The lesson to be learned is just because it was Blu-Ray does not automatically mean that is is good. Just because it came from iTunes does not automatically mean that it is bad.
Correct but vice versa too.
AND with BD, you actually
own the copy of the movie. You can loan it to someone else, give it away, will it to someone when you die and then those others will fully own the movie and can do what they want with it. Try that with an iTunes copy.
AND with BD, you get to decide the quality if you rip it into iTunes rather than someone at a Studio or Apple deciding a one-quality-fits-all rip is "good enough" for all. The whole AV industry revolves around more than just cheapest or most convenient. Much of it is full of people who are chasing better quality of speakers, receivers, players and so on. The old joke of the college kid's apartment stocked with a 3rd hand sofa, milk crates for end tables, mattresses on the floor, etc... and $18K worth of AV equipment tends to be a joke that actually applies. Yet here, a lot of us will let one company decide a "good enough" quality for all and then try to rationalize it as "as good" as any alternative. My Sony is better than your Panasonic or this Speaker set is better than that one. But iTunes "good enough" is indeed as good as anything else? As with other AV stuff, if it's "good enough" for you, that's all that counts. But don't expect your "good enough" to be everyone else's.
AND with BD, you'll likely have access to much higher quality audio even if
TV "as is" can't do anything with it (yet). Dolby Digital is a 1991 standard but that's as good as a stock
TV can do. Eventually, we hope Apple will decide to get toe-to-toe with BD on modern audio standards. If so, maybe
TV 5 or 6 will unlock the audio upgrade.
AND with BD, you don't have to worry about the yanked availability. With iTunes media, should a Studio decide to yank a video that you have forgotten to download and store locally, your copy of the movie will simply be gone. Search for the multitude of threads where iTunes movie buyers learn this the hard way. Then, go buy a fat hard drive or two and start downloading the media you've left parked in iCloud if this applies to you. Or get your "my movies are gone" thread content ready when movies you think you own are yanked right out of your iCloud locker.
AND with BD, you have a hard backup if the hard drive where you store your media dies and you don't have a backup (shame on you), or if both drives die. You can always fall back to the ultimate backup and restore your media collection.
AND with BD, you can usually find a lower price for most movies. If not new discs in bargain bins, there's also a whole used market where BD can get down to just a few dollars (and yet they play their content as pristine as any new disc). Where's that used market (pricing) for iTunes media? Where's that swap market for iTunes media?
BD is probably the last of the mediums for "owning" a copy of a movie. iTunes is ushering in a concept of "lifetime lease*" with the Studios retaining the right to yank any media from iCloud at any time (so it's not necessarily "lifetime" unless you download a copy to a local drive). iTunes definitely wins on the convenience front but just about every other benefit one can have by going the BD route favors the latter.
