Movie news, rumors, and invective can be found at Ain’t It Cool News. And it happened not just because of websites, but because every early DVD adopter became an evangelist for the format, until, within a few years, even the most casual home-video viewers found a reason to invest in DVD, at least alongside their trusty VCR. In fact, it won a few wars against DIVX, against the VHS rental market, against mainstream consumer technophobia. Looking for a few laughs? Looking back, we see there simply is no comparison between 1997 and 2007. Today, it’s not only possible, but affordable for the average consumer to own an excellent personal film collection and home-theater equipment. And then there was videotape itself bulky, non-indexed, and liable to warp, break, and degrade, it simply was not durable enough to satisfy film collectors. Even more frequently, long-requested titles remained (and still remain) off the market for years until studios could complete a print restoration and compile enough extra features to make even the most cynical of DVD consumers excited about an upcoming release (and yes, waiting for a landmark like King Kong was worth it). Dimming the lights: On August 26, 1997, Digital Video Disc made its unofficial debut, with Warner Home Video placing 61 titles in nationwide release after a six-month trial period in test markets.
Without that, DVD might look very different in 2007. Thanks to the Web, some titles that didn’t meet the high standards that the format itself promised were re-issued with improved transfers. Or the company might simplify the transaction by offering one, use-based fee. And this has been DVD’s true value-add. We’d all like to think that quality is what drove this format over the past decade, but that’s not entirely true. You couldn’t have a setup like that and, say, live in an apartment. And, in the end, even that hasn’t mattered much. This experiment with helium balloons and hot summer days will show you how — and how much. Music just hits different in the summer. MP3s don’t “record” either, but it’s the usability of downloadable, digitally compressed music that has caused it to supplant a good portion of CD sales, just as CDs replaced vinyl and cassettes, just as DVD has replaced movies on videotape, and just as broadband viewing options are bound to chip away at DVD’s market dominance in the foreseeable future. We also see Apple making forays into the digital living room, hoping to crest the sort of technological watershed with iTV that they’ve already crossed with the iPod and iTunes, putting downloadable movies on everyone’s set-top box just as they’ve put music in everyone’s pocket.
They kept the DVD industry honest by making sure that the earliest of consumers were radically informed about their purchases. These websites, and the others who followed in their wake, did more than just offer the latest industry gossip and movie reviews. The writers would like to extend thanks to everyone in the home-video industry we have had contact with over the past decade, from the hard-working publicists who do their best to get products out in advance of street-dates, to the miracle-worker technicians who have done the most challenging, and most important, job of all restoring classic films to the best condition possible, allowing us to enjoy them at home, and forever. For consumers willing to research via mouse-clicks, DVD websites have offered a wealth of details about any given DVD’s transfer quality and extras, often before new products reach store shelves. Combine that with the fact that websites could be published not just once a day, but updated several times per day, by multiple writers. The vanguard of DVD websites that arrived between 1997 and 1999 made the difference, trading out time and effort for the sake of improving the format, inspiring widespread consumer confidence, and waging an information war against the now-defunct pay-to-play DIVX format by Circuit City.
This is one time when the movies may have gotten smaller, but they also got better. For movie fans, the format has meant quality transfers, widescreen presentations (for many, seeing full ratios on old favorites for the first time), and a reason to buy good speakers and blackout curtains. Folks who didn’t have Laserdisc players and deep pockets could purchase some movies on VHS with widescreen transfers, but they came at a premium price. These professionally designed gardens may have the newest plants and creative ideas for combining them. Under that rock, someone, a miner or it may have been my friend, Black Bart, had buried a bondi round straw tote bag topshop of gold in five, ten and twenty dollar pieces, more than nine-hundred dollars in all. If it wasn’t a body, then Blair would have a whole lot more trouble ahead than if he simply had to explain to Jim about the overnight stay with Professor Duhrman.