As we near the first wave of Blu-ray and HD DVD titles you may wonder how they will look or be packaged. When DVDs first came out they came in a whole new type of packaging. The "Amaray Style" cases were rectangular and soft plastic unlike it's counterpart in CDs with the smaller square brittle jewel cases. The DVD Case was likely designed to appear unique distinguishing it from a jewel case in order to avoid confusion between the two different formats. The new Blu-ray and HD DVD titles will also appear in their own unique packaging once they start hitting the shelves in the near future.
Warner apparently is responsible for coming up with the idea for the HD DVD package. HD DVD packaging will consist of red translucent plastic very similar to the look of standard
DVD cases. The cases will be thinner than the Amaray style DVD Cases and will measure only 12.5mm in thickness. It is said that the smaller compact size will improve efficiencies in both retail stocking and in shipping.
Blu-ray on the other hand will launch it’s own style of packaging very similar to that of HD DVD. Instead of a red translucent case Blu-ray will sport a blue translucent case. Now that a format war is all but certain, it’s nice to know that they were at least able to color coordinate the two types making shopping easier. The blue
Blu-ray case will look very similar to the rival
HD DVD case but will be a tad slimmer measuring 11 mm and it will also have rounded corners.
It will be interesting to see how these new types of packaging are utilized. Right now it is not uncommon for our customers to want to put DVDs in jewel cases and CDs into DVD Cases. I wonder if HD DVD and Blu-ray cases will be used to package other types of media or if people will just use them extensively for the formats they were made for. For now, all you’ll need to know is whether you shop on the red side or the blue side of the rack.
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