Nothing can last forever, I suppose. Regrettably, after more than 8,000 posts and nearly a decade of writing about all manner of movie, TV, and home theater topics, the Bonus View blog at High-Def Digest must close its doors effective today.

In the early days of its life, High-Def Digest was devoted almost exclusively to news and reviews about the Blu-ray format and its (now-defunct) competitor, HD DVD. Even after HD DVD conceded and the great High-Def Format War ended, the site maintained a focus on movie discs and software. To be fair, despite the waning presence of physical media in the marketplace, that remains a significant interest to most of our readers.

However, this is not and has never been “Blu-ray Digest.” Starting in April of 2010 (read Post #1), I spearheaded an initiative to expand the site’s scope by opening a blog which would serve as an outlet for myself and our writers to discuss other topics related to high-definition video and the home theater hobby. These included, but were not limited to: movies in theaters, TV shows, video games, electronics, and (later on) streaming.

The original mandate for the blog was to post two to three articles a week. That seemed insufficient to me, and I made an aggressive push to post every day. At our peak, we had as many as five or six posts a day, five days a week. That slowed down a bit over time. Old writers left and new writers joined. Personally, having kids severely limited the amount of available time I have to write. Nevertheless, with limited exceptions, I’ve overseen the publishing of new content in this blog every working business day for nine-and-a-half years. Some of those posts may have been more substantive than others, but I’ve tried my best to make sure we have something interesting to read here every day, with a minimum of blatant click-bait. (I won’t say there’s been none, but I tried to keep our readers engaged.)

I appreciate the blog format because it forced me to write something every day, overcoming my inclination toward procrastination. I’ve been Managing Editor of The Bonus View since its inception. During that time, I set a goal to personally contribute at least one post on every active day, often working through vacations and illnesses. Since 2010, I’ve only had about a dozen absences, and half of those were paternity leave immediately after my kids were born. I also edited every single piece of content that ever got published in the blog (some of our writers might say too heavily), and frequently chose the images and wrote the headlines to go with them. The Bonus View is very personal to me, and I am deeply saddened to see it end. I know that everyone working here feels the same.

The following are just a small handful of my personal favorite articles that I wrote for this blog:

Home Theater Technical Articles

• A Constant Image Height Refresher
• Where Movies and Home Theater Fail Math – How 2.35 = 2.40
• The Shape of Blockbuster Movies
• Choosing the Right Subwoofer for Home Theater
• Dolby Atmos Beyond 7.1.4 (start of series)
• Making Better Bass (start of series)
• Building a Home Theater (start of series)
• A Eulogy for OPPO Digital
• Watching 4k Ultra HD on a 1080p Display
• When 4k Is Not 4k
• An Ultra HD Blu-ray Q&A
• Poll: Did You Ever Own a Laserdisc Player?
• Is There Still Room for Laserdisc in a 4k Home Theater?
• No Easy Fix for 3D Crosstalk

Movies and Discs

• The 1-2-3s of Organizing a Movie Collection
• All Deckard Out: A History of Blade Runner on Laserdisc
• Blu-ray Highlights: Week of March 29th, 2015 (you’ll understand after a few entries)
• Poll: What Did You Think of Prometheus?
• A Second Opinion on That G.I. Joe Retaliation Trailer
• Now Playing: So-So G.I. Joe
• Off the Shelf: Space Truckers
• The Crazy Eighties: Body Heat
• Nineties Noir: The Last Seduction

TV

• Fuller House Pilot Recap (some of my finest analysis)
• A.P.B. Pilot Recap
• The Orville Pilot Recap
• MacGyver (2016) Pilot Recap
• Into the Badlands Pilot Recap
• Backstrom Pilot Recap
• 9-1-1 Pilot Recap
• American Horror Story Pilot Recap
• Star Trek: Discovery Pilot Recap
• Westworld Pilot Recap
• Westworld 2.10 Recap
• Twin Peaks 3.08 Recap
• The X Files 11.04 Recap
• The Newsroom 1.10 Recap
• Haven Series Finale Recap
• Agent Carter Series Finale Recap
• V Series Finale Recap
• Under the Dome 3.09 Recap
• Under the Dome Series Finale Recap
• True Blood Series Finale Recap
• Fringe Series Finale Recap
• Hannibal Series Finale Recap
• Game of Thrones Series Finale Recap
• Now Streaming: Love, Death + Robots
• Now Streaming: Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams
• Now Streaming: Godless
• Now Streaming: Russian Doll
• Now Streaming: Undone

Fun Stuff

• “Shield Practice”
• Classic 1980s G.I. Joe Characters Ripped Off from Movies and TV
• Unboxed: Alien ReAction Egg Chamber Playset

Looking at it, I see that many of those were technical articles. I suppose I single them out because they were the hardest to write (except that Q&A piece, which was a blast), yet also the most rewarding. Of course, we also had a great deal of fun talking about movies and TV. Among countless TV posts, I wrote lengthy recaps for every single episode of Game of Thrones from start to finish over its eight seasons.

Another accomplishment I rather enjoyed was systematically working through the entire career of filmmaker David Lynch for a series of posts under the heading Auteur Theory. Grouped with these are recaps for every episode of the Twin Peaks revival series, through which I attempted to make some sense of the infamous, mind-warping Episode 8.

Counting this one, The Bonus View published 8,197 posts during its lifetime, from 27 different authors. Most of those were regular contributors in some fashion, while a few were one-shot guests. Among all those posts were 1,954 TV recaps; 1,466 theatrical reviews; 484 Blu-ray Highlights articles; 466 Weekend Roundtables; and 394 reports from film festivals.

Intended as a weekly buying guide for everything released on Blu-ray and Ultra HD, the Blu-ray Highlights pieces were a tremendous amount of work to put together and write every week. As someone who remains passionate about watching movies on these formats, my goal was for the posts to serve as a useful resource for other fans and collectors. They were (and still are) the sort of thing that I wanted to read somewhere, and not seeing anyone else doing it as comprehensively as I liked, I took on the responsibility myself. I can only hope that came through.

This is the final post for the Bonus View blog. After today, the Comments section will remain open, but I’m not sure whether (or how long) it will be moderated. I am told that the wealth of content we’ve amassed over the last 9+ years will remain where it is. Unfortunately, no further posts will be published.

Some of our blog writers may remain on the site staff to contribute Blu-ray reviews. Starting next month, I have accepted a position to write about television for Primetimer and will be found there. I’m also exploring some other options to continue writing about movies and home theater, but don’t have anything to announce yet. (Sorry, I don’t do Twitter and my Facebook is only open to people I know personally.)

Before we shut the doors, here are some stats you might find of interest.

Total Numbers

Posts: 8,197
Months active: 114
Posts per month: 71.9
Avg words per post: 796

Josh Zyber

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Soon to be found at: Primetimer

Posts: 3,701
Months active: 114
Posts per month: 32.5
Avg words per post: 927

David Krauss

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Posts: 59
Months active: 111
Posts per month: 0.5
Avg words per post: 1,507

[Note: David’s numbers are somewhat skewed because he wrote a few posts in the early days of the blog but only became a regular contributor about a year ago.]

Deirdre Crimmins

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Follow: @dedecrim

Posts: 180
Months active: 16
Posts per month: 11.3
Avg words per post: 525

Jason Gorber

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Follow: @filmfest_ca
Also found at: ThatShelf

Posts: 169
Months active: 18
Posts per month: 9.4
Avg words per post: 534

Adam Tyner

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Also found at: DVDTalk

Posts: 49
Months active: 93
Posts per month: 0.5
Avg words per post: 1,052

Phil Brown

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Follow: @thatphilbrown

Posts: 1,105
Months active: 58
Posts per month: 19.1
Avg words per post: 752

Shannon Nutt

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Follow: @shannonnutt

Posts: 281
Months active: 66
Posts per month: 4.3
Avg words per post: 1,019

Brian Hoss

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Posts: 170
Months active: 26
Posts per month: 6.5
Avg words per post: 739

Luke Hickman

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Posts: 992
Months active: 84
Posts per month: 11.8
Avg words per post: 561

Aaron Peck

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Posts: 367
Months active: 34
Posts per month: 10.8
Avg words per post: 763

M. Enois Duarte

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Posts: 167
Months active: 72
Posts per month: 2.3
Avg words per post: 522

Tom Landy

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Posts: 77
Months active: 81
Posts per month: 0.9
Avg words per post: 621

Dick Ward

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Follow: @celmatespodcast

Posts: 432
Months active: 23
Posts per month: 18.8
Avg words per post: 538

Wayne Rowe

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Posts: 62
Months active: 49
Posts per month: 1.3
Avg words per post: 722

I’m very proud of all the work we’ve accomplished here over the last decade, and very appreciative of the writers who have worked with me, both past and present. I know that I speak for the whole staff when I say that we’re extremely grateful to all of our readers for following us. Perhaps we’ll meet again, somewhere else. Until then, all I can say is…

Thank you.