Monday, April 26, 2010

Monday morons--design a better DVD case

I have hated the DVD cases from day one. For some reason, most of them are designed so that they hold onto the disk so securely that you have to bend back either the case or the disk or both to get the disk out of the case. CD cases were not designed that way, at least I don't remember buying any like that, and CDs and DVDs are pretty much the same, so I don't see why they needed to be in differently designed cases. I assume that the DVD cases were made a bit taller so that they did not get stocked with the CDs by mistake, so that part made some sense, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for making the inside of the case different.

So now we have a number of DVD movies, and there are also many DVDs of television shows, and they will often sell a whole season of episodes together in one box. The box often contains a number of smaller individual DVD cases, or cases that hold two disks each, with one disk held on either side of the case. But lately I've encountered a design that is even more annoying, with one case attempting to hold seven disks. So this very securely holds one disk on one side of the box, and one disk on the other side of the box, and they are as difficult to remove as from any other DVD case, that is, that you almost have to bend back either the case or the disk to pry the disk loose from the case. But then over those two disks are two more disks that are quite easy to get at. The real problem then comes with the three disks that are held in place over those, or rather, not held in place over those, as they usually fall to the floor as soon as you open the case.

Last week I noticed that multiple CD cases, such as those that hold audio books, have a totally different design, and in my opinion, a much better one. The case contains a bunch of clear plastic envelopes held together, and each envelope holds one CD, or maybe it holds two CDs, one on each side. These can hold as many as twenty CDs, and the disks do not fall out as soon as you open the case, nor do they refuse to release any of the disks, and there is no confusion about which disk goes where or having to remove all of the disks to get to a certain one or any of the other problems that you get with having multiple disks in a DVD case.

Why didn't they just design DVD cases to be taller CD cases?

This is only a problem for me now with library loans and such. I've bought a travel case which holds 144 disks in clear plastic envelopes that are held in a three-ring binder, and most of my DVDs are stored there.

2 comments:

dmarks said...

I've seen a few CD cases with a foam disc in the center , size of the hole, to hold the disc in. This would be a perfect idea for DVDs.

in car dvd player said...

Create your text as a vector in a design program such as Adobe Illustrator.