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February 26, 2001

We know that sometimes many of our readers simply do not have time to watch DVDs.  To these readers we say, sometimes you just have to take it easy and chill out with a good DVD movie, especially on the weekends.

 

Take astronauts, for example, do they have time for DVD?  Astronauts certainly do have time for DVD. According 
to a couple of sources, the February space shuttle mission replenished the International Space Station with some 20 

DVDs (along with miscellaneous supplies such as food, 

water, clothing, etc). How do they watch their DVDs? With 
the Sony DVP-FX1 portable DVD player ($1,500) that 
comes with a built-in 7-inch 16:9 widescreen color LCD display. And what region code is the International Space Station? Region-free, of course, considering astronauts come from a number of countries from across the world. NASA went to a third-party company to have their Sony DVP-FX1 portable DVD players modified to play any region coded DVDs. It's nice to know that as hard as our astronauts are working, they still have time for DVD.  

(Sources: TheDigitalBits.com and Space.com)

 

In our quest to find good DVD movies for your enjoyment, we reviewed a handful of new titles, as posted on our DVD movie reviews page: Dr. T. and the Women, Glory: Special Edition (2-disc set), and Beautiful.  Glory is particularly good, so be sure to check out our review.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we added a ton of new DVD title announcements: In The Presence of Mine Enemies (2/27), Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are available as individual titles (3/20), Gummo (3/20), Red Planet (3/27), Enemy Mine (3/27), Cleopatra: 5-Star Edition (3-disc, 4/3), The Legend of Bagger Vance (4/3), Soul Food: The Director's Edition (4/3), Agent Red (4/10), Space Cowboys (4/17), Tigerland (4/17), The Yards (4/17), Nine Months (4/17), Finding Forrester (4/24), Spartacus (4/24), Princess Caraboo (4/24), Just Looking (4/24), One Day in September (4/24), Miss Congeniality (5/1), Postcards from the Edge (5/1), What Women Want (5/8), The X-Files: The Complete Third Season (5/8), Suspect (5/8), Jaws 2 (5/22), Point Break (5/22), Chain Reaction (5/22), and Traffic (5/29).

 

Finally, there's a couple of release date adjustments we thought you should know about: The Contender is delayed a week to March 6, and Requiem for a Dream has been delayed from March 20 to May 22.

 

 

February 12, 2001

We added the following DVD titles to our Upcoming Releases page: The Rock (3/13), Rugrats In Paris: The Movie (3/27), Bounce (4/10), Sabrina (4/10), Paris When It Sizzles (4/10), Funny Face (4/10), The Ladies Man (4/17), Coneheads (4/17), Summer Rental (4/17), 9 to 5 (4/17), Working Girl (4/17), The Truth About Cats and Dogs (4/17), Ghost (4/24), and Love Story (4/24), All The Pretty Horses (5/1), The Emperor's New Groove as a Collector's Edition or standard edition (5/1), Superman: The Movie (5/1), Superman II (5/1), Superman III (5/1), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (5/1), City Slickers (5/8), Throw Momma From The Train (5/8), The Magnificent Seven (5/8), Some Like It Hot as a Special Edition DVD or standard edition DVD (5/22), Stargate SG-1: The Complete First Season 5-disc set (5/22).  The 6th Day has been postponed two weeks until March 27.  Terms of Endearment is also delayed from February 27 to April 10.  The Killing Fields has been delayed from March 13 to May 8.

 

Be sure to check out our latest DVD movie reviews: Woman On Top (releases tomorrow), Courage Under Fire, Autumn in New York, Once Upon A Time in China, Shaft (2000), and Bless The Child.

 

 

January 29, 2001

Since our last Tidbits update, we completed a number of DVD movie reviews: Cutaway, Crime + Punishment in Suburbia, and Cirque du Soleil's Dralion DVDs.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we added these new DVD title announcements: Prince of Egypt & Joseph: King of Dreams 2-pack (3/6), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie & Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie double feature (3/13), Zardoz: SE (3/27), Krull (4/3), True Believer (4/3), The Natural (4/3), 102 Dalmatians (4/3), 101 Dalmatians & 102 Dalmatians 2-pack (4/3), and For Pete's Sake (4/3).  Also, we heard that Ordinary People will be delayed from February 27 until August 28 so that director Robert Redford can do an audio commentary.  Wonder Boys, previously delayed due to its success of a Golden Globe nomination, is now re-scheduled for release on March 13.

 

 
January 22, 2001

We've put together our list of the Top 10 DVDs of the Year 2000.  This list represents our opinion of the best DVDs that were released in calendar year 2000.  Our selections are based on overall entertainment value, with consideration given to the the following factors: movie itself, video and audio quality, bonus material content and quality of these extras.  Basically, it's a list of DVDs that we think are worth buying.  We hope that you'll find this list useful in building your DVD movie collection.  Click here to take a look.

 

Since our last Tidbits update, we completed a few DVD movie reviews.  First is our review of the Me, Myself & Irene Special Edition DVD, starring Jim Carrey and Renée Zellweger.  This DVD will find its way to retailer and rental shelves tomorrow, January 23.  Coming next Tuesday, January 30 is the long-awaited supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath, starring  Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer.  If you enjoy a good thriller, Alfred Hitchcock style, don't miss this Special Edition DVD release.  We also completed our review of the all-time favorite romantic comedy of When Harry Met Sally, starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.  This was recently released as a Special Edition DVD.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we added these new DVD title announcements: Get Carter (2/13), Legend of the Druken Master (3/13), The Tao of Steve (3/13), Requiem for a Dream (3/20), Dancer in the Dark (3/20), Lucky Numbers (3/20), Nurse Betty (4/3/01), Lawrence of Arabia: Limited Edition (4/3), and The Mummy: Ultimate Edition (4/24).  You may remember that we had previously reported that the Reindeer Games: Exclusive Director's Cut DVD was delayed for some unknown reason.  Well, rumor now has it that is re-scheduled for March 27.

 

In hardware news, the DVD Entertainment Group recently predicted that DVD player shipments will amount to some 13 million DVD players for 2001 in this press release, bringing the cumulative total to an incredible 27 million DVD players (or about 25% total penetration rate) by the end of 2001.  This figure compares to almost 10 million DVD players sold in the U.S. and Canada in the year 2000.  We have every confidence that this prediction will hold.

 

 
January 10, 2001

Again, we've updated our News page to link to more press releases that are coming out of the 2001 ICES.

 

We completed our reviews of The Last of the Mohicans and Predator DVDs.  The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe, is one of our favorite movies of all time.  It is a beautifully told story of survival, love, honor, and redemption.  This DVD re-release for January 23 features anamorphic widescreen and both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks.  Predator is action-thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-released on December 26 with anamorphic widescreen and DTS 5.1 surround sound.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we added these new DVD title announcements: The Fantasticks (2/27), Girlfight (3/27), Hendrix (3/27), and...

 

We have great news for you Rocky fans out there.  On April 24, MGM will release Rocky as a 25^th anniversary Special Edition DVD (suggested retail $24.98) and standard edition DVD (suggested retail of $14.95).  There's also two gift box sets: one with Rocky: SE, Rocky II, III, and IV (suggested retail of $89.96); and one with Rocky II, III, and IV.  So far it looks like the Rocky 25^th anniversary Special Edition DVD will feature anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1, and will include: a 33-minute video commentary with Sylvester Stallone, "Behind the Scenes" featurette with director John Avildsen with never-before-seen footage, Tribute to Burgess Meredith, Tribute to James Crabe, audio commentary with the director, producer, and cast, original advertising materials, and original theatrical trailer.

 

 

January 9, 2001

We've updated our News page to link to more press releases that are coming out of the 2001 ICES.  Of particular interest is that seven companies rallied behind the DVD+RW recordable DVD format during the show.  These companies include Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics, Sony, Ricoh, Yamaha, MCC/Verbatim, and now Thomson Multimedia (parent company of RCA).  The DVD+RW recordable format offers compatibility with existing DVD-ROM drives (for use with computer systems) and standalone DVD players.  Imagine that, a DVD recordable format that can be used with existing DVD players.  It may sound like common sense, but the DVD-RAM recordable format does not support that type of compatibility.  Go figure.  For more information regarding the DVD+RW format, visit www.dvdrw.com or read the full press release.

 

On the software side, there's a couple of interesting developments.  First, Fox's upcoming DVD release of Bedazzled, starring Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley, will be the first DVD-Video title to feature NUON technology for greater interactivity.  Specifically, this title will feature dynamic book marking of scenes, pre-selected close-up zooms of interesting scene elements, an enhanced art gallery and set design stills with their counterparts clips in the film, dynamic chapter selection with full-motion video.  To take advantage of the NUON enhancements, you need a NUON compatible DVD player, such as the Toshiba SD-2300 and Samsung Extiva N-2000.  The Bedazzled DVD will be released on March 13 and retail for $26.98.  For more info, read the full press release or visit the NUON web site.

 

Second, Artisan Entertainment is producing the world's first DVD+CD^™ with their upcoming release of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 on March 13.  A DVD+CD is a disc that is a DVD-Video on one side, and an audio CD on the other.  Artisan is using this hybrid format to put the movie on one side, and the soundtrack on the other.  Cool concept huh?  Apparently, Artisan was the first studio/distributor to use the DVD-9 format (i.e., single-sided, dual-layered DVD) and the DVD-18 format (i.e., double-sided and dual-layered DVD).  For more information, read the full press release.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we added these new DVD title announcements: Bedazzled (3/13), Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (3/13), A Passage To India (3/20). 

 

As a final note for today, it looks like our domain name (www.TimeForDVD.com) transfer to our new web server over the last few days has gone quite well.  We are shutting down our old web server.  Thanks for your patience over the last few days.  Hopefully, the anomalies (if any) didn't cause too much inconvenience for you.

 

 

January 5, 2001

This weekend, the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES) kicks off in Las Vegas 
(January 6-9, 2001).  It's an international convention
highlighting all of the new consumer electronics.  If 
you happen to be in the Las Vegas area and love
consumer electronics, this is the show.  We've 
updated our News page to link to some of the latest 
press releases concerning new DVD and home theater products and technologies that are being publicized and introduced at the show.  For example, Hitachi is introducing the world's first DVD-RAM based camcorder.  The Hitachi DZ-MV100A camcorder ($2,000) records about an hour of high quality MPEG-2 video (at about 6 Megabits per second) to a re-writable 8-cm DVD-RAM disc that can hold 2.8 GBytes of digital video.

 

In light of all the exciting things going on at ICES 2001, we found (with the help of a few of our avid readers) a couple of interesting articles on the internet that we think you'll find interesting.  First is a Forbes Home Theater article that talks about folks lucky enough to build or re-model for a dedicated home theater room.  We're talking about home theaters that seat 18 people in luxury and comfort with a 120-inch diagonally measured screen.  We're talking about home theaters in the $50,000 range on up to $700,000.  Wow!

 

If that wasn't enough, there's a great article from Silicon Valley magazine that talks about some Silicon Valley billionaire's fully-automated and fully networked homes.  We're talking in the multi-million dollar range now, for a home theater, an integrated computer and communications system, and house-wide home automation for heating, lighting, security, and an "aroma" system.  And that's just for the electronics!  (Mansion sold separately.)  Yes, that's the latest status symbol for the technologically enabled billionaires.  Imagine if you will, a subwoofer the size of a swimming pool, a front video projector the size of a bathtub, a house custom-built around a pair of $75,000 speakers that are anchored to bedrock.  It's a must-read article.  So how large is your head-end?  And you thought you're so cool with that cable modem or DSL service.  Ha!  

 

OK, back to the real world... As another sign of DVD's popularity, the Academy that votes for the Oscar winners (at the Academy Awards) has been requesting more and more DVDs in which to screen, nominate, and vote for the Oscar winners.  According to this news release, the number of DVD requests increased from 300 last year to almost 2,400 this year.  The article goes on to explain why releasing a screener in the DVD-Video format is not always easy.  What surprises us is that the Academy members screen movies using VHS?  Whoa.  We had expected them to experience the movies in the theaters--wouldn't you??  We would understand using DVD screeners if they had a decent home theater system that is properly set-up and calibrated, but VHS?  Hmmmm.

 

We have a new DVD movie review for you.  It's Brian De Palma's 1987 The Untouchables, starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro, and Andy Garcia.  This is one of our all-time favorite mobster movies.  If you're a fan of this genre, don't miss this movie when it comes out on January 16.

 

On our Upcoming Releases page, we have some new DVD title announcements: Lost Souls (2/27), The Killing Fields (3/13), Remember The Titans (3/20), and Charlie's Angels (3/27).  There seems to be quite a few street date delays as of late.  The latest example is that we heard Dogma: SE is being delayed from its original release date of January 23.  A new date has yet to be announced.

 

And finally, we're going to transfer our domain name (www.TimeForDVD.com) to our new web server over the next few days.  So if you experience any anomalies, at least you would know what's going on.  Please bear with us.  We expect everything to be back to normal around the middle of next week (around January 10 or so).

 

  

January 2, 2001

Welcome back from the holidays, everyone!  We hope all of you had a wonderful time during the holidays.  We'll kick off the year (and possibly the Millennium, depending on when you define the start of a Millennium) with a quick review of progress the DVD format has made in the past year, followed by a mention of the first DVD movie releases for calendar year 2001, our latest DVD movie review, and some upcoming releases news.

 

DVD, THE YEAR IN REVIEW

 

An Excellent Year for DVD Hardware - With more than 14 million DVD players sold to consumers in the United States and Canada, DVD has well surpassed the 10% adoption rate, considered by many industry experts as a major milestone for a new product to be considered "mainstream".  Keep in mind that this number does not include the DVD-ROM drives sold with/for computer systems.  Probably the best thing that's happened to DVD for most of our readers (i.e., "the everyday consumers") is that prices have fallen to the $100 to $120 range for entry-level models. All this in only less than four years since the format's introduction in March 1997. Wow!

     If you were in the market for a DVD player last 
year, there were so many different types of DVD 
players from which to choose. The year 2000 saw 
the introduction of integrated DVD home theater 
systems (e.g., Sony DAV-S300, Panasonic 
SC-PM08, Pioneer HTZ-55DV, JVC TH-A10).  
Picture quality made another jump as the new 
progressive scan DVD players were introduced.  
These models can output 480p (480 lines of resolution in progressive scanning mode) component video signal for a stunning flicker-free and nearly artifact-free picture on 480p capable digital TVs and HDTVs. Toshiba even makes a progressive scan portable DVD player, the Toshiba SDP-1000 ($1,600).

     The year 2000 also saw the introduction of DVD-Audio players. DVD-Audio is a high-resolution, multi-channel capable audio DVD format that promises unequalled sonic fidelity. Though copyright protection concerns delayed the roll out of DVD-Audio players from summer until recently, DVD-Audio players are here. Right now, there's only a handful of models from various manufacturers, but expect every major brand to sport their line of DVD-Audio/Video players in time for the holidays in 2001! Though DVD-Audio is an exciting format for audiophiles and audio enthusiasts, it remains to be seen if this format will catch on with the "everyday consumers".  And finally, since the format is just coming to market, there's only a few DVD-Audio music titles available today. We'll cover DVD-Audio more when it becomes more "mainstream".

A Great Year for DVD Movie Fans - Year 2000 saw more and more movie titles released to the DVD format. The vast majority of DVD-Video titles are being released "day and date" with their VHS counterparts. (Thanks to the studios' strong support of the DVD format!)  There was a proliferation of DTS DVD titles, particularly those with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 surround sound formats, thanks to the new, more data capacity-friendly DTS format that encodes soundtracks at 754 kbits/sec.  Most exciting of all, more DVDs were released in the new "extended surround" sound formats: DTS Extended Surround and THX Surround EX. These titles include Gladiator, Chicken Run, Se7en, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Ultimate Edition), The Haunting, and the Fight Club.  As a final sign that DVD has reached mainstream status, there are currently over 9,600 DVD titles available.

***

Now, back to the present... today, there's a number of terrific DVD titles being released, including Hollow Man, Autumn in New York, Under Suspicion, The Way of the Gun, and Crime + Punishment in Suburbia.  We recently completed our review of Hollow Man, a terrific science fiction, action, thriller movie with visual special effects that will make your jaw drop.  Not since Terminator 2 have we seen visual special effects this dazzling!

Speaking of action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, The 6th Day, a futuristic, action-thriller is coming to DVD on March 13.  The DVD features an anamorphic video transfer, animated menus, scene selections with full motion video, and the following bonus material: a Showtime making-of featurette entitled "The Future is Coming", ten "On the 6th Day" behind-the-scenes featurettes, an isolated music score with commentary by composer Trevor Rabin, three storyboard comparisons, two animatics, talent files, theatrical trailers, RePet infomercial and TV spot, and productions notes.  This DVD will sport a retail price of $27.96.

In other Upcoming Releases news, The Contender is coming to DVD on February 27.  Judging from the titles on our Upcoming Releases page so far for this year, we have a good feeling that 2001 will shape up to be another terrific year for DVD fans.

We also finished up our answers for the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) relating to DVDs recently.  Be sure to check that out if you still have lingering unanswered questions.  If you can't find your question listed or answered, just drop us a note.  Chances are, others will have the same question.  We'll finish up the FAQs relating to home theater and digital TV topics in the next month or so.  That's it for today.