Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2009-10-05 @ 17:14:08 , edited on 2009-10-05 @ 20:55:49

So I ordered the complete series of Battlestar Galactica on Blu-ray a few months back (excellent series, by the way), and it came in this crazy, intricate, ginormous (whoa, 'ginormous' is recognized by Firefox's spellchecker!) box. This box is a cube that splits in half so that the top half lifts up, supported by and attached to a square column in the center, on each face of which sits one of the four seasons of the show, in its own smaller box:


Taken from amazon.com. Used without permission.

This thing is awesome, though a bit unwieldy. Unfortunately, the small boxes aren't that well designed. The discs are stored in a cardboard sleeve that's folded like a fan, with the discs sitting in the folds. However, this sleeve isn't able to support the weight of the discs, so the front facing bends (I'm thinking this is also partly because of the extra room in the case; they have the same packaging for the DVD release, and each of those uses at least one more disc per season):


Taken from amazon.com. Used without permission.

And apart from the poor construction here, I don't like cases that you have to slide discs in and out of. That seems like asking for scratches. So I decided to order some multi-disc cases for them and print up my own sleeve inserts.

I started my search looking for 5-disc blu-ray cases. I know these exist; my copy of Blade Runner came in one. However, after much scouring of the internet, I was only able to find one retailer offering them, and they were in Australia. No way I'm paying overseas shipping for < $10 worth of plastic!

So, I switched to searching for multi-disc DVD cases. This was easier (I thought), as I quickly found exactly what I was looking for at Sleeve City, from whom I'd ordered stuff before.

Well I ordered one 4-disc case, two 5-disc cases, and one 6-disc case (is it weird to spell out one, two and one, but not 4, 5, and 6 here?), and they got here pretty quickly. However, to my chagrin, the 4- and 6- disc cases were of quite shoddy quality. They were made of flimsy, poor quality plastic and had rough molding marks in the actual disc trays. The 5-disc cases were nice though: sturdy construction and smooth trays. Sadly, both 5-disc cases had cuts in the sleeves.

So, I ordered 4 more 5-disc cases (since one disc from the 6-disc season is actually the mini-tv-movie Razor and I decided to give it a separate case), but it turns out I inadvertently ordered the ones of the same manufacture of the 4- and 6- disc cases that were so crappy!

The irony here is, these things are so cheap, it'll actually cost me more to ship them back for a return than to just buy replacements!

So, I just recently tried to order 4 of the nicer ones, only to be told they're discontinued. SIGH. I think I've found them from another retailer, so we'll see. What a pain in the ass.

Also, who knew it would be so hard to find legal-size paper (go figure, these sleeve inserts measure slightly longer than 11", so letter-size paper is out) that's slightly glossy (ie low-end photo-quality paper)? The only place I've found that has anything like it is, of all people, Radio Shack! Crazy!

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