25 Years of DVD!
 

It's hard to believe but the DVD format was introduced to the North American market this week in 1997, apparently with the release of "Twister" from Warner Home Video.

Who would have thought with the release of Blu-ray 16 years ago and 4K 6 years ago, that DVD would still continue to be the most popular physical disc format.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainmen...-dvd-1.6245540

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Hoorah!

It’s been a heck of a journey. I was initially only interested in Star Trek and Star Wars but the format opened my eyes to so many more amazing stories.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Wow, that means DVD came out before I graduated high school--by a matter of months, but still, that's wild to me. I was the first of my circle of family and friends to get a DVD player, though I wasn't an immediate adopter. A coworker of mine was evangelical about original aspect ratio and finally convinced me some time in 1998. I collected widescreen VHS releases for awhile. One night after work, I finally got tired of waiting for Tombstone to get a widescreen VHS release so I splurged for an RCA RC5220P and the Tombstone DVD. I'm certain whenever I bought it was after 19 October 1999 because that was the day The Wizard of Oz Deluxe Edition came out and I bought it on VHS. There's no way I wouldn't have opted for DVD if I had the player at that time.

I know it sounds silly, but I genuinely appreciated that the DVD player included a navigable onscreen glossary. It helped me understand what all that machine could do to enhance my viewing experience beyond what VHS offered. I was especially fascinated by the foreign language audio dub tracks. My favorite of those tracks was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I showed that to some friends one night, just to marvel at the novelty of it. Years later, one friend admitted he resented me doing that because he thought I was trying to impress and steal his crush. I thought that hilarious. For the life of me, though, I cannot recall the first commentary track I ever played.

It came with a voucher for five free DVD's, but you had to pay the shipping. I passed at the time, as I didn't have enough interest in the offered group. A couple years ago, though, just on a lark I tracked down all of them. Somewhere around here I even started a thread about those offers but I'm too lazy to look for it. I do know that the quintet offered to me consisted of:

Lethal Weapon 4
Lost in Space
Six Days, Seven Nights
Stargate
Stepmom

Stargate was a flipper, and I don't mean WS on one side and FS on the other. I mean they actually broke the movie into two parts and you had to flip the disc to finish watching it. By far the most impressive of the lot was Lost in Space. That thing was packed to the gills with so many supplemental materials it puts contemporary Blu-ray treatments to shame. And it irks me that to this very day, that non-anamorphic DVD is the only disc release Six Days, Seven Nights has ever had.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I was a late adapter. I didn't get a DVD player until late 2000 or 2001. I actually bought my first two DVDs (Boogie Nights and Magnolia) months and months before I bought my player.

The player I bought also had a promo where you got a bunch of DVDs when mailed in your receipt. I got Lethal Weapon 4, Romeo Must Die, US Marshals, and one or two others I don't remember.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I had just gotten into collecting VHS tapes so I was very ready for the switch over to DVD. A friend had Laserdisc and DVD promised Laserdisc-like quality in a CD-sized package, so I was sold from the beginning.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I was late to the game and didn't get a player till 2001. My first dvd was Phantasm, as I only had like 12 dollaes after i bought the player and it was selling for 9.99

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I had one of those rare CRT widescreen sets I bought in 1996 that weight about 500 lbs. The most impressive thing to me was the anamorphic squeeze trick that greatly reduced the scan lines vs zooming the 4x3 letterbox image like you had to do on laserdisc. I thought this was a good as video would ever get! It would be about 7 years in between my first DVD player and my first 16x9 HDTV, so I got a lot of use out of that.

It blows my mind that you go to Redbox and it's still dominated by DVD's. I don't understand why this format won't die.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Back in the late 1990s, my first foray into dvd died abruptly (ie. doa).

The first dvd I purchased was Terminator 2, which froze around 20 minutes into the movie. Once frozen, the remote control couldn't do anything. I had to pull the plug on the dvd player and plug it back in, in order to eject the disc out.

This defective T2 dvd went back to the retailer, where I got a refund. Any possible "dvd collecting hobby" for me at the time, died a stillborn death that day.

It wasn't until more than a decade later, that I started buying a lot of dvds / blurays in 2011.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Boogie Nights was the 3rd DVD I bought, and it rotted after more than 10 years. I managed to find a sealed copy of the original issue which played fine.

VHS lasted for roughly 30 years before it was finally put to rest. There's not even a big difference in prices on Blu-Ray players anymore and those still play regular DVDs, so no reason for DVD-only players to keep being made.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I got the same offer. Watched the hell out of that Stargate disc. Lethal Weapon got spun up a few times as that was the one with Pesci and Jet Li. Six Days and Seven Nights got watched once. Somehow the chemistry between Harrison Ford and Anne Heche just wasn't believable. I have no memory of ever watching Lost in Space, but I'm sure I did because of Heather Graham. Stepmom I know I never watched. Ever.

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I think Jumanji was one of my freebies, it was the one in the CD sized jewel case.
I remember having Lost In Space very early, not sure if it was a freebie or if I actually bought it. I enjoyed it actually, was never a fan of the old show, but the new movie was a lot of fun. I keep meaning to look for a cheap blu-ray copy to upgrade.

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I have a theory that the notion of Harrison Ford and Anne Heche being "unbelievable" was one of those things where someone started that narrative and it influenced everyone else. I went through contemporaneous reviews, and whenever that topic was addressed, it was linked to Heche having just come out of the closet. That peripheral subject became the thing everyone talked about. I loved the movie and thought they had terrific chemistry. I hadn't seen Ford play such a fun role in quite awhile by then, and Heche played great against him. I would encourage you to give it another viewing at some point. Just make sure you stream it and don't resort to its singular DVD release unless you like pillarboxing.

Regarding Stepmom, it's something of a guilty pleasure of mine. I think Julia Roberts is fantastic in it. And to pilfer from what I wrote elsewhere about it, there's just something wild to me about the very existence of a movie like this. Columbia spent $50 million to make this. Director Chris Columbus even secured John Williams to score it. John Williams! They opened it on Christmas, and it was #2 that weekend. All of that is unthinkable in today's movie landscape.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Oh, memories. I was a fairly early adopter. I think I got my first player Christmas 1997. It came with one DVD, Jim Carrey's The Mask, and a form to send off for a couple more.

I know we often talk about the early Internet days and the crazy DVD deals that could be had, but I don't hear people talk as much about the WB and MGM free movie deals. Both distributors (they were completely separate then) offered deals. They might have both been buy 4 get 1 free, though one might have been buy 3. Anyway, you'd send in your receipts, proof of purchases, and select which DVD you wanted. Six weeks later or so, your new DVD would arrive. I got a number of movies that way.

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I got my first player, an RCA for $399, in June of 1998 from Bradlees. I remember it came with your choice of two free movies. I got Hoodlum and Air Force One, then also purchased Tomorrow Never Dies. I still remember many of the free movie deals, the glory days of Reel.com, anxiously awaiting the Circuit City & Best Buy flyers to leak so I could plan my New Release buying, and of course finding this forum.

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I was graduating college and had some money to play around with so I got this new fangled thing called a 5.1 surround home theatre. :p

My first DVD was The Matrix.

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That was a small portion of it, but not the main issue I remember having with the film. The bigger factor for me was that Ford was almost twice her age. That just screamed creepy to me.

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That's a fair point. That can bother me, too. I got into Audrey Hepburn in the last few years and her filmography is terrifying in this regard. I didn't have an issue with it in Six Days, Seven Nights, though. I think it was in part because women I know in real life have kept him on the list of "older guys who still have it" so I believe Anne Heche's character would be attracted to him. His character is rather immature, which undercuts his age to an extent, too.

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My first "DVD player" was a top-of-the-line PC (custom built specifically for game playing) with a "huge" 19" CRT. I insisted on a DVD drive (as well as a CD burner - IIRC there were no combo CDRW/DVD drives at that time) as I envisioned PC software coming out on DVD rather than several CDs. It was purchased in the spring of 1999. The first *movie* disc I purchased was The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended edition. While the graphics card had video outputs its location in relation to the TV was not conducive for running the cables so I watch it on the 19" monitor. It would be 3 or 4 more years before I splurged on a stand-alone DVD player to connect to my TV. By then I had a small collection of movies. That stand-alone player was in the $100-$150 range (don't remember exactly - just that my wife complained about the amount and I thought I'd gotten a bargain).

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My wife pushed me to get a DVD ROM drive in the early days but I really wanted a regular player to watch on our TV.
Looking back, I probably should have done that to get a cheaper drive to start off with, and had something to watch movies while browsing on the internet.

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Would your computer and internet speed have supported watching a movie while browsing on the internet at that time?

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You know, after I posted that I had that thought regarding that.

But the stuff I was browsing at the time was text only message boards (like during ST Voyager's original run), so it might have been okay, plus my wife has been building her own computers since the late 80s and probably would have made sure it was souped up a bit to handle it.

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Not sure what year I adopted the format but I remember I put a Sony DVD player, DVDs of Blade Runner The Director's Cut, Taxi Driver, 2001 A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and Pink Floyd's The Wall in layaway.

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I didn't get into it until 2003 when I bought a PS2. First DVD was Jackass: The Movie

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I was late to the hobby with a Toshiba SD-1800 player that came with Eyes Wide Shut and Any Given Sunday. I still have the player and it still runs well.

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They gave you Eyes Wide Shut to inaugurate your new DVD player? There needs to be a documentary about how that decision was made.

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It was the unrated version to boot! I'm sure someone at Toshiba was reprimanded for that decision! :lol:

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...And someone at Warner was congratulated for that deal!

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That's what's missing today. There's just no real excitement anymore. I'm sure a lot of people have gotten fatigue by now, but the industry could at least be trying a bit more to push 4K discs and stuff like that. Instead they're trying to cripple discs by releasing new movies on digital early, and they seem to know there's no excitement in that. I click "Buy" and now I have access to this movie- yay.

What really sucks is Best Buy put many real media retailers out of business by undercutting them on pricing. It was only after most of them were gone when they decided "You know, we really don't want to sell this stuff anyways."

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

For me, it goes back to the days of VHS rental. Because of the nature of that business model, you only rented something if you were committed to watching it that night, or at least within however many days your rental period spanned. The viewing experience was private, in your own home with your own family and/or friends, but the rental store was a public, communal environment. You'd browse the shelves next to strangers, maybe make small talk. "Have you seen that? Is it any good?" Even if you didn't interact with anyone but the clerk, that itself was some kind of engagement. If you went in wanting to rent something specific, there was the chance you'd be disappointed because there wouldn't be any copies available. When you found there was one, though, it was a bit of a thrill. Movies should be thrilling. There was no "put it on for background noise" attitude about rented movies.

As the home video market shifted from rental to retail, and from VHS to DVD, that kinda died off but it lived on in a way on New Release Tuesday. Even if it was only a virtual shared experience of chatting on here about the scavenger hunts for retailer exclusive variants, that was something. The best, though, were the Star Wars DVD releases. Those got midnight release events. Here in my small town, that consisted of the Walmart electronics department worker bringing out the box to stock the shelves while a handful of us nerds stood around waiting to get our grubby little paws on them. It was paltry, but it called to mind those VHS rental store experiences.

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Right when the format debuted there was nonstop asking "When is Star Wars coming out?" And that was before Fox had even started releasing anything on the format, they were the last major studio to join. That release was a non-event to me though since they weren't the original versions, and had even been tweaked further than the 1997 special editions which were at least shown in theaters.

I'd stopped renting movies by the time DVD came out, I switched to laserdisc in 1993 and there were only a handful of places that rented those, and by 1997 there was only one place left. I worked at a theater so I already saw most of the current movies. I remember in the VHS days though when you were lucky enough to be in the store when a new release would get returned and put back on the shelf, you almost felt obligated to rent it then. I don't know how that was by the time DVD came around, I'd vowed never to rent them because the studios were threatening to start pricing those the same as VHS which thankfully never happened.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

This particular mindset remained with me, long after my first dvd purchase of a defective Terminator2 dvd which froze 20 minutes into the movie. The time period limit for me, was the number of weeks where a dvd could still be returned/exchanged at the retailer. I would not buy any dvds which I was not willing to watch immediately from start to finish, and all the special features.

In those days, there was no easy way to check for unreadable bad sectors on dvd discs due to manufacturing defects, other than watching through the entire movie from start to finish.

Once I figured out that it only takes around 11 minutes for a computer to check through an entire dvd disc for bad sectors (due to manufacturing defects), this completely changed how I thought of dvd discs.

One of the big reasons why I never got into 4Kbluray, was that it takes over an hour to check a fully packed 4Kbluray for bad sectors on the computer. If it is taking a computer over an hour to check for manufacturing defects on a particular 4Kbluray discs, then I mind as well just watch the entire movie by just playing the actual disc.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Remember how people reacted in 2000 when Episode I was released only on VHS and George Lucas said he DVD wasn't a priority? That was a -popcorn-moment for me. As for the OT DVD release in '04, I had mixed feelings. Replacing Marjorie Eaton and Clive Revill with Ian McDiarmid in Empire worked for me (though I prefer the original dialogue). Replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen in Jedi did not. I'm sure I've watched the DVD's far fewer times than I ever watched my 1992 box set. Hell, I probably watched the original making-of VHS, From "Star Wars" to "Jedi": The Making of a Saga more. In fairness, though, by time the DVD box set came out, my interest had largely shifted from revisiting favorites frequently to chancing new things with my viewing time.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I held off a bit, saying I would wait for either Star Trek or Star Wars to be released because I figured that once one did, the other would follow. So when Paramount finally started releasing TOS on two episodes per disc DVDs I got serious about joining the format.

But we all know how that went and eventually I began exploring other sci fi and even horror titles that I never would have seen if I hadn’t been on forums like this.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

This sums-up how I feel about the all-you-can-consume model of today. It's great that everything is dirt-cheap and accessible but the trade-off is nothing has any resonance or long-term worthiness.

Think about how we used to watch TV before the VCR? TV shows were important. I kept an old TV Guide magazine from 1981 (Vancouver, BC, Canada, medium-sized city at the time) and it was shocking how little choice there was in any given time-slot. PrimeTime on Tuesday night there were maybe 3 or 4 shows to choose from. No wonder 30 million people tuned into M*A*S*H*, "Dallas" or "ABC Sunday Night Movie" every week!

PrimeTime TV shows never just played in the background, you had to adjust your schedule around these shows or otherwise you'd have to wait for a re-run in the summer months if you missed an episode. Everything is available where-ever and whenever you want and while the convenience is appreciated, the down-side is there's no sense of importance or significance revolving around TV shows or movies anymore.

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I got my first DVD Player in 1999. I had to get an adaptor to make it work with my older TV at the time, but I loved it! The picture was cleaner and crisper than VHS or even LaserDisc. And they were small and didn't take up as much storage space as those other formats.

I miss the days when I could walk in to WalMart and see a huge DVD section. I always found at least a handful of stuff that I wanted, and bought at least one of them.

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There's another byproduct of this: People my age and older aren't nearly as spoilerphobic as younger people. We treated shows more like gossip than anything else. The next day's conversation went like this:

Person A: Did you see [show] last night?
Person B: No, what happened?

As for movies, they had up to five waves of buzz. There was the initial theatrical release wave, which had a smaller second wave when the movie hit second run theaters. Then came the third wave: home video release, by which time we'd kinda forgotten that initial buzz from the first wave. For quite some time, this only included rental. Everyone rented it at the same time (or, rather, as soon as someone else returned it!) and because of the aforementioned business model, most everyone who rented it watched it promptly. Having to check periodically to find out if a movie had been returned and was available prolonged that buzz. A fourth wave was the home video retail release. That could be the same date as the rental release, or it could be more than a year later. A fifth wave was the first network TV broadcast. Today, though, the window between theatrical release and streaming is so brief there's really only one wave of buzz, book-ended by those two releases. And, of course, no one relies on TV broadcasts anymore and certainly not the edited versions a network would have to air. I'm not talking about the instances where movies have streamed date and day with their theatrical releases; those have been under extenuating circumstances. Here are three examples (spoiler'd for length):



Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I bought my first DVD player in 1999. I still have it actually in a closet. It’s a Samsung 511 and still works I think. My first movies were Ghostbusters 1&2. Those however are long gone. I believe I’ve bought those five times since then.
I’m trying to remember the last dvd I bought. I think it was fairly recently. It might have been 8mm since I couldn’t find it on streaming anywhere and I stumbled upon it at a used store.
Cost and rewatchablity are what drive my purchases. Most of them these days are blu followed by UHD. I’ve only made two digital purchases. I’m not ready to go all in on that yet. I don’t see it ever happening.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

I still buy DVDs, mainly used but I bought the last Daniel Craig 007 movie on DVD because I started collecting his movies on DVD with the special edition of Casino Royale and I wanted to finish the set on DVD.

-----------------------------------------------

I was thinking about this thread and I wondered if we could discuss some "what could have been" things, like if you could send a message back in time to the groups that standardized the DVD format, what would you tell them to add or take away from the format?

For me, an easy one: any film 1.66 or wider would be required to have a 16x9 transfer.
Also, English subtitles or closed captioning would be required. My hearing is going with age and I've got DVDs that are getting hard to watch because I can't always make out the dialog and there's no subs, like most of my MST3K collection.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

(On a tangent).

Was this version of the Casino Royale dvd disc which was notorious for being "unplayable" on many standalone dvd players back in 2007 ?

IIRC, Sony actually did a recall / replacement of this botched dvd version at the time.

Re: 25 Years of DVD!
 

Wow, I hope not, I haven't tried to play in years. I'll have to pull it out tonight and try it.