what you might call 240i, and I can verify that the high-def version is no funnier. In fact, instead of fishing out the HD DVD of it I have, and hooking up the HD DVD drive to my Xbox, I'd probably sooner try to find it on Netflix, in whatever video quality they're offering.

Besides, most people—most Giz readers, I'd wager—are watching "high def" movies on LCD TVs they bought at Costco for $899, so you can't tell me that they can see a difference between so-called VOD high-def and real bonafide Blu-ray high-def, even though there definitely is one.

The Criterion Collection belongs on Blu-ray. But six films by Wes Anderson, Terry Gilliam and Akira Kurosawa do not an industry make. Like our discussion of audiophiles, there's a need to preserve (and even appreciate) video at very high quality, but that need doesn't trickle down to the masses, and especially doesn't matter for every single film, or even the vast majority of middle-of-the-road movies and TV. DVDs were a hit because they were the smartest way to deliver most video in the years 1999 to 2007. Now, the smartest way to deliver most video is over broadband, not on high-density shiny discs.

Don't get me wrong. You'll buy a "Blu-ray player." Stats show many of you already are. You may even buy some Blu-ray discs, or pay the extra $2 or $3 for Netflix Blu-ray rental. But the amount of time you'll spend watching Blu-ray on it will continue to dwindle, until, maybe one day, the disc tray just refuses to open from lack of use.

And the even cooler part is that the base tech will be very similar to the laser systems used to read CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs today, so the new holographic-enhanced players and drives would still be backwards compatible with previous optical discs.

Still quite a while until this approaches the realm of a product, but it's good to know about the next stupid format war this will surely spawn well before it happens! [NYTimes]

If you don't recall, RealDVD was a late, unusual addition to the DVD copying field. By late, I mean the latter half of 2008, and by strange, I mean not free. Surprise! The MPAA is outraged, and the product is pulled from shelves literally days after launch. Now the controversy is making its way to a federal court, where Real attorneys will square off against whatever reptilian law-creatures the movie industry is employing these days, and the fate of RealDVD will be decided.

But the NYT thinks they've uncovered RealNetworks', ehh, Real™ intentions: to build ripping capabilities into mainstream DVD players. It's all part of a project called Facet that actually predate RealDVD, at least internally, by some time. Real wants to license this software on the cheap to major DVD player manufacturers, who could then produce reasonably priced (sub-$300) DVD-saving players.

Fun, right? Well, the underlying technology is pretty much RealDVD on Linux, so it—and pretty much any other integrated DVD player backup solutions—is depending on courtroom victory this week. If this is really their strategy, then RealDVD was might have never even a serious product—just a sad, legal, sacrificial lamb. [NYT]

The company is going to begin testing Saturday processing so that late week returns don't hose customers. (Good news for us, bad news for Netflix employees who like their weekends.) It's unclear as to how many of Netflix's 60 shipping centers will participate, but of course, it'll be a wash once the US Postal Service cuts down their delivery week to five days anyway. [Hacking Netflix via Zatz Not Funny]

I remember being blown away when I saw The Undiscovered Country in the theater. It was no Wrath of Khan, but it was an improvement on The Voyage Home. (Was there a film in between The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country? I'm really not sure.)

So when Trek VI came out on VHS, I couldn't wait to rent it. Unfortunately, this time around it felt draggy and dull. Maybe some of that was just seeing it a second time, and realizing quite how unnecessary some of prison-planet stuff was and how much the movie lost focus about halfway through. But a huge part of it was the lengthy scenes of the Federation President debating and discussing options and solutions, over and over again. And then I noticed on the VHS box that the VHS release included previously unseen footage. (Only a few minutes worth, supposedly, but it felt like a noticeably different film.)

That's the version of the film that came out on DVD in 1999, and the two-disc special edition includes a slightly longer cut than that. So, to the best of my knowledge, there's never been a VHS or DVD release of the movie's original theatrical cut, which I remember being quite a bit more fun and engaging. (Again, I haven't seen the theatrical cut in years, so memory may be exaggerating.)

The good news is, the upcoming Blu-ray release of Undiscovered will include the theatrical cut for the first time ever. Also, the Blu-ray of Wrath Of Khan will include that movie's theatrical cut as well — so no lengthy discussion of Tiberian bats — but you can also buy a used copy of TWOK's original DVD release, with the theatrical cut, pretty easily.

It'll be interesting to see the version of Undiscovered that appeared in theaters once again, to find out if it's really as good as I remember, or if the movie really was a bit bloated in all its forms. The Blu-Ray discs will be out in May, just in time for the new Trek movie's theatrical release. [Trek Movie]

Why anyone would go into a brick-and-mortar Blockbuster these days is beyond me. I mean, $5 for a new release? Come on. With online services like Netflix out there and $1 DVD kiosks popping up all over the place it just doesn't make sense to throw your money away like that. Besides, Blockbuster's CEO Jim Keyes noted that these 99 cent titles would include "thousands of DVDs, including many classic older movies"—which is really code for "if you are looking for a copy of Romancing the Stone or Air Bud, we got em' here cheap!" Blockbuster is expected to roll out the program starting in January. [Reuters via Consumerist]

The stakes for RealNetworks aren't terribly high either, as sales of RealDVD might have been slow because of, oh, I don't know, the mountains of free software that does a better and more complete job. Within the day, Real filed a countersuit which could possibly set a new precedent for the interpretation of the Hollywood's DVD license. Even in a best-case scenario, the most legal headway that could probably be made would be to permit neutered software like RealDVD, which would still leave any useful method of DVD backup well outside of the law. [NYT]