A Year In The Life Of A DVD Addict
A reflective report by Dean McIntosh
Introduction
It has now been a year since I was formally introduced
to the virtues and traps of the DVD Video format, which is undoubtedly
the best thing to happen to home theatre since the mere concept was introduced.
The rather shaky ride I've had through my first year of DVD usage has been
quite an interesting one, as well as being a real eye-opener and a source
of some frustration with the manner in which some distributors behave.
So, in writing this article, I thought I would share with you what I felt
were the highs and lows of what has so far been the breakthrough year of
the format, as well as some things I want to see in the next year.
A Year Of Looking At The Retailer's Shelves
In October of 1999, hunting for an enjoyable title on
DVD at the local branch of Grace Bros. was something like trying to pull
diamonds out of a bucket filled with cow dung. Within the first week of
having acquired my DVD player, I had bought all of the titles that I had
any interest in, and had even begun to look through the films that didn't
interest me at all. The first film I had actually bought, rather than been
given as a gift, was Wild
Things, an interesting exploration of people's hidden natures
that featured one of the most fascinating sex scenes in the history of
celluloid. Having viewed this film a number of times on the Very Hazy System,
seeing the DVD version was something of an eye-opener as to how much picture
information I was missing out on with VHS. An excellent example is the
shot in which Neve Campbell pours champagne all over the front of
Denise Richards: on VHS, only Denise is visible, but on the DVD,
all three participants in this scene can be clearly viewed. This resulted
in me making a firm decision in regards to how I view films: either I view
it at the theatre, on DVD, or not at all. By the way, distributors, that
happens to be a hint, since it has resulted in me importing several of
my favourite films from overseas simply because they are not available
here at all, Robocop and The Evil Dead being
the two most prominent examples.
Of course, in October of 2000, the list of available
choices in the Region 4 DVD market has grown quite substantially, but it
also has quite a long way to go. The USA has a catalogue of titles numbering
somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven thousand, whereas Australians only
have around a thousand titles to choose from. Given that both nations speak
the same language, and used to use the same censorship and classification
system until the Australian government realized how absurd the American
model was, I see no justification for this discrepancy. When I emailed
the industry-supported DVDUserGroup
about this in December of 1999, their response to the lack of variety available
at the time was that they were trying to ensure that "only the best quality
titles are available in Region 4". I kid you not: that is really the response
I got to one curious and frustrated email I sent them. Given the industry's
current track record in the titles they have brought to Region 4, I hardly
believe them to be the best judges of what the best quality titles are.
Robocop 3 in place
of the original, which happens to be the greatest Christ theme-based story
of the Twentieth Century, and possibly the greatest story to be based on
this popular Pagan legend in its entire history? Well, so much for only
making sure the best quality titles are available to Australians and New
Zealanders.
This brings me to what distributors and film studios
can do in order to improve the state of the market, and thus improve their
sales in Region 4.
-
Make the film available, and in a good format with a good transfer.
I cannot stress enough how important this is, because most of my favourite
films are presently only available in Region 1, and those that are available
in this Region have been severely short-changed in the formatting or transfer
stakes. As a matter of fact, the only such film that I am willing to wait
for the Region 4 release of would be the original Mad Max,
and that is only because the version that was released in America was a
butchered mess. My favourite film of all time, Robocop, remains
unavailable in this Region, while there are two distinct versions available
in Region 1. Another favourite of mine, Starship
Troopers, is available in this country as a flipper, but is
entirely bereft of all the extras that keep me going back to the Region
1 version again and again and again. If you want to stop parallel imports,
you have to treat the audiences in countries that speak the same language
equally; it's that simple.
-
Get the latest titles onto DVD as quickly as humanly possible.
While there might be some excuses for delaying the re-release of a
film that is over ten years old, there is no excuse for failing to release
a film that has just finished its theatrical run in the best possible format.
Given that DVD and VHS sales are undergoing the same reversal of percentages
as CD-DA and vinyl went through after 1988, making a habit of releasing
all new films on DVD right away will save a lot of headaches in the future.
-
We need more independent distributors.
At present, the independent DVD market here is dominated by distributors
that have a habit of giving films a substandard transfer. There are a handful
of decent independent distributors in Region 4, such as Siren, but the
vast majority of independent distributors are an embarrassment to the format.
There is a logical choice that can be made by the major distributors such
as Columbia TriStar in order to improve the image of independent DVD. In
a nutshell, it involves giving the independents better access to films
and transfer facilities in exchange for a percentage. If someone took a
few minutes to sit with the people at some of the smaller distributors
and show them how to make a viewable presentation on DVD in exchange for
a percentage of their gross sales, their sales figures would increase due
to renewed consumer confidence, and it would justify the investment. Surely,
if a whacked-out reviewer like myself can think of an idea like this, it
cannot be that hard to implement?
-
Price the DVDs reasonably.
When I first started viewing films on DVD, Columbia Tristar discs were
priced at $34.95, which I eventually came to feel was a reasonable price
when the superior quality and lifespan of the disc was taken into account.
Sadly, the price of DVDs has done nothing but rise in the last twelve months,
with even the changeover to a GST-based tax system not delivering the reduction
in prices that it should have. The reduction in tax that was meant to occur
on DVDs with the implementation of this new tax system was twelve percent
(Wholesale Sales Tax on DVDs was twenty-two percent), which is a lot more
than the two dollars that Columbia Tristar discs have been reduced by at
the local Grace Bros. The major distributors are bound to hit trouble when
an independent distributor comes around who takes pride in the workmanship
of their transfers and prices the discs at a reasonable rate. Pricing them
more reasonably now could avoid that problem.
A Year Of Looking At Hardware
The price of DVD Video hardware has decreased quite
substantially since October of 1999, with prices being drastically reduced
to the point where one can now buy a good DVD player for seven hundred
dollars, a price that was unthinkable as recently as six months ago. However,
the problem with buying a DVD player is not the price at the moment, but
the inherent unreliability of the players put onto the market by a number
of manufacturers. Indeed, there are some DVD players out there that feature
MPEG decoding chips which are simply not up to the task required of them
by high-bitrate discs. Given that the format itself is still very much
in a transitional stage, this is obviously not the best way to put together
any kind of DVD player, especially now that the market is being flooded
with more ignorant buyers. This situation is not helped by the fact that
there are some less-than-honest salesmen in various retailers who lie in
wait for customers with a weak understanding of the format, in much the
same way as lions lie in wait for careless tourists.
Thankfully, almost all DVD Video players available
as of October 2000 feature an S-video output, which I feel is the bare
minimum a DVD needs in order to look its best. The number of artefacts
which are taken for granted on VHS and are solely introduced by composite
video processing is something of a rude shock when you first notice the
difference. The absence of dot crawl, cross-colouration, and chroma noise
brings films to life in a way that was simply not possible before the advent
of DVD. Considering that we will very soon be seeing television screens
with a wider aspect ratio, and the fact that the sound offered by the DTS
format is already better than listening to the film in theatres, the owners
of theatres should be very worried indeed. Of course, they wouldn't have
to be if they charged a more reasonable price like Village Parramatta did
while the Sydney Olympics were in full swing, but good business decisions
seem to be beyond them at this stage.
The digital amplifier is a fascinating piece of hardware,
considering the numerous sound formats that are in existence today. Finding
one that is compatible with every sound format you are likely to encounter
on DVD is next to impossible, especially considering the existence of MPEG
soundtracks, as well as the Dolby Digital EX format. If there is one thing
that the past year has taught me about home theatre, and indeed many aspects
of my daily life, it is that the first step to truly being happy with one's
setup is not to think about what your equipment cannot do, but rather what
it can do and how well it does it. Obviously, if your DVD copy of Total
Recall sounds like it was recorded inside a giant tin can with
an answering machine, then buying that new two-thousand dollar set of speakers
is a good idea, but one has to learn to leave well enough alone.
A Year In The Life Of A DVD Collection
When filling out a survey about my usage of DVD hardware,
one of the questions related to how many DVD Video discs I was planning
to buy in the next year. I extrapolated on the question somewhat and pretended
I was being asked how many discs I expected to have in a years time, and
thus answered that I would own at least fifty. I was hoping to have at
least a hundred, but the slow output of titles in this Region and the difficulty
I have in ordering from overseas has resulted in falling slightly short
of my personal target. However, I am perfectly happy with the quality of
those titles, although such films as Soldaat Van Oranje and
De
Vierde Man (the film which screenwriter Joe Eszterhas tried
with mixed success to Americanise in Basic Instinct) remain
conspicuously absent. Some effort on the part of Region 4 distributors
to make these films available locally would be much appreciated.
This is not to say that all hope is lost when it
comes to the Region 4 release sheets. Indeed, we seem to be in a period
where the release lists are going to explode, with the team of reviewers
on this site having doubled in size through anticipation of this situation.
Thanks to Columbia Tristar, we can soon rejoice in the beauty of having
a DTS version of Gladiator, a film which I firmly believe
should topple Ben Hur's record Oscar haul. Metro-Goldwyn
Mayer and Twentieth Century Fox are all set to have all of the nineteen
films in the official Bond canon available on our beloved discs by the
middle of next year. Even Village Roadshow have substantially increased
the value of their recent releases, with works of art such as American
History X and Sleepy
Hollow gracing the Region 4 shelves. Even Warner Brothers have
lifted their game by dumping the lamentable Snapper case and bringing us
such beloved classics as Gremlins.
Perhaps even Buena Vista will wake up to themselves and start putting out
something other than the cheapest, most worthless crap they have, and possibly
even in something other than the cheapest, most worthless presentation
they can come up with.
One worrying trend, however, is the release of DVDs
to the rental market, which is really of little benefit to the serious
movie collector. Most of the films that I will really want to own I will
have more than likely seen them already in the theatres, and the care with
which DVDs are treated by rental outlets leaves quite a lot to be desired.
Their understanding of the format and its virtues also leaves quite a lot
to be desired, and I often have to wonder if they are even aware that television
screens are being widened, much less the reasons why. Technophobia is quite
a worrying thing, and the advertising used to increase public awareness
of the DVD Video format is not helping to reduce this psychological reaction
at all.
A Year (Well, Almost) Of Reviewing DVDs
It has been approximately ten months since I began reviewing
DVDs for this site, and I originally only began doing so a month beforehand
as something of a time waster. In that time, we have seen the death of
the snapper case, the brief resurgence of the button case, and the emergence
of a host of other cases that still make me wonder what on earth the manufacturers
were smoking when the cases were thought up.
Many people seem to think that reviewing a film consists
of little more than seeing it and then basically giving an opinion of it,
but this is far from the case. Reviewing a film, be it at the cinema as
I did for a friend's magazine in the case of The
Blair Witch Project (my review was equally scathing there),
or on DVD, is a tough job. In the case of merely reviewing the plot and
the execution, one has to analyse the way in which the story is told and
how the characters are developed, as well as the way in which the film
was photographed. These tasks are easy enough for a writer like myself,
who used to take a perverse delight in writing fifty thousand words about
nothing, but reviewing a film on DVD is even more work.
When viewing a film on DVD, we here at Michael D's
are expected to make explicit notations of any serious or persistent flaws
we might find in the video and audio transfers, as well as any obvious
cuts that have been made to the film for arbitrary reasons. With the emergence
of films and music videos on DVD that have soundtracks encoded in the DTS
format, comparisons must also be made between the Dolby Digital soundtrack
and the DTS soundtrack. This is to say nothing of the fact that understanding
why the differences between soundtracks in these formats come about is
a very hard ask for someone who is not completely inclined towards the
technical side of things, as is the case with me. This is to say nothing
of how tiring it can be to view a film with audio commentary tracks, because
a good commentary track, such as one provided by Paul Verhoeven
and Edward Neumeier, can be a joy to listen to, but a particularly
bad one such as that provided with The
Matrix can be quite painful to listen to from start to finish.
It's something like pulling an engine apart piece
by piece and putting it back together again: doing it for your own benefit
can be quite enjoyable, and it can even be so if you do it for a living,
but explaining to an audience in explicit detail what you are seeing and
doing makes it a lot harder. This is certainly not helped by the fact that
suffering major personal problems, as I was at the beginning of this year,
can have a noticeable effect on the end result of your work. Reviewers
are only human, even if they have been blessed with a slightly greater
understanding of the medium in question and how it works.
In Closing
Now that I have been viewing films on DVD for a year,
I believe that we have a lot to hope for in the future, and I think that
some of the film studios will quite probably deliver on those hopes. Hopefully,
we will see the emergence of more independent operators, ones that take
a little pride in the workmanship of their transfers and don't believe
in recycling VHS or laserdisc masters. The introduction of High Definition
Television is something of a worry, given that DVD Video is not yet a high-definition
format, but this is why it pays to insist that all transfers be 16x9 Enhanced:
to future-proof one's investment as much as possible. In any case, I have
to say that this has been a good year for DVD Video, and I hope that the
next year will be even better. After having reviewed so many discs, and
learned so much about the format in the last ten months, the mere existence
of DVD Video gives me a lot of hope for the future.
© Dean McIntosh (my bio
sucks... read it anyway)
October 27, 2000.