Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

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Monterey Jack
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Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#1 Post by Monterey Jack »

:shock:

God, I'm old. :cry:

Eric W.
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#2 Post by Eric W. »

Tell me about it, man!

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AndyDursin
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#3 Post by AndyDursin »

I remember writing up my first look at DVD back in, what was it, 97 or 98? And it was not impressive. Sight & Sound up in Waltham Mass. (a haunt for anyone in the New England area for laserdiscs) had a demo unit with the first DVD discs...I believe they were Total Recall and Red Heat and some other Artisan DVD...and the video playback was choppy and unimpressive. I remember writing not to write off laserdisc just yet in FSM!

Needless to say they ironed out the kinks fast -- within a period of several months, the quality had improved substantially -- though the audio was never DVD's strong suit. As cumbersome and expensive as laserdiscs were, the format's audio was generally superior and that was always, for me, the hangup with DVD in general. Especially with non-5.1 stereo or mono soundtracks...they often came off as pinched and compressed, whereas the laserdisc audio was PCM lossless and took up the space of a massive digital platter, lol.

But visually, the format became really strong and the 16:9 enhancement was really the big ace up the sleeve. And it makes those discs watchable today too.

It's funny how many studios spent lots of money creating special features and commentaries back then. Today, nobody is spending that kind of cash unless it's Shout or a boutique label like Criterion...which made the DVD era a more exciting one for catalog releases than Blu-Ray. We've been getting catalog content in drips and drabs, and only in the last couple of years have the "floodgates" opened...but for some studios like Disney, we've never gotten there, even now.

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Paul MacLean
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#4 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote:I remember writing up my first look at DVD back in, what was it, 97 or 98? And it was not impressive.
Those early DVDs arguably looked a little more "crisp" than laserdiscs, but were afflicted by heavy, blocky bitmapping, and in scenes with little or no movement, they would take on the static look of a "freeze frame" (which, in effect, they almost were, owing to the heavy compression).

AndyDursin wrote:But visually, the format became really strong and the 16:9 enhancement was really the big ace up the sleeve. And it makes those discs watchable today too.
Among my first DVDs were Alien, Amadeus and The Road Warrior -- each anamorphic transfers, which looked spectacular, particularly on my computer monitor (which had higher rez than my TV).
AndyDursin wrote:It's funny how many studios spent lots of money creating special features and commentaries back then. Today, nobody is spending that kind of cash unless it's Shout or a boutique label like Criterion.
Special features were lame at first, with those awful "cast and crew bios" (which were nothing but glorified title cards!), but soon it seemed that every movie of significance (whether new or old) had a commentary track, and/or "making of" featurette.

I have to add that the DVD format's success with the public at large surprised me, because the complaint I always heard from people about laserdisc was "Laserdisc sucks -- it doesn't record".

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AndyDursin
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#5 Post by AndyDursin »

I have to add that the DVD format's success with the public at large surprised me, because the complaint I always heard from people about laserdisc was "Laserdisc sucks -- it doesn't record".
It really did show that the bigger issue for laserdisc -- in terms of mass acceptance -- wasn't that it didn't record, but that you could only fit a 2 hour movie on 1 disc. Longer movies would have to be split up to multiple discs, multiple sides, etc. And you'd have to flip it at the hour mark (or half-hour mark with CAV discs) unless your player read both sides! Granted, some labels did a decent job with the dreaded side break, but that was a major hindrance.

But in many ways, the DVD was a natural step up from laserdisc as a format -- and one heck of an upgrade for the masses coming over from VHS!

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Paul MacLean
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#6 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote: But in many ways, the DVD was a natural step up from laserdisc as a format -- and one heck of an upgrade for the masses coming over from VHS!
The pricing of DVDs was reasonable too. I remember paying over $35 for most laserdisc releases, whereas DVDs started out at, what was it? Around $20 for most titles?

The irony is that when they finally introduced recordable DVD decks they weren't a huge hit. By that point people seemed to prefer buying content rather than recording it off the TV.

In any case, I never even bought movies on VHS. The format was so perishable, and the quality was frankly lame -- and besides, I could acquire many of the movies I wanted by recording them off the TV (or renting the laserdisc and copying that -- not that I ever did that of course)!

I wasn't an early adopter of DVD, but by the time I took the plunge (by 1999 I believe it was), the DVD format finally offered home video which had not only acceptable, but good image quality. The biggest thrill for me was the discovery that some DVD players could be "hacked" so that they would play discs from anywhere in the world. Suddenly all those British TV shows I had been unable to watch were available to me!

Even at this point, my collection is still less than half Blu-ray. I still watch DVDs. In fact a good anamorphic DVD transfer looks better than a lot of the movies available for streaming on Netflix or Amazon.

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AndyDursin
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#7 Post by AndyDursin »

Yeah, exactly, lower-priced DVDs spelled the end of laserdisc forever. As it was, laserdisc was much more affordable than VHS initially as VHS tapes were priced for rental stores to purchase in bulk -- if you wanted to buy, you bought laserdisc, and prices were workable for their time.

At any rate, kudos to DVD. Its size and convenience made it easier to import, like you said Paul, and it has had a tremendous run. I don't own a lot of DVDs anymore, as I've shifted to Blu-Ray and digital (where applicable) myself, but the DVD format was a robust one, even if the audio wasn't the best. They ironed out the jerky motion quickly and many of the players also proved durable in their construction too.

KevinEK
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#8 Post by KevinEK »

I remember the beginnings of DVD quite well.

My brother was working at Ken Crane's big screen TV stores at the time, and he and his co-workers initially laughed at the picture and sound quality of the early DVDs when they would try to demo them on the big tube sets. They'd try running a laserdisc of one of the movies and then try the DVD, and there was no comparison. Within a year, we were hearing about the whole DivX idea, which I always saw as a ridiculous thought and was fine to see it flounder. I figured DivX was the studios trying to somehow become their own Blockbuster service. I remember a director I was working for on JAG at the time extolling its virtues and I told him I didn't see them. A year later, he was denying that he had supported it and was now saying it was a greedy move that properly backfired.

I also remember that DVD was actually not just supposed to be a movie format. The original purpose I recall was for it to be a Digital Versatile Disc, a high capacity storage media that could either hold a much larger computer program or a lot more CD songs. By 1995 and 1996, we were constantly getting these retrospective CD sets of various bands that would usually run about 6 discs long, each loaded with 12-14 songs. (I remember a David Bowie retrospective and a Tom Petty retrospective, not to mention the Star Wars soundtrack collection in 1993). The initial idea of DVD was, I thought, to allow you to have that material within a single disc and not need to keep reloading discs into your player. (That was even with most people having a carousel player of 3-5 discs). Same thing for computer games, where we had some games that went on for 5 or 6 CD-Roms before you got through them. This way, you could just load the one disc and you were off to the races.

But the initial release of DVDs showed very quickly what that capacity could mean for home video. Before DVD, I did collect a lot of VHS tapes, some store-bought, most taped from cable at the slowest possible speed. (I've never pretended not to be cheap) And some of those were laserdiscs taped to VHS to allow me to have widescreen copies of some of these movies. Were they great quality? No. But I could at least get to see these movies in the full 2.35:1 ratio and remember what it was like to see them properly in the movie theater. I remember noting that the laserdiscs did allow for multiple audio tracks, so that you could have a commentary running on one channel. And I remember that with the chaptering, you could also have behind-the-scenes materials included as well. But up to May 1998, I never actually owned a laserdisc or a DVD - it was all just VHS tapes, many of which were of TV shows that still have not made it to DVD hor anything else.

In May 1998, as a reward to myself for surviving the 3rd season of JAG, I went ahead and purchased a Pioneer DVL-909, as well as several laserdiscs and some DVDs. I picked that player because it could handle both formats, so if DVD suddenly did not thrive, I would still have a player that was useful for lasers. And over that summer, I picked up a BUNCH of lasers from Dave's Lasers in the valley. At the time, they did have a DVD section, but it was a small one, off to the side. The lasers tended to be more expensive, particularly the really nice Criterion editions and the big special sets, like the ALIEN and ALIENS box sets, which each ran me over a hundred bucks. I had been keen to get these plus the Abyss box set because the latter two had longer editions of the movies that weren't available elsewhere. (I remember a VHS of the longer version of The Abyss being released at some point, but it didn't have all the other goodies from the laser) And the ALIEN box included the deleted scenes that I'd read about for years. I picked up the Criterion Close Encounters because it allowed you to watch the original 1977 version of the movie (albeit with one very small change in one shot), and with the chapter function you could also re-order the scenes and watch the Special Edition.

My initial haul of DVDs was a smattering of what was available at the time. Things like Runaway Train, Capricorn One, Contact, Logan's Run. Contact was interesting because they had put three different commentaries on the disc.

Over the next several years, my collecting really turned to DVD as laserdisc phased out of existence in a shockingly brief time. Once the initial PQ issues with DVD were handled, and once the DVDs began offering better quality audio tracks, it looked pretty clear that they were a more convenient format for everyone. I always liked the lasers, and in fact have kept about 35 or so of them for reference, but DVD simply offered a lot more in a much more conveniently sized package.

For someone who was accustomed to lower quality VHS picture quality and even some intermittent broadcast quality of various shows, DVD was an immediate jump - rather than having a muddy VHS copy of an old Trek episode or movie, I could now see what would have been the best possible analog quality of the same. And there was an option to watch either full screen or widescreen. And you could toggle between multiple audio tracks. Of course, the other extras were usually limited to the cast or production screens mentioned above. But if you got a decent quality DVD or a 2-DVD set, you could avail yourself of various documentaries and other goodies. I remember that in addition to the multiple audio options, the other big thing was initially going to be the multiple angle options - so multiple video and audio tracks available on the same disc for the same scenes. Except that the alternate angle idea really only got used once in a blue moon by major DVD producers.

For the following 9 years or so, DVD really skyrocketed - I remember going every weekend to Laser Blazer in West LA to see what new goodies were coming in terms of new films and catalogue. Practically every weekend was a voyage of discovery. Because of this, I amassed a pretty good library of titles. The advent of Blu-ray transformed this notion, but didn't change its core. The difference with Blu-ray has been that the picture and sound, for a large screen home theater, has been noticeably improved. And I've been very happy to pick up Blus of anything I wanted to see and hear for that quality improvement. But I also noted at the time Blu-ray started that the improvement in many places was more incremental. The bigger jump for me was when we went from muddy VHS to DVD and everything stabilized. Going to Blu-ray for me was a smaller jump - an appreciable one, but not a quantum leap. (I still remember the various HD displays at Circuit City trying to show you how much better Blu-ray resolution was than DVD, and they'd always show you the muddiest image possible on the left and the sharpest image possible on the right, as though anyone was regularly watching muddy DVDs for entertainment...) I do recognize that audio quality on Blus is solidly above that of DVDs - this, frankly, is the place where the Blus really outshine their ancestors. And now we have 4K and whatever comes next, and frankly, I'm not feeling an urge to upgrade to 4K. I have a 65" HD 3D set, and my DVDs and Blus get an excellent presentation on it. At 65", I don't see an advantage from going to 4K.

There's an interesting track in the evolution of the media, if you just follow the history of the James Bond releases. Back when we were kids, there weren't VHS store copies of these movies. If you wanted to watch Goldfinger, you could watch it on TV when it came around. Or you could watch it on cable, if you had that and had a premium channel like HBO or, in Los Angeles, the Z Channel. At some point in the late 70s and early 80s, you had the new option of being able to rent a videotape of Goldfinger from a local store, or you could buy the tape for a much more expensive amount. Or you could buy an early laserdisc of Goldfinger. And in all of these home video options, the movie was panned and scanned and wasn't necessarily the finest PQ or sound quality. By the early 90s, laserdisc had evolved a bit, and you had the Criterion widescreen editions of the first three Bond films, complete with the commentaries that the Bond producers had yanked back. And then in 1995, with the advent of Goldeneye, there was a large box VHS and laser release of the catalogue Bond films, including Goldfinger - now available in widescreen on VHS. And there was even an extra tape in the box that had making-of materials on Goldfinger and Thunderball. A couple of years later, DVD hit, and one of the early releases was a DVD of Goldfinger. I recall it having options to watch both widescreen and fullscreen and having several audio options. I think it also included the making-of material from the VHS/laser release of 1995. I believe this first release of Goldfinger on DVD was called a "Special Edition". After Tomorrow Never Dies came out, I remember another series of Bond catalogue titles on DVD, this time called the "Special 007 Edition" versions. This version had some really fun opening menus, and jettisoned the fullscreen idea to just stay widescreen - as well as to add commentaries wherever possible, to add trailers and to see whatever other goodness they could add. And then in 2006, with the advent of Casino Royale, we suddenly got the new "Ultimate Edition" DVD sets, with 2 DVD editions for all the movies. Goldfinger (like the others) got a Lowry HD restoration, a new transfer, and a new release with even more materials than seen in the 007 edition. (The Roger Moore Bonds now all received commentaries from Roger Moore. Sean Connery never did one.) And two years later, those same tranfers and materials were used for the Blu-ray releases of the catalogue Bonds - with the material that filled 2 DVDs now contained to a single Blu-ray. I honestly don't know if they've released Goldfinger on 4K and I frankly don't care. I'm very happy with the Blu-ray I have of it. It has great PQ and AQ, and it's loaded with everything I could possibly think of in wanting to know about the making of the movie. Even a Connery commentary at this point would really be a question mark of whether it would add anything major that we don't already know about the production.

I'm very pleased to have this library, both for the DVDs and the Blus. I agree that the future of this idea is likely going to be everything going digital - my own thought is that at some point, home entertainment drives will be big enough (and easily manageable) that people will be able to digitize their discs and essentially have a home server version of Netflix.

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Paul MacLean
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Re: Good Lord, it's the 20-year anniversary of the DVD format

#9 Post by Paul MacLean »

KevinEK wrote:Within a year, we were hearing about the whole DivX idea, which I always saw as a ridiculous thought and was fine to see it flounder. I figured DivX was the studios trying to somehow become their own Blockbuster service.
I'd forgotten about DIVX! Connecting with a server and being billed to watch a disc you owned. How did such a format not catch-on? :roll:

Similar to DIVX was an odd format I came across in an FYE store once -- a "disposable" movie; a DVD sealed in airtight plastic wrap, which was designed to deteriorate and become unplayable a couple of days after it was unsealed. The idea was you'd pay a small fee (about a dollar or two) for the disc, so you could watch it and then throw it away. Not very environmentally sound (and obviously this format didn't catch-on either).
KevinEK wrote:I also remember that DVD was actually not just supposed to be a movie format. The original purpose I recall was for it to be a Digital Versatile Disc, a high capacity storage media that could either hold a much larger computer program or a lot more CD songs.
Yeah, I remember hearing that DVD was the "format of the future", and it would be the sole format for video, music and computer software. Well, they were 2/3 right (for a few years anyway). Those music DVDs never caught on.

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