Scott Kriefall
Second Unit
we univocally condemned the evil studios who dared to bring us DVDs in jewel casesI was not part of that group, and I recall voicing my preference for jewel cases on the primary DVD newsgroup (alt.video.dvd) circa 1997-8.
I don't really want to start a major discussion of jewel cases, since it's really a dead issue now. I'll only state that I have not encountered the fragility problems that others have described with standard, single-disc JCs. The thin, double-disc JCs do seem more fragile.
I've been mostly content with keepcases, at least compared to snappers and the old Polygram case. Keepcases share two of the main benefits of jewel cases -- they're easily replaceable, and allow the use of alternate artwork. The disadvantage is that they require more storage space... although the new "ThinPak" keepcase variant will hopefully address that in the near future.