I usually design Blu-Ray cases here, but for fun I thought I’d design a Blu-Ray player. The best theme for a player in my opinion is the Criterion Collection, something I’m sure many Cinephiles would agree with.

Criterion would look minimalistic and somewhat luxurious, so I enlisted wood paneling and aluminum for the main body. Gone are the electronic LCD panels, instead are a few printed card displays that are illuminated with bulb or LED lights. Buttons are also scarce here, only the power and eject buttons are on the face (the rest could be buried behind a panel elsewhere, I didn’t include it here).

One cosmetic feature is a single-hand clock that would display the progress of the film in lieu of a quartz timer. I personally think it looks really classy, especially with the Criterion ‘C’ on the face. For those who want to see specific time information, that could be displayed onscreen (via remote press - remote not shown).

There are two individual disc trays; for loading the feature disc and special features disc, or two completely different movies. I think this would be better than those 3 or 5 disc trays, allowing you to replace discs without interrupting one that is currently playing. Also you can quickly toggle between the two discs, because they would be loaded simultaneously.

And one feature that I think is really neat is a perch for parking your (empty) movie case. This perch has dramatic lighting to illuminate the case, showing off the case art and making this a theater marquee of sorts. The lights dim when the films plays, and come back on when the film is stopped.

This was just a fun exercise. In all likelihood such a player would look very conventional (cobalt black, LED display, single disc tray). Personally I’d like to see a flat design, something I pitched a long time ago.