Supermallet

I was thinking about this the other day, most people rate D-Theater as a pretty great HD medium. Now that HD DVD/BD have come to the market, the buy-in price on D-Theater must be pretty cheap. And considering 20th Century Fox released some of the best DVHS material (including Alien!), I was mildly considering the idea of picking up a D-Theater deck and some tapes.

Then, I started to think. I know next to nothing about D-Theater. How similar is it actually to normal VHS? Do the tapes degrade with each use? How stable are they? What kind of sound options can you get from them? Are they even using magnetic tape or what is it?

And how many movies came out from companies that right now only support BD? I just thought it could be a good alternative for a few years if the price is right, but I don't know what the drawbacks are.

Has anyone else thought about this?

speedyray

Interesting thought. I had considered it back before HD-DVD. I think Fox and Disney will cave and release HD-DVD though. Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros are busy making sales of HD-DVD while BD languishes. Money talks.

Supermallet

They might both end up on HD DVD, but the question is, when? The thought of Alien in HD makes me drool.

Supermallet

I found an image of Fox's ENTIRE D-Theater catalogue:


Out of those, I would only own ID4, X-Men, Fight Club, Die Hard, Something About Mary, True Lies, Moulin Rouge, X2, Alien, and Master and Commander. As good as those movies are, I'm not sure it's worth the investment unless it's something like $50 for the player and $10 per tape.

In fact, there were only 142 D-Theater titles released in total for America, and some of them have already come out or have been announced for HD DVD, so, again, it would only make sense if it's very, very cheap.

Drexl

As badly as I want Moulin Rouge in HD, I don't think this would be a viable option. I doubt the price would be that cheap. These were sold at a time when HD was more limited than it is now, and places like Best Buy and Circuit City never carried them, let alone Wal-Mart and the like. I also would think that most people who have an HD disc format and D-VHS would hold on to them, just so they can watch movies on whatever format they haven't bought. Then, there are people that have both disc formats, but will hold on to their D-VHS players until the titles they want are released.

I just checked eBay and of the couple of players there, one is up to about $150 and the other is over $160. There are a few tapes from $15 - 22.

Burnt Thru

There's the added issue that the best DVHS titles from Fox are still said to be the best HD commercially available.

digitalfreaknyc

I'd own 16 of those. That's hot.

Supermallet

That's debatable. Most people on AVS agree that the HD DVD versions of films also released on D-Theater generally look better on HD DVD. There are some D-Theater die hards who say that D-Theater is the best HD they've ever seen, but even most of those agree that there are HD DVDs that have matched them.

Spiky

Yes, it is still tape and will not last as long as optical discs. But you can record in HD if you have the proper equipment.

DthRdrX

Actually, Best Buy DID carry D-VHS!! At my local Best Buy they had the first JVC unit set up where HD-dvd is set up right now. They have the player and thats it. lol. I asked the employee if they had any movies for it. He said he doesn't think they even carried them, or at least they never got any in!!!! Should have seen the look on his face when I asked why someone would pay 700 dollars for a HD player with no support in the store at all.

DthRdrX

I have a good chunk of them, but I'l probably be selling most of them soon while they still get good change on Ebay and AVS. I havn't had time yet but I'd like to compare "Aeon Flux" to "I, Robot" as they are probably the best of each format so far. It is still a tape format so you are going to see wear and tear, as early as the first or second viewing.

If anyone is interested in picking up a D-VHS player the two titles that will wow you and are must buys are I, Robot and Passion of the Christ.

BTW, I have found the D-VHS player to deliver terrific quality and tracking if you are looking to backup old vhs tapes to a dvd recorder. The only downside is that these things rewind so fast I had a vhs tape snap!

Drexl

Wow, I guess they were for recording.

Alan Smithee

The only studios that put out D-Theater movies were Fox, Universal and Artisan. Be forwarned that they WON'T play on any D-VHS machine either, it has to have the "D-Theater" logo on it. There are just plain D-VHS machines that will record digitally but do not have prerecorded tapes for them. A few D-Theater titles have DTS sound but like the first-generation DVD players, the earlier decks won't output the signal.

As a collector of obscure formats I'm hoping to get a D-Theater deck eventually, they do seem to be hard to find though. I've picked up 3 movies though at Big Lots- Dr. T & The Women, Novocaine and The Limey. It seems like one D-Theater tape will show up at each Big Lots store and they're thrown in with the regular VHS tapes, so look for the silver case! Just for fun I tried playing one on my regular VHS deck and got nothing, like a blank tape, though the Hi-Fi indicator lit up.

DthRdrX

Alan I completely forgot about the first few decks not playing D-theater tapes. I have the HM-DH5U and love it. Dreamworks is also mentioned as releasing a few titles for the fromat as well.