DVD first reached store shelves ten years ago this week, and this website went online with its very first DVD reviews nearly a year after that. Our shiny little platter has reached its peak. Gorbachev allowed Estonians a little bit of political freedom but was wary that the situation might spiral out of control if he granted too many concessions. By mid-September, it was evident that the Luftwaffe was making little headway, and the first phase of the Battle of Britain was over. But within that success may lie more uncertainty, because a multi-disc release of Blade Runner is very much is for the True Fan and not for the casual viewer, who will happily turn to a competing delivery method to see the film (or a version of it) without the need to pore over every detail or see five versions of what they consider to be the same thing.
We’d all like to think that quality is what drove this format over the past decade, but that’s not entirely true. Plus, learn as you invest, with tools like our virtual $100k portfolio and the eToro Academy. Instead of being the King Kong of home-video rental/retail, swatting away all competitors like toy planes on strings, is it about to be consigned to something as inconsequential as a consumer preference? This is the formidable, ongoing challenge that faces those who are in the business of producing and selling packaged media: olymp trade review promo What is the value proposition of renting or owning a tangible product like a DVD? Since then, we’ve posted almost 4,000 DVD reviews, watched the retail sheets for the best upcoming DVDs, and hopefully steered a few folks into renting or purchasing movies they otherwise might have overlooked. As cool as it was when Fight Club arrived in its innovative fold-out digipak case that contained two discs, a dark, thrilling film of violence and male bonding (one that almost could have been designed for the DVD demographic itself), and surprising extras. The re-issue of several titles, as many as two or three times (the dreaded “double-dip”) have been welcome in some circumstances for improved transfers, reviled in others for slick re-packaging of an already existing product.
DVD-Audio and its competitor, Super Audio CD (SACD), have not supplanted Compact Disc sales, even as CD sales as nearly perfect a mass-media product as has ever been invented find MP3 downloads denting their margins. The first book, which was red, established the basic standards for audio recording on compact disc. Last we checked, hi-resolution audio was consigned to a small shelf in the back of our nearest big-box electronics retailer, while every type of sleeve for every size of iPod was stacked up on the nearest route to the cash registers. Most DVD viewers don’t listen to commentaries (ask somebody, anybody), while others only watch extras once or twice at most. Downloads need to be simple, and while most people seem comfortable with putting a DVD in a tray, we know that a significant portion of the consumer public still gets a rash when they have to interact with a personal computer any more than absolutely necessary. Home video is on the cusp of unprecedented fragmentation, and it’s easy to wonder if we’ll ever see the likes of one simple, universal format ever again. The consumers who don’t want everything simple, who love the bitter details of every studio squabble and scraps of cutting-room floors?
Cartoon character Sexy Jane boosts GI morale: After cartoonist Norman Pett’s wife, Jane, was asked to look after a “Count Fritz von Pumpernickel” — who turned out to be a dachshund — Pett started drawing cartoons and comic strips about Jane and Fritz. Beyond that, Jobs was an interesting character. In June 1815, Napoleon’s previously unstoppable army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in what is now called Belgium. Nonetheless, even if the next generation of DVD Video has yet to emerge, standard DVDs have now entered a slow, graceful decline at least in terms of overall market share. Jeffrey Katzenberg (the ‘K’ in DreamWorks SKG), as reported by Variety, said on a conference call to investors earlier this year “Blu-Ray and HD DVD are a niche business They’re not going to become the next platform. I think for the general consumer, there is not a big enough delta between the standard DVD in terms of where it is today and the next generation.” We agree. By the midpoint of this century, none of this may exist at all, with every possible form of proprietary content film, television, journalism, books, radio programs, music, your morning traffic report, even dust-covered scrolls lost in the basement-time of distant libraries sliced, analyzed, digitized, compressed, optimized, repackaged, marketed, and consumed by us in portions large and small via vaporous, intelligible technologies that today are the stuff of plausible imagination.
