What Were They Thinking?

As attentive readers of this blog may have noticed, of late I have been thinking about the Roman Empire.

This led to me finally cracking open my Blu-Ray box set of the two seasons the highly lauded HBO series Rome, starring the excellent Ray Stevenson, Trainspotting's Kevin McKidd and one of my favourite actors, James Purefoy.

However the first thing that struck about both boxes was the very old fashioned way the individual Blu-Rays were packed in each.

Rather than a succession of plastic leaves or even cardboard sleeves for each individual disc, the five discs for each season were all stacked on a single central pillar!

All the discs stacked like donuts

This was fine for watching the first disc and even swapping out for the second, but after that cack-handed me began to worry about juggling the discs to get to the third, fourth, or fifth on the central rosette. 

I'm clumsy at the best of times, but when I'm trying to sort something out carefully like this - when I'm worried about marking, smudging, or scratching my precious Blu-Rays - then I usually get more stressed. And clumsier.

As a staunch campaigner for the eternal utility - and retention - of solid media, I knew these discs deserved better, something more "modern".

So I, of course, looked on Amazon and ordered myself some multi-tray Blu-Ray cases capable of holding five discs.

There was a bit of a 'technical' snafu along the way as I first ordered DVD cases and it didn't hit me until I'd torn them out of the packaging that these would be stupidly large to hold the cover inserts for the two seasons.

So, back to the drawing board and Blu-Ray cases were ordered:

I'm much more comfortable with the set-up now that I've transferred the discs over into the new cases.

It's so much simpler, and safer, to pop out the required disc. 

This is how it should have been to start with

Of course, now the box sets of the the two seasons are too big to fit inside the original card sleeve they came in (pictured up top), but that's a small price to pay for knowing that my discs are going to be a lot safer when I'm accessing them.