6 August 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW continued...

READER OF THE DAY: There was a DVD letter delay, but here are a couple. First, from Jimm: "At last, a subject I can expound upon! With a modicum of insight, at any rate. I assume you think the DVD format is short-term because of the scheduled arrival of digital broadcasting and HDTV. The edge that DVD has is the special edition features that can't be found anywhere else. It seems more likely that VHS will go the way of Betamax in the next decade, while DVD supplants it in rental outlets such as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. I've never been into collecting movies in the past, but VHS never offered commentaries and documentaries and storyboards and trailers and all the other goodies found on special edition DVDs. Also, the Internet makes access to offbeat and international films very convenient, whether for rental or purchase. I may not be willing to shell out $35.00 to $50.00 for Hong Kong action movies, but I'll gladly pay Netflix $3.50 plus shipping for a chance to see stuff I could only read about a year or two ago. Showtime graciously offers its viewers the letterboxed subtitled version of Hard-Boiled periodically, but they'll never show the audio commentary featuring the director and producer Criterion offers DVD owners.

As a film buff, I'm grateful to the industry for starting this format off properly, and I tend to buy DVDs as often as renting them just to support the companies producing and distributing extra-packed DVDs. I have hooked up with another DVD buff in town and we trade our DVDs free of charge to share our joint appreciation for this format. That makes me feel better about buying obscure stuff with limited appeal that I'll never find at any of the local DVD rental outlets. I tend to scour the Web looking for coupons and special deals (usually starting at dvdpricesearch.com, which is a terrific source for bargains), but the bottom line is that my library of DVDs keeps growing. And my appreciation for the amazing quality of DVD sound and video is renewed with each film I experience (or reexperience) on DVD. Granted, I have not done HDTV yet. But I can't imagine being able to afford that for another five to ten years. DVD is the next best thing to it, and I hope it continues to flourish in the years ahead."

And now, from Big B: "I finally decided to get a DVD player this past Christmas. I don't regret the purchase, and do feel that it's a wonderful format, but I also have my reservations. The picture is NOT perfect. Part of it is my player, I'm sure, but there are places where the compression is visible. It's a field I work in, and I know compression artifacts when I see 'em. The players and/or DVDs can be buggy. This is scary. I never thought I'd have to worry about bugs when I was watching a movie. Due to a combination of bugs on DVDs and in my player, I've seen all kinds of artifacts and problems. Annoying jumps between tracks. Parts of the DVD that you can't access from the menus but have to go hunting around the DVD to find (the worst example I've seen of this is the City of Angels DVD, which has a wonderful amount of material - if you're motivated enough to find it). DVDs that you can't play without actually going into the stupid MENU and playing it from there. Menu options that go nowhere. Etc. etc. etc.

Finally, and the thing that disturbs me the most, is that since DVDs are essentially computer programs (to some extent), the makers of the DVD can define what you watch in what order. Sure, for now they just make me sit through that STUPID FREAKING warning from the FBI every time. No, you can't skip it, or fast forward, or stop it, or anything. You just have to wait EVERY DAMN time. What's next? Ads? Messages from the director? They could put all this crap in there and we'd just have to sit and watch it before we got to the opening credits. Hell, I hate to give them ideas, but I bet they could even disable pause and frame advance if they wanted to, and prevent people from looking for bloopers and the like. 'I'm sorry. You can't stop the movie during this sequence, the director has negotiated a contract that forbids stopping or pausing his movies during car chases.' In any case, I don't regret buying my player, but don't by any means think it's the end-all-be-all of formats. It will do for a while, though."