How to make a good Blu-ray Disc

Introduction

A common saying amongst the individuals who review and evaluate any form of home video is that when all other factors are equal, the picture with the most active dots in it wins. Blu-ray Disc is the king of the home video castle in that sense. No prior medium has ever offered more than twenty percent of its active dot count.

Musing about home video again: The Alien Anthology BD set.

As a semi-early adopter of the Blu-ray Disc format, I have noticed two distinct patterns in terms of which releases I will line up to buy next. On the one hand, I will buy a lot of discs where I have heard good things about the film therein (or seen it as a rental) and am willing to take a punt. Examples of that include Crank: High Voltage or Machete. On the other hand, there are films I saw repeatedly as a boy and, since coming to fully grok the benefits of progressive video and lossless audio, have been dying of curiosity to learn how they scrubbed up on the new format. Aliens and the series it is part of (to one extent or another) is an example of that.