The Original DVDs (1 Viewer)

[Robert Dunnill]

In June of '97, I remember The Mask being demo'd on a big screen TV at a Montgomery Ward store in Arlington, TX. That was my first encounter with the format.

The first disc I bought was Pale Rider, on January 1, 1998. There was only a modest selection available at the time, and three studios (Paramount, Fox, and Dreamworks) had yet to commit to the format.

RD

 

[Harry-N]

The first home video release with stereo sound that I remember being demonstrated in a store (Bambergers - now Macy's) was Olivia Newton-John's Xanadu on a newfangled thing called a Laser Disc. I remember thinking how novel the idea was to actually have a movie in stereo sound at home.

Radical!

Harry

 

[David Norman]

My Sony 7000 in April 1997 came bundled with In the Line of Fire, Fly Away Home, Tony Bennett Unplugged: TheVideo, and 25th Anniversary Sesame Street: A Musical Celebration.

Eraser was one of the first DVD I bought and I had to order it from a buddy who was in one of the test markets where they had released the discs. You could only buy them in a handful of cities initially. I think Goldeneye, Species, and maybe Blade Runner were the other in that first pack. Very early releases were Batman, Space Jam, The Fugitive, Twister, Jumanji, Interview with a Vampire, ?? Exorcist, and Goodfellas though I'm not sure how many were in the initial wave.

Here's a list of the very early discs you could get with the Panasonic model in March or April 97. I won't vouch that all of these were actually available, but the list looks right:

Batman
Birdcage, The
Blade Runner: Director's Cut
Bodyguard, The
Bonnie & Clyde
Bridges of Madison County
Color Purple, The
Eraser
Eric Claption Unplugged
Exorcist, The
Fugitive, The
Get Shorty
Glimmer Man, The
Goldeneye
Goodfellas
Hootie & The Blowish
Interview with the Vampire
JFK: Special Edition
Lethal Weapon
Madonna: Girlie Show Live Down Under
Mask, The
Michael Collins
Midnight Cowboy
Mortal Kombat
Poltergeist
Raging Bull
Rain Man
Rem: Road Movie
Road Warrior, The
Rocky
Seven
Sleepers
Space Jam
Species
Street Car Named Desire, A: Director's version
Three Tenors in Concert 1994, The
Time to Kill, A
Twister
Unforgiven
Wizard of Oz
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I ordered my first DVD player from Sound City in March of '97, and ordered BATMAN to go with the player. The first DVD I purchased in a store was either TOTAL RECALL or IN THE LINE OF FIRE. Philly wasn't one of the test markets, so I wasn't supposed to be able to get the Warner DVD's. But Tower on South Street carried the Warners titles, and I purchased THE FUGITIVE, the other BATMAN films and MARS ATTACKS! from them.

Most of those titles leave a lot to be desired now compared to the current state of the art, but they looked amazing at the time.

 

[TonyDale]

My first dvd purchase was Frank Oz' LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (the musical), ONLY because it had the special feature of the original ending. . .I didn't even own a player until at least six weeks later.

Wasn't LITTLE SHOP one of the early Warner releases, and one of the first to be recalled?

 

[Harry-N]

I came late to the DVD 'party', having been a longtime LaserDisc aficianado. I was simply content to continue in the LaserDisc world to see if this DVD thing would stick or fall by the wayside as another failed format.

Sometime in 1998, my wife bought a new computer that had a DVD-ROM drive. Deciding that I now had a way of testing one of these things at home, I went out and bought Close To You: Remembering The Carpenters, since I'd seen the PBS show and heard that the DVD had 'extras.' The nasty thing about that was that it wasn't region coded, so the computer's DVD-ROM software wouldn't accept it as a first time source. It wanted a region code so it could set itself to that region.

Sometime later, we bought another DVD, a Widescreen version of "Somewhere In Time" - something we weren't able to get on LaserDisc where it was only available in Pan'N'Scan. That DVD set the region code and we entered the DVD world.

Ironically, the first two CD purchases I made back when THOSE were new to the marketplace were Carpenters Singles 1969-1973 and the soundtrack to Somewhere In Time. It was purely a coincidence, but I've found that somewhat interesting.

Harry

 

[JonZ]

Davids list looks right to me.

 

[Nick T Robot]

I have 3 of those original discs on David Norman's list.

Thanks, guys!

 

[MikeEckman]

I worked for Best Buy in March 1997, and I remember the first day DVD players were available for sale. People came in and bought the players even though the first titles wouldn't have been available til the next week.

Back then I was still living at home and didnt even own my own first VCR, so I had no interest in home theater, and just thought it was stupid that people were buying players for a format that didnt have any titles available.

I remember when the first titles first came out, Best Buy placed them on a cart on the blue track. I remembered looking at the Warner Snapper packaging and thinking how cheap the carboard and plastic case was.

My first actual experience with DVD was back in 1998 sometime when a technology-geek friend of mine had a PC with a DVD-ROM drive hooked up to his home theater, and we watched The Fifth Element. I remembered being blown away by the picture quality and surround sound!

The prices of the players, and the lack of availability put me off of DVD for a while, and I didnt get my first player til early 2000.

Its been a glorious ride since. My most recent DVD Profiler update says I have 412 titles!

 

[Eric Huffstutler]

Warner Brothers was the "first" to release a wave of titles and the above lists looks about right. I think Batman (by numbering) was the first title in that series but wasn't the first DVD. In fact, the first discs were made in Japan for the Japanese market. What I consider the first TRUE widely marketed DVD's (have historical timeline somewhere) were the IMAX series mentioned above by ChrisMatson. They came packaged in clear jewel cases exactly like what music CD's come in today but instead of having CD embossed it says DVD. I have this in the Rainforest title and holding on to it as (1) a collector's item (2) for historical value.

 

[JenaroM]

"Contact" was the first DVD I ever bought. It was THE special edition of the day.

 

[Nick T Robot]

The Fifth Element was one of the first DVDs I got. Back in july 1999, It was a wait and see kind of purchase.

5th Element, GhostBusters Special Edition(With the MST3k-like commentary!) and Terminator 2: The Regular Edition was my collection back then.