dvdshonna

That's really exceptional. Don't know anyone personally that has done
as well with their LCD TVs. It's not like I've done a survey. Mostly going
by reviews on the Walmart site. It seems like there are a lot of unhappy
people complaining about TVs, "dead on arrival", picture problems
or the screen going within 6 months, etc.

Anyway sounds like you got a really good buy.

--
http://buzzhonna.tumblr.com

Spottedfeather

My first player was in April 4th, 2001. It was an RCA (the model number escapes me) and the first dvd I ever got was Highlander 10th Anniversary Director's Cut. A little while later, I got the 5 free dvds that you'd get when you bought that particular player.

Fools Rush In
The Mask
Analyze This
Get Shorty
The Jackal

Regulus

That's because I didn't buy it from Walmart!

MBoyd

It was around the end of May 1999 pr the beginning of June maybe. Bought a Pioneer player at Best Buy out of loyalty to Pioneer's laserdisc years. Considered buying a combo player, but the reviews weren't that good. I'd planned to buy one of the high end LD players and use it with the DVD player but never did.

Fry's had a huge selection of movies So the same day I got my player I went over there and bought Austin Powers, 2001, and 5-6 more I don't remember.

Found dvdtalk, went coupon crazy and had an average of 3 movies a week sent to me that year I bet. Maybe more.

I keep trying to remember the name of that online media store that was opened by I want to say an ex-Disney exec. They sent out an apology coupon code to certain people for some mishap. The coupon code was the same for everyone and multi use. It got leaked on dvdtalk and usenet and everyone ordered DVDs at 50% off an already discounted price. Still cant believe the orders were honored. this all happened in June of '99. I had two huge orders myself.

Any old timers remember that stores name? It was shuttered within a year.

RayChuang

For a long time, I never bought a DVD player because players were pretty expensive for the good models (the cheap Apex models were for the most part junk). It wasn't until the spring of 2003 I finally bought a DVD player, one that I still use to this day: a Panasonic DVD-S35, which is connected to my 26" LCD TV in the kitchen using component video connections running in 480p mode.

(By the way, does anyone remember the furor nine years ago when DVD player manufacturers started to go away from the Faroudja DCDi de-interlacing technology for 480p video in favor of their own technologies? I remember the DVD-S35 as one of the first Panasonic models to offer 480p progressive scan component video not processed with the DCDi method, and all heck broke loose on multiple forums over this change.)

adrenaline78

My first dvd player was a sony. I want to say early-mid 98. I can't remember the model # and don't want to get up and look. It still works although since I bought the PS3 I don't use it anymore.

My first dvd was the Fifth Element that came in the CD size Jewel case. Still have it too.

Josh-da-man

My first player was a Toshiba I got at the tail end of 1998. Don't remember the model number; was it a 2008? Only had S-video and composite output.

The first DVD movie I bought was "Devil's Advocate" for $24.98. I got that one about four months before I got a player and paid retail for it because it was one of the original pressings, before they had to censor the statue.

By the time I got a DVD player, I had acquired about fifteen or DVDs so I had plenty of things to watch on it. I also eBay'ed the five free DVDs I got with my player (Lost in Space, City of Angels, Sphere, Perfect Murder, US Marshals) and was able to pay for a good chunk of my player that way. Hard to believe there was a time when people on eBay would actually pay more for DVDs on eBay than they sold for at Best Buy.

I actually used that same DVD player for ten years until I upgraded to an HDTV in 2008 when I got a Toshiba DVD-recorder that upconverts to 1080p, and a Sony blu-ray player a year or so later. I had been getting blu-rays before that, though, since I could watch on my girlfriend's PS3.

kd5

I was probably one of the last holdouts here to buy a DVD Player, I had a relatively (by my standards) large collection of VHS videos and was reluctant to make the change to DVD. I'm still using the first DVD/VHS Combo player I ever bought (Sony SLV-D550P), I've had it for several years now, it's still going strong (knock on wood). I'll probably be one of the last holdouts to make the change to a blu-ray player as well, as long as my DVD player holds out. If it ever dies I'll probably make the change but since I've already made the conversion once (from VHS to DVD) I probably won't do it again (to blu-ray).

To Mister Peepers: I know I don't have to convert my DVDs to blu-ray, no need to remind me...

I don't remember what the first DVD I ever bought was, I think it might have been the Ultimate Edition of Legend but I won't swear to it. -kd5-

milo bloom

Our Samsung LCD we got from Fry's will be, I think, 4 years old this summer. If it anything happens to it, it will be from being constantly moved around the house as my wife redoes the living room *yet again!* and I were to drop it.


And as for laserdisc, I actually bought into that well after I got into DVD. I wanted things like the original Star Wars films and a few other things, and for a while you could get LD players dirt cheap at any pawn shop. It seems like the supply has dried up a bit, but then just a few weekends ago I scored a Pioneer CLD-D503 for $6.99 at Goodwill, and then sold off my old 201 plus a few discs for more than that. Just need to find a remote and I'm good to go.

darkhawk

I remember when I first saw dvds in Florida. I was a taxi driver and stopped to look in a Montgomery Wards for their VHS tapes. I walked by and saw their showroom where they keep new furniture and tvs. I glanced in and saw 4 Sony dvds and a player in a glass case. I saw Jumanji, Legend of the Fall, Fly Away Home and (I don't remember the 4th one.) I was excited and stopped buying vhs tapes. The players were too expensive at the time. I started buying 1 or 2 dvds at a time without a player just to replace the vhs tapes I owned. When I hear that Men in Black was coming out later the next year, I started saving to buy a player just to get it. Even though MIB was delayed, I still bought the player.

bboisvert

I felt the same way. LD was just starting to scrape the barrel (in a *good* way) and put out great editions of obscure stuff.

I was worried that DVD was going to hit the reset button -- and the quality of most initial titles was LD at best... and sometimes below that standard. I definitely saw it as the end of a good thing.


A couple of years later, it was pretty clear that it was the start of an *amazing* thing.

orangerunner

Yeah, I seem to remember Jumanji, Legends of the Fall, Single White Female and In the Line of Fire being the first DVDs I saw for sale.

I also recall Universal titles like Backdraft being sold in CD jewel cases as well.

Alan Smithee

"The Mask" was the first DVD to have an audio commentary (originally recorded for laserdisc, of course!) The first porno on DVD was "Bobby Sox" from Vivid (which I have on Video CD, not too exciting. Interestingly it was also issued on laserdisc, not too many Vivid titles were.) I think Eric Clapton Unplugged and REM's Road Movie were the first music discs.

First 2-disc set was Metallica's Cunning Stunts, first multi-disc set was From The Earth to the Moon, first DVD-18 (2 sided with dual layer on both sides) was The Stand (sadly reissued as 2 1-sided discs later.) First movie to be issued a 2nd time on DVD (to be later known as a 'double-dip') was Animal House, first issued in 4x3 with no extras, then as a special edition in 16x9.

Anyone have the funny cases Disney used for their first releases (which were 4x3 transfers of George of the Jungle and Homeward Bound, both of which were letterboxed on LD)? They were white and shaped slightly different than a regular keepcase, I think they were wider and a bit thinner. Wondering what they looked like inside. I never got any of their discs when they had the red stickers outside saying "Special Features Include: Chapter Search". They weren't doing 16x9 til much later, and were among the highest priced. Warner's first discs had a silver sticker on the outside with the WB shield and listing special features like "Widescreen and Standard Versions", multiple languages and theatrical trailers. I cut out and saved those, as I always have done with media that includes such stickers. Most of New Line's earlier discs said on the back cover: "It's more than just the movie!" The VERY first Sony titles in keepcases had a small sticker inside explaining how to remove and replace the disc- I have a demo disc which shows one, but never got a case with that in it. (Who decided to call them keepcases anyways?) Universal's jewel cases also had cardboard slips, similar to Philips' VideoCD movies. Wish I had grabbed one of them when I had the chance.

Remembered that PolyGram was going to release "Portrait of a Lady" as a rental-priced disc, but as far as I know that didn't actually happen. And let's not forget the lowest-priced and fastest-produced disc, President Clinton's Grand Jury Testimony, sold by Netflix for 2 cents plus about 2 bucks shipping- need to find time to watch that again.

Internet retailers that came along selling cheap DVDs included Reel, Shopping.com, Bigstar, 800.com Buy.com and DVDExpress. I'm sure there were others I'm forgetting. Ironically I couldn't take advantage of many of those deals since I had spent a fortune on my player and sound system along with my TV which wasn't fully paid for, and took about a year to pay it all off. (Word to the wise- don't buy stuff on credit totaling several times more than what you have in your bank account!)

JCWBobC

I can't remember when I bought my first DVD player but I know it was in January because I remember it was in the middle of a massive snow storm. I'm thinking it was 1999 because the prices had started to come down on DVD players to around $399. I bought a Toshiba at 6th Ave. on Route 4 in NJ and as soon as we got in the car I opened the box to look at the instructions and there were food stains and someone had written in it. We turned right around and took it back. The manager made a big deal about walking around the box to check it out and told me he had no idea how it happened, well first he suggested that the food stains happened in the factory but they I also mentioned how the remote had the batteries in it. He ended up giving me a better model and a free DVD so I got Disturbing Behavior with Katie Holmes for free.

Before DVDs were released I had been reading all the electronic and video magazines so I made my boss, I managed a video store at that time, order the first 20-30 titles that were released. I don't really remember which ones they were but I remember customer's asking what they were and having to describe them. The funny part is people would bring them to the counter without knowing what they were or owning a DVD player. The store went out of business in 1999 so I grabbed a bunch of titles and we sold the rest. When we only had about 20 left a customer asked me to hold them for him while he ran to the ATM to get money for them and he didn't even own a DVD player but we were only selling them for around $5 barely used.

The oldest title I found in my discs is The Usual Suspect from 1996. It's in aplastic case with a black pull out piece at the bottom but nothing to hold the disc in place. I know I ordered Austin Powers and Wild Things when I bought my player so those are probably the first two I actually paid for but I had been watching the store DVDs since they were first released.

JCWBobC

On a related note does anyone remember a DVD web site where they would give away a free DVD every month or every other month? I still have the original Night of the Living Dead DVD and some others but I can't remember the name of the site.

Update:

I just checked the discs and on the back side it says "Total Movie & InsideDVD content" so it must have been InsideDVD. Anyone remember all the titles they gave away?

milo bloom

Didn't Total Movie also do those discs that were full of trailers and short films? I have two like that, one of them has the Star Wars fan film Troops.

JCWBobC

I think so but I don't know what happened to my discs of those.

Alan Smithee

That free disc was originally called VersaDisc, then InsideDVD, then took over Total Movie when the first owners of that went bust and soon went bust themselves soon afterwards. I never got the first 2 (one included the movie "Telling Lies in America", I forget what the other had) even though I had sent for them. The first one I got had "Infinity" with Matthew Broderick and I got all the rest after that. Quality on those was awful, and tons of spelling errors in the menus and such. The last "Total Movie" had a pan and scan copy of "Species" with awful mono sound that seemed like it had been processed in some way- hollow is how I'd describe it. They said they'd be including other MGM titles in their further issues, but that was their last one.

Another interesting memory is how early the budget video companies got into DVD, many before Fox and Paramount did. The first cheapo DVD I bought was Metropolis from Madacy for about 9 bucks, it made me laugh seeing a stretch mark from the analog master tape! I bought a number of Simitar titles (they were the first DVD label to go out of business, by the way) from Circuit City just because I couldn't believe they were selling for $4.99. Many of them I still haven't watched yet. I used to pick up EVERY DVD priced under 5 bucks, but I'd be out of shelf space if I still did that, and $5 actually seems high now for a DVD after being spoiled by Big Lots' $3 discs!

I still think in terms of laserdisc prices however, and will usually gladly pay anything under $30 for something I really want, especially if it's on Blu-Ray.

IDrinkMolson

1st "player" I owned came with a DELL PC I bought in 1999. Then I got a Sony theater in a box 5 disc changer.
1st movie was Eyes Wide Shut (rental)
Didn't buy anything until Complete Superman Collection.

davidh777

First DVD player was a Sony in summer of 1999 for about $349. I was a minor VHS collector at the time (LA Confidential, Con Air) but I stopped buying those when I realized I was going to get a DVD player.

As I just posted in the other thread (do you still own your first DVD?), my first purchase was Casablanca (MGM), LA Confidential (snapper), Seven Samurai (Criterion), and Ran (Fox Lorber). I also got Lost in Space, The Devil's Advocate, and something else with my player.

Still remember the glory days of price wars among DVD Express, Reel, and Amazon. Got Titanic from Reel for 50% off plus a free copy of The Shining (which I still haven't watched and later got in the Kubrick box). Piled up the Criterions when all pre-orders were 40% off.

Rexxriot

If I remember correctly, InsideDVD was free, then when they became Total Movie, it was $40 for a year subscription. I believe that when you signed up, you were supposed to get like 20 double sided DVDs with probably public domain movies. I never got them and mostly forgot about it until this thread.

d2cheer

Toshiba SD something purchased in Dec of 1999 same month I joined here. First DVD was the Anchor Bay LE 2 DVD set of Army of Darkness. Actually had that before I bought my player.

Got 5 free movies with it like Stepmother...can't remember the rest.

DeanoBKN

A local department store was giving away 2 free movies with the purchase of an RCA DVD player back in June of 1998, so I picked up Hoodlum and Air Force One, both of which I still own today. The DVD player died a long time ago.

Oh, the money I wasted on barebones releases back in the day...

zyzzle

DVD is older than 15 years. Some DVDs were released in Japan in 1996. The MPEG2 compression codec has been around nearly 20 years now! (late '93-early '94)

This brings back memories. I, too was skeptical of DVD's quality, based on the video-CDs I had seen. In March / April 1997, I saw the DVD demos at Frys and actually could have purchaed some of the first titles ($19.95 each!). I remember thinking that the slow camera pans in the demo were intentional because fast camera movement would certainly show the inferiority of the MPEG 2 compression compared to non-compressed Analog. As a longtime LD owner (Pioneer CLD-704, yeah!), I didn't give in until 2000 when I got a Toshiba DVD player from 800.com (I think?) for $159.

I had actually purchased my first DVD a year before at Ken Cranes. It was Anchor Bay's IMPULSE (1984). Talk about an impulsive buy!

UAIOE

My first DVD player was/is a Sony DVP-530D. I got it for xmas 1999 and it still works. $290 after employee discount.

The first movie I owned was "The Matrix", but the first I watched was "American Pie". I just remember being totally blown away that a movie was available to own six months after being in theaters.