THE DVD FORMAT TURNS 20 THIS MONTH!

The Digital Bits ^ | March 1, 2017 | Bill Hunt

[PJ-Comix]

Yes, folks, it’s true… this month marks the 20th anniversary of the beloved DVD format. The exact date is a matter of debate; some technically consider March 1, 1997 as the official date, though our records show that March 19 technically marks the official start of the U.S. launch, and the format was actually launched first in Japan in November of 1996. Either way, the first players and movie discs weren’t available in the seven initial U.S. test markets (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Seattle, and Washington) until much later in March 1997.

Specifically, the first DVD titles appeared at Best Buy, Tower Records, The Good Guys, and other video/electronics stores in those markets on March 24, and the first actual players didn’t arrive in stock until March 26. Warner launched the format with an initial slate of 25 titles, including Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut (as it happens, the first title I purchased – you can see it below), Twister, Batman, GoldenEye, Eraser, The Fugitive, The Glimmer Man, The Mask, and Space Jam, among others. Those titles sold for $19.95 to $24.98. Tell me... do these old Snapper cases (below) look familiar to you?

[Malsua]

I totally miss going to video rental stores. I always loved browsing the shelves of everything from the new releases to the B grade movies.

It was so much more recreational then ordering movies the Netflix or download.

Back in 2009, I posted in a number of threads about how the entire business was going to change and some of the people really thought I was dumb and an idiot. heh. Anyway, your post made me think of an old thread on technology predictions being wrong...how did I do?

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Here’s a prediction...

In 5-10 years, renting a shiny disc from a store to watch a movie on will seem silly and quaint.

Almost all the software you buy will be digital delivery with options to purchase a flash drive with the media on it for the broadband impaired.

Cable companies as we know them now will become more internet service providers than cable companies with legacy wires strung around rather than the other way around.

The computer you buy 3 years from now probably won’t have a spinning hard disk. You can buy solid state now, but it tends to add cost. That will flip over in a few years.

6 posted on 12/28/2009, 6:16:59 PM by Malsua

[RayChuang88]

What the DVD format did was to make it a LOT more convenient to watch movies, with picture quality right at the limit of CRT TV's of the day. The arrival of 480p progressive scan DVD players in 2001 (along with players that played the discs that supported the widescreen 480p progressive scan format) hastened the demise of many movie theaters.

[dangerdoc]

VHS didn’t make it past our last move.

I had kept a player for years but we were paying for the move and it didn’t find room on the truck.

[dangerdoc]

Two factors.

1. Late fees
2. Dearth of new movies worth getting into the car and driving to the store to rent.

For me it was mostly the latter.

[Dalberg-Acton]

The video compression used in DVDs has been improved on a lot in the last few years, and the resolutions are much higher.

[ktw]

My Microsoft Surface has a solid state drive (240gig) as it’s main drive. And it has NO DVD player. Although, it has ONE USB 3.0 port.

[LostInBayport]

I’m with you. I rarely watch tv, but once in a while I’ll choose something from my DVDs (I have a lot of stuff I’ve never watched yet) and the quality of the picture is fantastic. Not so with streaming from what I’ve seen on the sets of friends and family. Plus I’m one of those people who will watch a series or movie many times if I like it; why pay for it more than once?

[dangerdoc]

Most movies aren’t worth buying and it costs less than 2 bucks to get a disk at redbox vs. 4-5 bucks to stream

[dangerdoc]

As an aside, my kids will stream a movie that is on disc literally 2 feet from the TV, even worse, they will watch a movie on cable that they could stream or watch directly from a disc without commercials.

[IYAS9YAS]

When I bought my first DVD player in 1998, it cost me the princely sum of $400 plus tax. The store (Fred Meyer in Coeur d'Alene, ID) was giving away a free promotion with every DVD player purchase. A VHS copy of "Titanic"... I still have the first DVD I bought with the player - "A Christmas Story".

[MNDude]

Cool! What are your predictions for the next 5 to 10 years?

[Snickering Hound]

The video compression used in DVDs has been improved on a lot in the last few years, and the resolutions are much higher.

The video codec for DVD is MPEG 2 and it's resolution in NTSC North America is 480i, Much of Europe uses PAL and 576i.

What has improved is upscaling in the players, the newer Blu-ray format can support the newer more efficient video codecs and the discs have a much larger capacity.

Ultimately, there is no replacement for more bits although I know lots of people who watch DVD's not knowing that they're NOT High Definition.

[Pravious]

“I still buy them.”

Me, too. My grown kids call it a complete waste of money. I tell them it’s my money to waste. I don’t want to stream a movie - if I like it, I want to OWN it.

[Maurice Tift]

  They're still in business because they don't pay much for workers. However, some employees who work in the red boxes are complaining about the conditions and they want more money. There's some talk that Redbox will replace them with automation and this is the talk that keeps employees in line.

[Sans-Culotte]

I’m still going to always prefer physical Blu-ray and DVD though. More reliable, better and deeper resolution and color, and there’s just something about having a tangible box sitting in my shelf as opposed to in the cloud or even on my hard drive drive.

Same with me. I have tons of Blu-rays and DVDs. I still have a VHS for old tapes that are not on disc or home movies that I am recording to DVD. I still have a laserdisc for the same reason. I think the quality is always better with physical media. I think the people who say they are happy with streaming or MP3s iTunes have a low quality threshhold, just like the people who don't mind if a widescreen movie has its sides chopped off as long as it fits their TV. Or people who watch movies on their phone. You'll often see someone on FR who is perfectly content to watch a YouTube upload of a movie that has about as much resolution as a postage stamp.

I do some streaming for movies or programs that I do not consider important or worth keeping.

[stylin19a]

too funny here

from 2001 - touting VHS over DVD

http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.8.24.112921.289.html

[Ciaphas Cain]

I’ve the iPad Pro that came out last year, with ridiculously good resolution and a bunch of movies from iTunes along with a Lightning to HDMI adapter. It’s been prettty nice on the road if a hotel room’s set has an input.

[Larry Lucido]

I remember LP-sized Laser-discs at Blockbuster back in 1994.

[Snickering Hound]

Star Wars laser disc. Original non-cgi special effects and Han Solo shot first.

They still sell and refurb Pioneer laser/dvd combo players on Ebay to play that one.

[Ciaphas Cain]

Many years ago I had dinner with Paul Blake, the actor who played Greedo. And I asked him what he thought about making Greedo shoot first.

He replied that it was "absolutely bollocks" and that Han was perfect justified in shooting first because it was obvious Greedo was going to kill him. It genuinely mystified him why George Lucas changed that.