DVDs and Me

As a kid, one of the few things my family did together was watch movies. We would rent, record, borrow, and yes, sometimes even pirate video tapes. Since a lot of stuff we liked to watch was on at odd time when everyone wasn't around, we taped our favorite shows and watched them later. We got so used to this, in fact, that when the show we were watching hit a commercial, a favorite joke of my Dad's was to tell one of us kids to go hit fast forward, and then start laughing when we realized we are actually watching real TV for once.

When I first discovered DVDs, to put it mildly, I was fantastically excited. The movies were cheap, easy to use, and usually had great stuff on them. Anytime I wanted to disappear into the fictional world I could put in a shiny new disc and whisp off to my favorite scenes or episode without fast forwarding, rewinding, or worrying about the tape getting eaten. TV on DVD was even better. Best part? No commercials.

As DVDs have conquered the industry and are now leaving us to be eaten by the Blueray, I've become a little pickier about what I like and don't like and I've been pretty annoyed by some of the dumber practices of DVD.

When I was a kid watching Videos, I was always annoyed at the beginning of a movie when they had the black bars on the top on bottom of the screen. Being uneducated in film and such, we kids couldn't understand why the people making the video would cut out the top and bottom of the movie. It was annoying and we demanded to always have full screen. Sometime around my mission, perhaps just before or after, I can't remember, I became savvy to the whole Widescreen VS Fullscreen argument. I realized, to my horror, that my previous beliefs on the subject were backwards, and in fact it was the fullscreen people who were cutting the edges of the movies to make a rectangular image (all the better to fit on a theater screen) into a square television screen. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had missed scenes and events in my favorite movies that didn't fit into that square!

So today, I do everything in my power to educate people, because most people still ignorantly believe that widescreen cuts off the top and bottom of the movie, or that they're still seeing the movie the director wanted to make when they watch the fullscreen. What annoys me about this is that the industry charges the same amount for the dvds. I suppose it evens out, as fullscreen watchers get 33% less movie image but no dead space on their screen, but widescreen people get the whole movie but not economic use of their TV screen space. Being jaded, I suppose, I think Fullscreen should be discounted, as it is not the entire movie and, since most movies are still shot on film instead of digital, the image isn't as sharp when it's been blown up (as in, the draw a square on the rectangle, cut it out, and zoom in to make it fit on your screen). Most TV these days is also shown in "Letterbox" format, which I think give these shows a much sharper and sophisticated look.

One solution is to include both versions of the film, such as on Finding Nemo, but even then we have a different situation, because the folks at Pixar are, no kidding, movie making GODS. When Pixar made the Fullscreen version of Finding Nemo, instead of cutting a rectangle down to a square, They EXTENDED the rectangle, actually ADDING to the top and bottom to make a square, which I find AMAZING! So in fact, the Fullscreen of that movie is actually the better value. yet they included BOTH versions in a two disc set along with TONS of extras. Today, a two disc version will usually fit on one with room to spare.

The usual packaging for a movie with both fullscreen and widescreen has almost no special features and is a double sided disc, which, my friend leads to another thing I HATE about DVDs. Double sided discs, while economical, is blasphemy for the dedicated lover of movies. The thing looks like crap, is ALWAYS badly labeled (which leads to repeated flipping) and has the durability of toilet paper (which can scratch these dvds; No Kidding, I once ruined a dvd by cleaning it with toilet paper... breath Mike, breath....).

To be fair though, I love, love, love LOVE decorated discs. I always love to open new DVDS (sometimes I can't even wait till I get home... I HAVE to see the disc and open it in the car) and see the design on the disc and the inserts. In the beginning, ALL discs were really nicely decorated, and they had GREAT inserts: booklets, interviews, pictures.... fun stuff. Now, most discs are silver with black font writing and there's NOTHING inside. But yet Slip covers abound, even though IT'S THE SAME IMAGE THAT'S ON THE DVD! Slip Covers falls into the area of dust covers for me.... it's funny, these thing once were supposed to protect the book, now I take mine off while reading a hard cover so I don't damage it, cause without it, the book looks like crap. Same with the dvds.

Today, DVDs are pumped out fast and cheap, which is sad since the quality stuff was coming out as recently as 3-4 years ago. Bluerays seem to be trying to blow people away with nice packaging and nice features, but that's only to woo people to buy them. In five years, it'll be the same situation.

The last thing I want to rant about is the new practice of different "editions," each with a different selection of features and packaging... and then half the time the edition you really wanted comes out 2 months later (unannounced) and you have to decide whether to buy the damn movie again or not. King Kong, Fellowship of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia ALL got me on that. I went to the store and bought the "nice" Two Disc Special edition, only to discover that extended editions were coming out with more footage and better features a couple months later. But they didn't start advertising this until a week or so after the release of the first dvd (or dvds.... how stupid is that, to release a one disc and a two disc only to then release the three/four disc a few months later? so stupid I imagine the producers are wondering where the hell all the money in their laps came from, I bet; grrrrrr) .

What inspired all this is my purchase of the "3-disc" special edition of the Incredible Hulk (great movie, will review it soon!). I was excited to get it, but the three discs is only two, as one is a "digital copy." the special Features on disc two are minimal, and would have fit on the first disc with no problem. The only reason the separated them was simplify the production.... see, EVERY version had disc one, which had the bare bones stuff, and then the people who forked over the extra 8 bucks got the second disc that had maybe an hour or so of more features.... Ugh. And the
Worst part? Silver, undecorated discs with green lettering. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Come on, Hollywood. you can do better than this. We the consumers want an attractive edition of the film we loved enough to buy at a reasonable price and with solid special features. We don't want to pay thirty dollars for something we could have bought five years ago for Ten bucks. And for those who don't want all the bells and whistles it's okay to have different editions, but please, announce them and release them at the same time, ok?
Unfortunately, the best we can hope for is that Bluerays will at least stay god-awful expensive and not progress to immorally expensive.
Ah well. Anyone read any good books lately?