Norm de Plume

I can't remember the very first DVD I bought back around 1998, but one of the first was a blind buy, a good paranoia drama/thriller called Stuart Bliss.

milo bloom

You know, I didn't mention my first, and I still have it actually and it's also a James Bond flick since we're talking about them: it was the silver cover special edition of Tomorrow Never Dies. I bought it even before I had my player because I was afraid it would be hard to find if I didn't.

Then I bought the first three single disc editions of the South Park episodes from the first season. We watched the hell out of those four DVDs until the used market came into existence and I could afford more discs.

morriscroy

Did this version of "Tommorow Never Dies" have the 4:3 fullscreen AND 16:9 widescreen versions BOTH on the same single-sided dvd disc?

(ie. In the first menu screen, there was an option to choose either the widescreen or fullscreen version to watch).

morriscroy

The second dvd I purchased was Total Recall, which I purchased at the same time as that first Terminator2 dvd. Though I never actually opened up the Total Recall dvd package.

When I played that defective Terminator2 dvd disc that froze twenty minutes into the movie, subsequently I went back to the retail store and got a refund for both dvd titles.

BobO'Link

It's interesting - I've done sound mixing professionally and what I read was "excuse/excuse/excuse/etc" with no one accepting the blame for creating mixes where the *voices* are at most 25% on a meter with sfx and music pushing 100% (if not close to clipping) on the vast majority of movies. I've yet to purchase a "current" movie (made in the last 20 years) that has a *properly* done stereo only mix in English. You get them for every language *but* English. English mixes are 5.1/7.1 and sound simply horrible on standard consumer equipment. They might sound "OK" if you have a system capable of playing such mixes properly but few people do. The mixes I hear at home sound no different than what I hear in the theater - and they're almost always horribly done. When someone's speaking intelligibly and you *still* can't hear it because the voice is just too low in the mix then someone's not done a good job. I stopped going to the theater as much due to "bad" sound mixes as the "quality" of the patrons. If you have to strain to hear a "whisper" on a movie sound track the person mixing the audio hasn't done their job. Sometimes that means a "whisper" must be turned up on the track and be louder than you'd expect just so it can be heard. In order to *properly* hear dialog you not only need "actors" who can enunciate properly but the voice levels *must* be at least 75% as loud as the loudest thing on an audio track and *that's* just not happening.

One of the audio people commented on directors who overuse music to convey emotion when there's *none* present in the dialog. That's a huge pet peeve of mine. I like to quote Roger Ebert in those cases:
That rarely happens these days. It frequently blows you out of your seat and works hard to be the auditory focus at all times.

milo bloom

I just checked, it’s widescreen only.

I think the first batch of 007 DVDs were the ones in snapper cases and they were all dual sided. And I think they were a mix of Bond actors. I’ve been thinking it would be neat to have collection of those first few Bond titles but I *never* see those snapper case versions at the used shops. Plenty of all the other releases but not those.

Travis McClain

I'll go you one further: Closed captions for commentary tracks and other supplemental features! I've found a handful of releases with captions for those things, but it's a tiny sliver of discs I've ever watched.

Also: Selling DVD's with Full Screen and Widescreen versions makes sense for that early transitional phase, but they did everyone a disservice by selling separate discs entirely. That only encouraged holding onto pan & scan and the phobia against black bars on a screen.

With TV series that have already concluded, it's woefully misguided to decide whether to release subsequent seasons based on how well the first season sells. If someone is a dedicated enough fan to want to own a TV series on disc in the first place, they almost certainly want a complete series box set and are willing to wait for that.

When my wife left, I was fine with almost everything she took, except Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which I can at least understand taking) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (which made no sense since she actively disliked it!). I eventually replaced both with Blu-rays, but still...!

That was the Walmart exclusive variant. It should have also included a replica poker chip.

That was its first release, in 1998. I bought it on VHS since I didn't have a DVD player or any expectation of getting one at that time. It was the box set with a copy of the shooting script, some photos, and a second tape with the Secrets of 007 doc that's a special feature on the DVD. in hindsight, that was a prelude to what's come later with Blu-ray releases rarely having any of the fun bells and whistles of DVD's.

Made all the worse by the fact that what passes for movie music today is generally droning audio wallpaper.

morriscroy

Did this Walmart exclusive exist for a 16:9 widescreen dvd version with the deck of cards (and chip) ?

By the time I found these longbox variants of Casino Royale with the deck of cards, I only ever saw the 4:3 fullscreen versions. I have never seen a widescreen dvd version of this walmart exclusive with a deck of cards.

morriscroy

There was a now rare dvd version of "The Man With The Golden Gun" from that initial batch in the late 1990s, which was botched.

Apparently when that Man With The Golden Gun dvd disc was first mastered, the encryption title key was abruptly changed at the layer change. Some dvd players didn't know how to handle this abrupt change in encryption keys, where the video was played scrambled for a few seconds or longer at the disc layer change.

I don't know if MGM ever recalled / replaced this defective version at the time.

Travis McClain

Yep! I owned the Widescreen version. Found this one on eBay in case you're curious.

Since we've ended up going down the Bond DVD rabbit hole, I remain fascinated how consistently underwhelming Bond DVD and Blu-ray cover art has been. It's especially baffling given how nifty so much of the poster artwork has been over the years. That said, I have a certain fondness for the Special Edition DVD's from 1999-2000. I bought them a la carte, but later bought empty slipcases for the three box sets on eBay. Awhile after I bought my first DVD player, I splurged on a surround sound system. GoldenEye was the first movie I watched with that. I was giddy. I can't remember if I bought it the same day, or if I already had GoldenEye.

Also, in 2003 when Die Another Day was released, Costco ran a promotion where if you pre-ordered from them for $17.99 (including free shipping!), you got to pick one your choices of either Moonraker or The World Is Not Enough free. It was convenient for me because Moonraker was the last one I hadn't bought and I didn't want to actually pay to buy it. There are things I do like about Die Another Day, plus I was interested in all the bonus features. It always kinda bummed me out that they deviated from the package layout they'd used for all the others, which was somewhat ironic given that it actually included elements from the poster campaign.

morriscroy

Did your widescreen dvd copy (from that wallymart variant with the deck of cards) have tons of "extra basketcase drm" which caused playback problems on some dvd players? (As mentioned in that Netflix official list of "sick" basketcase Sony dvds circa 2007).

This particular "extra basketcase drm" on some Casino Royale dvd discs, is easy to spot. Place the dvd disc into a computer dvd drive, and see what files are listed in the /VIDEO_TS directory. The "extra basketcase drm" version will have tons of IFO and VOB files labeled from 01 to 99.

In contrast if there is no "extra basketcase drm", the VIDEO_TS directory will only have a small quantity of IFO and VOB files labeled from 01 to around 08 or so.

I eventually found a generic mass market two-disc Sony release of the widescreen dvd of Casino Royale at a goodwill for $1. This particular copy did not have any "extra basketcase drm". It was authored just like any other generic movie dvd disc.

Travis McClain

Oh, hell, I have no idea. I traded in the DVD several years ago during one of my periodic purges. I don't remember having any playback issues. I watched it once when I first got it, including the special features. After that, I can't say with any confidence whether I even watched it a second time. Re-watching it just before Quantum of Solace opened sounds like me, but that was before I tracked at-home viewings so I can't say. By time Quantum came out on disc, we'd bought a Blu-ray player and I upgraded Casino Royale. That's what I've watched since.

morriscroy

Did you get the Sony or the Fox version of the Casino Royale bluray?

I remember reading some complaints about the Sony bluray version, about the video being cropped slightly wrong in some scenes. Though I haven't been able to figure out which scenes were problematic, compared to the Fox bluray version.


Other than having different corporate logos, the only other big difference I noticed immediatly was that the Sony version used a very early MKB version of the AACS encryption keys. (Every time hackers crack the current bluray AACS encryption keys, the AACS folks revoke the old compromised keys and issue new ones. This is seen in the MKB file being updated on newer released bluray discs).

The Fox bluray had a later MKB version of the encryption keys reflective of the early 2010's time period. (At the current time, the bluray MKB has been revised more than 75 times already since bluray's inception in 2006).

mndtrp

I picked up my first DVD player and DVDs in May 2000. I had graduated college, moved to a city, and was living in an extended stay hotel. It had a TV, but no VHS or anything. I worked an evening shift, so there was nothing really to watch when I got home around 1am. I went to either Best Buy or Circuit City to get a VHS player and some tapes, and realized for a reasonable amount more I could get the DVD player. I believe I picked up Three Kings and Next Friday as my first movies. DVD was awesome, even though the special features were in their infancy at the time. I remember seeing a ton of special feature listings that basically included just the trailer and chapter selection. Being able to skip to specific sections of the movie was really nice, especially when I started picking up concert DVDs. Once the special features really kicked into high gear, I learned a ton about movie making. Selecting angles was another really cool thing, although sparingly used, as I only had a few, and they were also concert discs.

Initially, I bought pan and scan discs. It probably wasn't until after I joined here that I got serious about getting the correct aspect ratio, 2004. I didn't have a proper 16x9 tv until somewhere around 2010, but the discs were all set and ready. Boxed sets of franchises were awesome. Small size, special features for days, so cool.

I sort of lament the change to streaming, but it's ultimately better for me these days. I miss the special features, especially the in-depth behind the scenes stuff. I do miss really diving into a movie, watching it repeatedly because my selection wasn't huge. However, I'm exposed to a lot more now, can find things I wouldn't have if I had to rely on buying a disc from somewhere, and it's so much cheaper. Watching movies/tv these days is more of something to pass the time as opposed to something I used to consider more of a hobby. Life is totally different now, though, and I'm not able to expend as much effort into watching things as I could.

morriscroy

(On a rambling tangent about bond blurays).

This may sound really silly.

If I'm going to buy another 007 complete movies set (up to the current day), I would likely pick up a 25 movie bluray set released by Warner/Universal SDS if I can figure out that all the bluray discs are reauthored without the BD+ extra basketcase drm.

Apparently Fox was notorious for consistently using the extra basketcase drm BD+ on almost ALL of their bluray releases from October 2007 to Oct/Nov 2017.

The last time I saw any older catalog Bond dvds/blurays at the nearby Wallyworld, it appears it was just the old Fox inventory with a newer "Warner" sticker placed by hand over the old Fox information.

jjcool

You sure? I'm trying to find some listing for that, but I can't seem to. I have that widescreen set with the cards and chip, and my records say I got it at Best Buy.

Travis McClain

100% sure. Here's an announcement from MI6:
There's also this forum page on abj007.com with a rundown of the U.S. exclusives:

Best Buy - Corgi Aston Martin
Circuit City - Carta Mundi Replica Poker Chip
Target - Bond on Set book
Walmart - Poker Set

morriscroy

When dvd players first started appearing at then-nearby circuit city shops, I didn't intend on buying one at the time. (There were no bestbuy nor any independent audio/video equipment retailers nearby where I lived in those days, and I wasn't willing to drive around window shopping).

I was completely confused about the circuit city DIVX players, and the generic dvd players. Other than the DIVX specific discs being less than $10 a pop, while generic dvd movie discs were easily $20 a pop or higher.

Slightly earlier, I ended up buying a used vhs copy of Goldeneye for around $10. It was one of those multiple dozen copies a nearby video rental store had back when the Goldeneye vhs was first released. Usually this nearby video rental store would get several copies of a then-recently released popular VHS movie. After a year or so when the popularity of that particular vhs movie died down, they would dump the extra copies to the bargain bin for sale. (Typically after the vhs version starts showing up at a local retailer, such as wallymart, etc ...).

This was one of the last pre-recorded vhs movies I purchased.

morriscroy

What might have been.

In hindsight, the dvd working group(s) should have had the foresight to see that 1920 x 1080 high def resolution would have already been available in the early 2000s. Even if it was still using the mpeg2 codec, on a 30 gigabytes sized disc. Basically a primitive version of hd-dvd.

Though unfortunately, the blue colored lasers used in bluray players would have not been easily available at the time circa 1990s. The patents underlying blue colored lasers were in legal disputes, which were not settled until 2004.

jjcool

Weird. My records indicate I got my copy from Walmart, and I know I have the cards and poker chip.
Now that I read your post about the other exclusives, I want to say that I have one of those Corgi Aston Martins as well. Maybe I got both exclusives? Maybe I put in the wrong retailer when I entered it so many years ago?

Trevor

Other retailers versions/exclusives have been known to turn up at Walmart.

Travis McClain

It would make sense to have traded/sold/given away the DVD from Best Buy and kept the one in the Walmart box. How long after 2007 did you enter that record?

jjcool

I guess I could have done that. I wouldn't have kept two copies of the same movie, as the shelf with the bond films is quite full. My purchase date that I have recorded is March 19, 2007.

Travis McClain

It seems plausible that you bought both exclusives, kept only the DVD that went in the gift box with the poker set, and simply made an error when cataloging it. Were you using DVD Profiler, by chance? You may have entered the one from Best Buy first and didn't catch that it auto-filled that in the Retailer field.

To bring us back on track, DVD Profiler played a big part in my evolving feelings about my DVD (and Blu-ray) library. I started tracking at-home viewings when I started using Profiler. That gave me an organized look at what I(/we when I was still married) owned and hadn't watched. Also, because Profiler's default is to just organize everything alphabetically instead of by things like director, franchise, or genre, I started organizing my disc library that way. My wife was initially opposed to the idea but she let me try it. It won her over, though we had different ideas about how strict the system should be.For example, The Adventures of Indiana Jones* box set. (Aesthetically, that might be my favorite box set I've ever owned!) She felt it should be in the I's for Indiana Jones. I argued for the A's because the first word in the box set title for alphabetizing is "Adventures". I eventually won that one. For one thing, there were other multi-film collections that were nearly impossible to alphabetize without using the collection's title. An example would be the "Price-Lee Horror Collection", a cheap 2-disc set. One had three Vincent Price movies crammed onto it and the other had three with Christopher Lee. There was no franchise, as with Indy. Would you go by the first movie in the collection? That was House on Haunted Hill. Also, the box spine was so prominent there was no confusion where to find Indy.

*That Indy box set came out right around my birthday that year. My then-girlfriend/current ex-wife was excited to get it for me as a gift, which was exciting to receive... Except she bought the Full Frame version. I asked if it was okay for me to exchange it for the Widescreen version. She said it was, but she sulked about it for months. A few years later, we got our first widescreen TV. We spent a day binging those movies. She begrudgingly agreed I'd made the right choice.

milo bloom

I loved spending time on DvdAficionado. Checking out all the various releases of titles and seeing who owned what movies. It’s an absolute punch to the gut that the site was allowed to disappear like that. The idea of the digital landscape was supposed to be that we could have records of everything forever.

It still makes me a little sick that all the work we put into that was just flushed away.