What originally got you into DVD....... (1 Viewer)

Was it price, better quality, extras, storability/size, beacause it was a new mediam, etc? For me it was because it was better quality. After initially getting into it, it was also for the extras. My household only had laserdiscs for a short while, so I don't really remember much about their quality and stuff. I do know that DVD beats VHS by a long shot. Probably Beta too, but I don't remember much about Beta because I was little when it went out.

I got into DVD for the sole reason that widescreen was the standard. It's hard to be a widescreen buff with only a VCR. :frowning:

The 5th Element. It looked and sounded so amazing I was instantly sold. Then a combination of my budding interest in classic/art/foreign film, the extras, and price kept me buying.

cough*poll*cough... sorry, I had something in my throat.

Anyway, I originally bought a DVD player when they were brand new. I paid $500 for my first Sony single disc player and it didn't even have componant or DTS!!! I got into buying a lot of DVDs once I began to upgrade my system.

A long time ago, I started with laserdisc. The price difference between DVDs and laserdiscs is what originally got me into DVD. The increasing catalog of available titles and improving quality of releases is what kept me.

Now with anamorphic, progressive scan, etc. there's nowhere else to go!!

My wife said she was having trouble finding movies she wanted on tape. That's all I needed to hear! What a break! She couldn't find the tapes and I got to upgrade the entire home theater package which included DVD's. Can't beat that for keeping harmony at home!
Never looked back and wondered why since.

I got into DVD because it was the first format I had seen that I thought could truly duplicate or even now beat the movie theater experience in my home.

I read an article about a new video format that would have pristine video and audio capabilities. That's all it took. I then waited over a year for the launch of DVD. Although I had never been a collector of movies, I now have a list I keep of upcoming titles I want to add to my collection.

Video quality, extra features, and a new medium. I didn't want to take a technological step back and go with laserdisc, and the movie that I wanted the extras of was available on DVD. That movie was Clerks.

Divx. About a year before the system was launched I was working in the home audio department of Circuit City and they were hyping this new way to watch movies at home and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. By the time the players were released I had left the company but I was sure to get one anyway. Fortunately it didn't take me long to figure out that Divx movies were all pan n scan and I could order a standard DVD player for considerably less from 800.com.

I had been following the upcoming release of DVD for about a year when the first players arrived locally (March of 1997, I think). I bought a Pioneer DVL-700 because I needed a new laserdisc player anyway, and I figured it would give me a chance to check out DVD at the same time. I managed to get 4 DVDs from a friend who lived in LA (they were not available locally for several months) and have been hooked ever since. Pretty impressive since those early DVDs weren't all that good compared to what we have now - my first four were Batman, Goldeneye, Goodfellas, and Unforgiven. My copy of Goldeneye has been upgraded to the newer SE and the old one was sold on eBay, and Batman will go the same route next year when the SE comes out. I can only hope that Goodfellas (flipper) and Unforgiven (the text looks terrible) eventually get SEs too!

Laserdisc.

My first impression of the blossoming dvd was that it was the rebellious bastard step-child of its more refined ancestor the laserdisc. So it was a natural transition.

Quote:

"I didn't want to take a technological step back and go with

laserdisc,..."

Going from vhs to laserdisc would have in fact been a major technological step forward. Going to dvd is but one step farther.

Jimmy

I was a huge Laserdisc fan, even though I don't have a very large collection of them. I had gotten into them for 3 reasons.

1. The Star Wars Trilogy Boxsets

2. The extended cuts of Aliens and The Abyss

3. I loved the picture quality, and the extras.

Sadly Laserdisc a few years later started to flouder and die, sure, I hated the huge discs that were a pain in the butt to have to turn over all the time. But It was better then VHS. I tried to avoid DVD, stopped buying movies almost entirely unless I could get it on Laser.

Soon, DVD started to draw me, the cheap (in comparison to Laserdisc) prices, the great sound and picture. So, I gave in and have never regreated the choice. Now I have 75 DVD's and aquiring more all the time. Thankfully the low prices and the ammount of players people own, should stop it from dieing anytime soon, unlike LD.

MTFBWY and HH!!

Mike

Even though I have enjoyed re-watchnig movies since I was in high school I could never bring myself to buy a VHS tape because of the quality. I would tape movies from TV sometimes though. Laserdisc was totally out of the question because of the cost. Then when I first heard about DVD in early 1997 I was interested because of teh price. My first player cost $600 (Toshiba SD3107 from Onecall), which by then was ok since I had money by then, but Laserdisc was still too must $$$$ IMO. When I saw the quality of DVD, and the price of about $20 (or so) I was in full support mode. Since then I am glad to say that I have been responsible for at least 5-10 friends buying DVD players and either renting or buying DVD.

Of course after researching it I went out and bought a widescreen TV the same time I got my DVD player to enhance the movie watching experience. My first two DVD's were The Fugitive, and Goodfellas.

So for me it was the following

Cost of buying movies was reasonable.

The quality of the picture was way better than I had seen before.

Now OAR could be had, which was a big factor as well.

5.1 surround sound! Another big ticket item.

Durability, as long as you take care of your DVD's they should look the same 20 years from now.

Better quality and cheap prices.

About five years ago, I felt I had achieved Home Theater Nirvana.

I owned a 32" direct view set, a VHS HI-FI tape deck, and a Pro-Logic receiver.

Heck, I even had a center channel speaker!!

I could pop those '97 Widescreen Star Wars movies into my system and ease back with a huge grin on my face!

Then, in late 1998, I made a *huge* mistake: I purchased a 55" Pioneer 16:10.7 "semi-widescreen" RPTV.

Immediately, all those VHS tapes that had looked so crisp and clear on the 32" direct view had melted into a fuzzy, smeary, mess on the RPTV.

At about the same time, I saw an ad in a Home Theater Magazine touting Paramount's Star Trek:First Contact coming to that new "almost hi-def" home video format called DVD.

Well, to make a long story short, that afternoon I saw a demo of DVD at my local Sears, and whipped-out the plastic to the tune of $350 on a Toshiba 2008 (long since retired). I then raced over to Suncoast and purchased Star Trek:First Contact; Gone with the Wind; Batman; The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; and Forbidden Planet.. (Don't worry: I didn't pay regular Suncoast prices on those discs. Sears and Suncoast were running a local cross-promotion on DVD at the time. The Toshiba came with Suncoast DVD coupons which entitled me to two free DVD'S and heavy discounts on another five, courtesy of Sears. Toshiba was also offering a mail-in promotion on another 5 free DVD's. I made out like a bandit!!)

Needless to say, the DVD's looked brilliant on the Pioneer and sounded at least twice as good as VHS on the Pro-Logic system. Six months later (after finding this forum) I upgraded my audio to Dolby Digital and started experiencing the wonder of split surrounds and discrete bass. About a year later I retired the Tosh in favor of a Sony component player and started experiencing "film-like" quality presentations of my discs.

I had reached Home Theater Nirvana!!

That is, until I purchased my LCD projector and realized that I needed a progressive scan player ... but that's another story ...

I got into DVD because of a Magnavox infomercial. It was somwhere around the time dvd just came out , and I woke up early because my mom wanted to go x-mas shopping early at the mall. While getting dressed I turned on the tv and they were showing this new video format called DVD. It explained the difference between widescreen/panscan, the type of extras it had, the picture quality and so on. On the way to the mall i mentioned to my mom that im gonna take my money and get a player right after x-mas since i was a big movie fan. True to my word on Dec 26th i went to PC richards and plopped down $650 on a Toshiba player which i got to choose 2 movies (Rocky and Goldfiner). I then went to the local caldor and picked up The Rock and Scream. The rest is history. A lot has changed in DVD since its release. I was glad to be along for the ride.

Capt

Quality and presentation.

I never was into buying VHS...I usually would watch AMC, TCM, and PPV for movies. I thought satellite TV was the best quality for home recorded movies...

One day, I was at a Best Buy looking for PC equipment (I think it was a new scanner) and saw a demo of DVD.

I commented on how good the quality was to my parents on how good it was and I later saved up for a Toshiba SD-1600. My first DVD's were The Abyss, Vegas Vacation, and two DVD's that came with the player (Sting: BND Tour and a calibration/setup disc).

Let me just say that I'm SO glad that I watched The Abyss first. I was amazed by the menus, sound, video, and proper 2.35:1 matted presentation.

After that, my VHS buying was limited to cheap public domain tapes (I was collecting colorized prints of cartoons for a now-dormant website of mine).

I have replaced some of my VHS tapes (Some I received as gifts) with DVD's (Jurassic Park, Citizen Kane, Amadeus, Fantasia, and Wizard of Oz) that surpass the tapes over 400%.

I am an avid film buff and most of my DVD collection is of films I saw first on DVD thankfully.

I was also amazed by the selection...even in 2000!

I got my first DVD player for a different reason. I purchased a Pioneer cd recorder and every 3rd disc I recorded would stop for some unknown reason. I tried replacing the digital cord, then a new recorder and the problem persisted. The next step was to buy a new cd player. So being the smart guy that I am I figured why not buy a DVD player and use it as a cd player. I thought I would only buy some of favorite movies(The Godfather, Resevoir Dogs etc.) and that would be the end of it. Well, 2.5 years later I replaced my entire audio set-up with a home theater and can't stop buying DVDs. The most ironic thing is that the original cd player was not defective at all, it was a bad batch of recorders from Pioneer!!
KrisM