SILENT WHITE -- Why the Platinum Edition of SNOW WHITE Needs the Isolated Score

[Ernest Rister]

One of the joys of mid-90's Disney Laserdiscs was a surprising but wonderful feature -- the ability to watch the entire movie with only the isolated original soundtrack. This feature was trotted out with the massive Snow White laserdisc box set, but was also used for Alice In Wonderland: Exclusive Archive Edition and the CAV pressing for Bambi, among others.

Entertainment Weekly raved about the "silent" version of Snow White -- and so did the Disney fan base.

So it was surprising when Snow White came to Platinum DVD without the acclaimed feature. To my knowledge, in the DVD era, no release of a Disney animated feature on DVD included an isolated score, and I can only presume the company felt the feature could cut into sales of the score on CD or ITunes or what have you. Others stated that wasn't the problem -- they said there wasn't enough disc space for the isolated score on DVD, what with the music videos, interactive games, commentary track and what have you.

Well, I'd like to fire a shot across the bow -- when Snow White comes to Blu-Ray next fall, it should include the soundtrack-only option. Many people got into Blu-Ray for the picture, but if picture quality was the end of the story, HD-DVD could have easily won. Blu-Ray, with its higher capacity, promised more than HD-DVD could deliver. When it comes to Snow White, surely the Blu-Ray release of this American classic should deliver more than a laserdisc release almost 15 years old.