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USHE Press Release: Back To The Future Trilogy (4k UHD) (1 Viewer)

Wayne_j

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$5 more for a steel book I would pay if I liked the cover. $20 is crazy talk.
 

Jake Lipson

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Well...I pick mine up at lunch today. Praying to karma gods it’s in decent shape.

Good luck. (Seriously.)

I do know that lots of people who have been posting unboxing videos on YouTube got steelbooks that are perfectly clean. So while they don't exist at my store, they certainly do exist somewhere. I really hope you get one.

$5 more for a steel book I would pay if I liked the cover. $20 is crazy talk.

Yeah. If it was just the covers, I would probably not have tried to do it. Since in this case it is also the only edition of the set which has trays and hubs to hold the discs, that was important to me. Oh well.
 
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Mark Booth

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I have about a dozen steelbooks. In my experience, if the steelbook gets shipped (vs going to a brick & mortar store to pick them up yourself), the odds are about 50/50 that the steelbook will arrive damaged in some way.

Mark
 

Angelo Colombus

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cancelled my order from them when it was clear yesterday that my order hadn’t shipped and wasn’t even in a shipping soon status. Ordered from amazon who indicated my order could be here today and was the same price as my Target pre-order
No rush to get the box set since i viewed my Blu-ray set earlier this year plus i had some special discounts with the order so i can wait.
 

Carlo_M

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I bet I’ll jinx myself. It’s sitting in the car while I get food w a friend. But it looks perfect from the exterior packaging. Crossing my fingers the steelbooks are in good shape when I take the shrinkwrap off.
 

Jake Lipson

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But it looks perfect from the exterior packaging.

Good for you. I'm glad at least one of us got a clean copy. All of the copies I interacted with yesterday seemed really well packaged and shrinkwrapped. If it hadn't been for the spine slashes, I would have accepted them. I'd be really surprised if you had a problem with the rest of the steelbooks if you managed to get one that wasn't spine slashed. Let us know. But I'm guessing you're fine.

I'm no longer looking to get the steelbooks because I'm just done with the shitshow and accepted the regular release. That being said, I checked Best Buy's website again today. It now shows that all copies of the steelbook are sold out from my local store where I went yesterday. This means that other people went in there, bought and accepted the scratched copies that I refused. That's their prerogative, but it surprises me because I would think the majority of steelbook collectors want them to look nice. Oh well. Whoever bought them is certainly welcome to those copies since I didn't want them.
 
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Tino

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Picked up this book at Barnes And Noble on a clearance sale. Terrific companion to all three films.
image.jpg
 

Jake Lipson

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Picked up this book at Barnes And Noble on a clearance sale.

How much did you pay for that? I think I know why it is on clearance.

That original edition is from 2015. There is a new, revised and updated edition of same which will be released November 3. They're probably clearing out old stock to replace them with the newer version.

BTTF Revised.jpg

The new one is currently pre-ordering on Amazon for its list price of $50, though. So if you got the old one on clearance, you probably got a better deal. I never got the old one so have the new one ordered, but I'd like it to come down some from that. We'll seee.

For those interested in BTTF books, I would also highly recommend this book by Caseen Gaines. It is a more traditional trade paperback type of book and isn't a coffee-table-size thing. But there's lots of great information in it and he writes in an engrossing, highly readable style.

We Don't Need Roads.jpg
 

Tino

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How much did you pay for that? I think I know why it is on clearance.

That original edition is from 2015. There is a new, revised and updated edition of same which will be released November 3. They're probably clearing out old stock to replace them with the newer version.

View attachment 80585

The new one is currently pre-ordering on Amazon for its list price of $50, though. So if you got the old one on clearance, you probably got a better deal. I never got the old one so have the new one ordered, but I'd like it to come down some from that. We'll seee.

For those interested in BTTF books, I would also highly recommend this book by Caseen Gaines. It is a more traditional trade paperback type of book and isn't a coffee-table-size thing. But there's lots of great information in it and he writes in an engrossing, highly readable style.

View attachment 80586
I think I paid $9.99. A few months ago.

The new book has very little new content.

The revised and expanded 35th anniversary edition includes incredible new features such as:

  • 16 additional pages of new behind-the-scenes content
  • USA Today front page insert from the original movie
 

Jake Lipson

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The new book has very little new content.

Right.

For $9.99, I would probably go with the older one too. But since I haven't found it on clearance here, I figure I might as well go with the new one. Amazon currently has the old version for $33 and the new one for $50. So it's not like the discount on the old one is night and day. If I'm already going to pay in that higher range, I figure it might as well be for the new one.

Also, one of the things that has happened to Back to the Future in the last five years is the development of the stage musical, which had its run interrupted by COVID. I'm hoping some of those new pages are about that, because I'm a big theatre person and am very excited about that.

On a related note, the musical dropped a new single today of Olly Dobson (Marty) performing Back in Time. I think this sounds great and wish the musical well for a successful reopening post-COVID. They are currently targeting a new opening date in May in London's West End. The full cast album will be released "around the same time" the show opens next year on the Sony Masterworks Broadway label.

 
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Angelo Colombus

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Nothing yet on my shipping info from Target. Have ordered from them before and they always ship close to the release date but not this time.
 

cinemel1

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Nothing yet on my shipping info from Target. Have ordered from them before and they always ship close to the release date but not this time.

Received my Trilogy yesterday. Watched the first film. I was very pleased with the way it looked in 4K UHD. Lots of detail and fine colors. You couldn’t tell the film was made years ago. I was especially blown away by the Atmos soundtrack. My only disappointment was the way the discs are packed in the book. It’s a pain getting them out, the same with the 4K Hitchcock set. Universal should get their act together and use a different packing format.
 

Carlo_M

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Good for you. I'm glad at least one of us got a clean copy. All of the copies I interacted with yesterday seemed really well packaged and shrinkwrapped. If it hadn't been for the spine slashes, I would have accepted them. I'd be really surprised if you had a problem with the rest of the steelbooks if you managed to get one that wasn't spine slashed. Let us know. But I'm guessing you're fine.

I'm no longer looking to get the steelbooks because I'm just done with the shitshow and accepted the regular release. That being said, I checked Best Buy's website again today. It now shows that all copies of the steelbook are sold out from my local store where I went yesterday. This means that other people went in there, bought and accepted the scratched copies that I refused. That's their prerogative, but it surprises me because I would think the majority of steelbook collectors want them to look nice. Oh well. Whoever bought them is certainly welcome to those copies since I didn't want them.
Fortunately my local store's employees seem to be more skilled with box cutters, as I have just opened it up and everything seems to be in good order. Bummer to hear about so many that were messed up by the one nearest you. They really should take greater care of these steelbook exclusives. Of course maybe they're thinking "hey they're made of steel, they're indestructible!" :laugh:
 

JoshZ

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All of the copies I interacted with yesterday seemed really well packaged and shrinkwrapped. If it hadn't been for the spine slashes, I would have accepted them.

Dumb question, but are you sure the spines were actually damaged and it wasn't just the crease of the shrinkwrap, which happens to align over the spines on this release?
 

Jake Lipson

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Bummer to hear about so many that were messed up by the one nearest you.

Thanks. I'm just happy for you that you got one that is in good shape at this point. I would have liked to get the steelbooks, and I do appreciate everyone here for listening to me vent about the annoyance. But I have already opened the regular release, so I'm kind of over it by now. It's a bummer, but if they can't make copies available near me that aren't damaged, it isn't worth my trouble to track them down.

All I can do at this point is enjoy the version I have.

To be fair to the people who work at my store, all of the scratches were underneath the shrinkwrap on one or more of the steelbooks themselves. That means they shipped that way from the warehouse. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

Dumb question, but are you sure the spines were actually damaged and it wasn't just the crease of the shrinkwrap, which happens to align over the spines on this release?

Yes, because each copy was scratched in a different place. A couple of them had BTTF 1 and 3 perfectly fine, but only 2 was scratched. One that I saw had scratches on 1 and 2 but 3 was fine.

It almost makes me think it would have been easier if the steelbooks were available separately, because then I could pick and choose individual copies of each that were clean. But of course these specific steelbooks combine to show one large picture across all of them, so there's no point to selling them on their own. Plus, the trilogy has never been released individually on Blu-ray as far as I'm aware. Of course, I want all three films anyway; I just meant that some of the steelbooks inside the packages were clean and some were not, so I couldn't open them and make my own set out of them, if that makes sense.

To go back for a second to the book @Tino mentioned, something weird occurred to me. The original version published in 2015 was designed with a cover to match the 2015 Blu-ray set.

BTTF 2015.jpg

BTTF book 2015.jpg

For this year's edition, they've changed the coloring of the book a little bit to more of a grey rather than blue tint, but it is clearly still using the same basic design from 2015.

BTTF book 2020.jpg

It's interesting that they didn't redesign the cover to match the design of the new disc release.

BTTF 2020.jpg

Also, I get that they're trying to go with elements from each time period Marty visits with the big heads on the top of the new box set. That's why they put Doc in the cowboy hat, which is a clear reference to Part III. However, it's still weird to see Thomas F. Wilson up there as Griff, rather than Biff, because Griff is his character with the least amount to do across the whole trilogy. I would've gone with Biff up there next to Lorraine, personally. Then again, I wouldn't have gone with a big heads approach in the first place, but you see what I mean.[/QUOTE]
 

Tommy R

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I’ve always liked the idea of steel books and have bought a few in the past, (I particularly like some of the alternative artwork), but I quickly stopped buying them because they are so prone to damage. Even when I managed to find good ones, the artwork seemed to peel over time by just sitting on my shelf.
 

The Obsolete Man

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Ah, Steelbooks.

I buy 'em when they're the cheapest option. Like Clueless during Target's B2G1 sale. Steel and regular were the same price, so I chose steel. Or back when Target had Lebowski, Blues Brothers, and a bunch of other Universal steels on sale cheap.

I mean, all things considered, if the price is the same or lower steelbooks are more durable than the average case.

I wonder if the BTTF steels will be at closeout prices one day? Then they'd be a smart buy for me.
 

Jake Lipson

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I wonder if the BTTF steels will be at closeout prices one day?

I doubt it. They are a store exclusive limited pressing, not a general release. They'll sell out and then that will be the end of it. My store sold out of them by the time I got up the day after I went in there, despite the fact that all of their copies were dinged. I don't think they will be around long.
 

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