There's no controversy, it's just an affection of the writer. They mention further down that there may be film purists who insist that movies are only correctly

There's no controversy, it's just an affection of the writer. They mention further down that there may be film purists who insist that movies are only correctly made and preserved in celluloid, but that luckily there's a "new generation of scholarship" interested in the history of home video. Apparently Leonard Maltin was part of this "new generation" when he wrote the Complete Guide to Home Video in 1981 :-P I find it extremely hard to believe that there's anybody academically involved in the history of cinema that would see this collection as without value and recommend putting it into the dumpster.