Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Well, this pretty much tells me that you were not following closely what was happening on the market. Reel were notorious for giving gift certificates that could get you a large amount of DVDs for pennies.



I am very sorry, but we are going to have to agree to disagree here. The first DVDs that came on the market most definitely were not of exceptionally good quality. Obviously, I do not know what you were buying, but large libraries, such as Miramax/Touchstone and Paramount's were notorious for poor non-anamorphic DVDs. On top of that, these were also very expensive titles, which is why many, many aficionados that used to post on various forums went to Columbia House's DVD club to get them. (Under 10$ per title was the desired price).

Paramount, which also used to be very slow with catalog releases -- which is something a lot of people do not seem to remember when they criticize their Blu-ray output -- was notorious for poor releases.

Another big library that had very poor releases is the defunct Polygram (if I recall correctly, portions of the catalog later moved to USA Films).

Universal also had a ton of very poorly mastered DVDs that were also priced very high. The likes of Out of Sight and Animal House immediately come to mind.

The real boom with strong DVD releases (meaning good transfers and supplemental features) came after Fox's Special Edition of Fight Club. After this release things slowly started to move in the right direction.




As I said earlier, decent transfers were done only for big releases. And Warner was ahead of everyone else because they were pushing for low prices, something they did with Blu-ray as well. They were the exception, not the norm. The norm was poor quality, plus many, many PAN/SCAN releases.



Indeed. Actually, the overwhelming majority.



I am sorry. This isn't true. See my comment about Fight Club.

Pro-B

I don't really agree with you, I think you are thinking in a 1080p world when DVD was half the resolution at the time and it did take a while for widescreen TVs, Dolby digital receivers and even component out DVD players to penetrate. Only then was a high quality transfer of older titles really needed


Most of the anamorphic newer releases looked fine.

[gabbott]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

1. What do you think initial sales of DVD would have been if the likes of Reel.com, and a few other big sites that eventually mutated into bigger businesses, would not have given away 10+ discs for pennies? I personally obtained quite a few discs for totals that even today sound incredibly low. These types of giveaways never existed with Blu-ray. The infamous BOGOs Blu-ray had cannot even being to compare with what Reel did.

Ah yes, reel.com... they and columbia house DVD club were the reason I amassed a huge DVD collection back in the day.

[gabbott]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

This is not true, to appreciate DVD at its best quality vs vhs, during that time you would need a widescreen TV, a player with component out, a receiver and external speakers as well.

I had one of the Sony WEGA models did a "squeeze" to get all the resolution on an anamorphic DVD. Some of the 4:3 sets even did 480P. So a widescreen TV wasn't a complete necessity at the time to get the full benefit of DVD.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

I don't really agree with you, I think you are thinking in a 1080p world when DVD was half the resolution at the time and it did take a while for widescreen TVs, Dolby digital receivers and even component out DVD players to penetrate. Only then was a high quality transfer of older titles really needed


Most of the anamorphic newer releases looked fine.

As an early adopter, I can vouch for the poor quality of the early discs. In fact, some were worse than the best looking VHS simple because I found bleed less annoying than complete backgrounds of blocky pixels. Of course, things got better, but some discs to this day still have them much like streaming quality now.

[BluRoo98]

Originally Posted by Canada

to step up to VHS from DVD you only needed a standard TV to to enjoy DVD, to notice the difference between DVD and Blu ray you need an HDTV, receiver, and external speakers.

This is exactly what I was gonna say. I was in college when we(my roomates) got our first DvD player. We did NOT upgrade anything other than a DVD player. Probably after 2 years of watching DVD's on our 27" TV we got an out fo the box surround sound system too. Definitely did not try to do what needs to be done today to enjoy bluray ($thousands$)
Most often I hear people say "I don't see the difference" (talking about bluray) which is a HUGE indicator that they probably don't own a HD TV or if they do it's not because of the picture quality (but rather they just bought what was out there or didn't really care).
They also do NOT talk about the audio quality (because very few people have invested in surround sound at all). Or if they did, they are not aware of how important source material is to output.

[Steedeel]

But isn't that just general ignorance by the public? Buying without researching, as it were? It just seems common sense that a widescreen tv was required to get the best out of DVD.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

It just seems common sense that a widescreen tv was required to get the best out of DVD.

Absolutely not! Many dvds at that time were dual picture, widescreen on one side and full screen on the other, most people did not have the widescreen tvs at the time. Unlike todays blu ray players with hdmi, dvd players did not always come with component video out.

[Steedeel]

Yes, but all displays in shops showed off widescreen pictures when promoting DVD and it was mentioned a lot in marketing of the product.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Yes, but all displays in shops showed off widescreen pictures when promoting DVD and it was mentioned a lot in marketing of the product.

They had both widescreen and full screen big screens at the time. Widescreen was a niche for a while. Also, at the time there was very little 16x9 (if none at all) content coming from cable and satellite companies. In 1998 there wasn't much product on the market to justify 16x9 at the time.

[Steedeel]

Sorry, but anyone with even a little awareness of tech would know that widescreen was the way to go. Don't you feel that is the case?

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Sorry, but anyone with even a little awareness of tech would know that widescreen was the way to go. Don't you feel that is the case?

No need to be sorry, of course that would be the case, but keep I in mind the realities of the time, most people were used to full screen unless they were laserdisc collectors (or the occasional widescreen vhs buyer).

Most dvds releases had a full screen option. The concept of anamorphic widescreen barely existed within the buying public.

[Steedeel]

That's not the experience I remember dude. Anyway, just my offering

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

That's not the experience I remember dude. Anyway, just my offering

I think you are mistaking letterbox movies on a 4.3 tv with anamorphic widescreen movies displayed on a widescreen 16x9 tv.

[JasonHensley]

DVD was the perfect product at the perfect time. There are so many reasons DVD became so popular in such a short period of time. For one thing, the jump in quality was quite apparent from the get go and you didn't necessarily have to upgrade all of your equipment from the get go to see the improved quality. Secondly, where as VHSs had odd ball pricing for years and you couldn't always find a good selection in stores DVDs started the trend of new releases on Tuesday and stores having huge selections of movies. Pricing was also a key factor. The first couple of years, they may have been expensive, but around late 99 and early 2000 the prices were insanely reasonable. I remember every tuesday any big new released would always be 15$ at Walmart. That was a great deal for a big time movie. The economy was also a key factor. Now, with the switch to blu-ray you have absurd pricing at some places, people afraid they have to upgrade everything, people not seeing the improvement to justify the price of the movies, the fact that blu-ray players are quite as simple to use as dvd players, and also the fact that DVD kinda started the average consumer collecting movies and most people are not going to upgrade them.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by JasonHensley

DVD was the perfect product at the perfect time. There are so many reasons DVD became so popular in such a short period of time. For one thing, the jump in quality was quite apparent from the get go and you didn't necessarily have to upgrade all of your equipment from the get go to see the improved quality. Secondly, where as VHSs had odd ball pricing for years and you couldn't always find a good selection in stores DVDs started the trend of new releases on Tuesday and stores having huge selections of movies. Pricing was also a key factor. The first couple of years, they may have been expensive, but around late 99 and early 2000 the prices were insanely reasonable. I remember every tuesday any big new released would always be 15$ at Walmart. That was a great deal for a big time movie. The economy was also a key factor. Now, with the switch to blu-ray you have absurd pricing at some places, people afraid they have to upgrade everything, people not seeing the improvement to justify the price of the movies, the fact that blu-ray players are quite as simple to use as dvd players, and also the fact that DVD kinda started the average consumer collecting movies and most people are not going to upgrade them.

This is a great response and well said, I like how you touched on the idea of pricing, DVD was priced at sell through pricing, something VHS rarely had. There was also no rental window on DVD as well unlike VHS.

Great response!

[JasonHensley]

Other factors people may not realize that DVD offered huge upgrades from VHS. Simple things like not having to rewind a tape, having special features, and chapter skips were a huge thing for the mass market consumer. LD never caught on enough and all of this was new to a lot of people.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

I think you are mistaking letterbox movies on a 4.3 tv with anamorphic widescreen movies displayed on a widescreen 16x9 tv.

Nope

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by JasonHensley

Other factors people may not realize that DVD offered huge upgrades from VHS. Simple things like not having to rewind a tape, having special features, and chapter skips were a huge thing for the mass market consumer. LD never caught on enough and all of this was new to a lot of people.

And let's not forget the sound. Dolby Digital was the standard.

[JasonHensley]

DVDs were often available in 2 separate versions, a widescreen and fullscreen. In fact, at times the widescreen version was harder to come by because stores for the longest time would order more of the fullscreen version and the widescreen selection would be gone.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by JasonHensley

DVDs were often available in 2 separate versions, a widescreen and fullscreen. In fact, at times the widescreen version was harder to come by because stores for the longest time would order more of the fullscreen version and the widescreen selection would be gone.

Many of the discs included both....