Friday, July 3, 1998
I can't believe that Bob completed two, in-depth reviews in the same day! EVERYONE should read his latest review of : THIEF. Especially those responsible for bringing this taught thriller to DVD. If you'll pardon my saying so -- with the DVD version of THIEF, the most surprising twist of the film is in the realization that the people on the other side of the screen are the ones who are really getting ripped off. Check our editorial above for further details.
Gather 'round the TV, kiddies! Bob Banka's latest review rolls in just in time for Friday Family Fun Night! Read for yourself if Disney's FLUBBER is a dudder -- or a green-globbin' good time! Sponsored by our buds at Digital Eyes.
As The BIG Picture continues to grow and evolve into a trusted and frequently visited site for DVD-related issues, we feel that the time is right to start speaking out on issues that effect the DVD market and consumers as a whole. We know that some of the major players are frequent visitors to this page and are hopeful that we can make at least some small contribution to the ongoing promotion and development of DVD product that we can all feel good about. The BIG Picture Editorial page officially debuts today and we invite your comments.
One of our Circuit City DVD sPy's just sent the latest Divx sales figures: 27 June - 2 July: 56 players sold. Again just to refresh from 14 June - 26 June: 88 players. That's a grand total of 144 players. If one graciously estimates first week player sales at 60, that would mean about 200 players have sold through to customers from the June 8 lainch date until yesterday. I hope your readers find this info interesting." Well, what do you think?
Family PC Magazine calls Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore one of their "Best New Idea" picks.
CNN says don't be the first on your block for once: Do not buy a DVD rewritable drive for your PC.
Thursday, July 2, 1998
Wired News reports that Samsung is developing a home network system with a Web-like interface that will link your TV, VCR, DVD player, and PC, letting you visit and control each device from a TV or PC screen. Cool!
Saddle up your recliners: Bob Banka's latest review of the Gary Cooper classic HIGH NOON, brought to you by our friends at Digital Eyes, is now posted.
Hollywood on-line treasures Hitchcock and trashes Starship Troopers on DVD.
The identities of the two Circuit City employees that broke ranks to reveal and Circuit City's short-stocking of open DVD players earlier this week have been confirmed by The Big Picture. Considering that these employees have untertaken a great personal risk in providing this information to us -- and the fact that they are in totally different geographic locations in the U.S., indicates to us that their stories are credible and accurate to the best of their knowledge.
Wednesday, July 1, 1998
Bob Banka's latest review is now posted at The BIB Picture: "Enter The Dragon". Click the title to enter the review and see what all the fuss is about
Panasonic debuts its' DVD software division with the pending release of the Nagano Winter Olympic Games with CBS. No mention is made of aspect ratios or 16:9 enhancements, however.
Laserviews updated their new release page yesterday. I guess the biggest news to come of it was the announcement of the recent, critically-acclaimed mini-series "Merlin" is coming to DVD September 15th. So is "Suicide Kings" with Christopher Walken. Even though it was a box office bomb, I'm sorta looking forward to seeing it.
Tuesday, June 30, 1998
A consumer in San Francisco caught our story below and wanted to provide more details on the Divx test marketing in The City: "Just read your June 30th update. Wanted to send in a note about CC's advertising in the SF Bay Area -- their ads have no DVD players in sight. The ads do have an outside "wrapper" advertising DIVX and an inside spread on DIVX. As for the Good Guys! I just got their ad yesterday; and unlike the last few they have put a few DVD players back in. The last two or three GG ads had no DVD players in them and only the DIVX player -- maybe the slow sales of DIVX have pushed the GG management to slide the DVD players back in the ads? I think the SF Bay Area is a bad test area for DIVX. There's too many techies here and there's too many other places, well known places, where people can shop for things. I just bought a DVD player two weeks ago, a Panasonic A-110, it took a while to find, but there were many places to look. Four Fry's stores (who aren't stocking DIVX and seem to dislike it all together), three Costcos, two Good Guys!, and <ahem> one Circuit City. Interestingly, the CC store that I went to visit -- for fun -- had an A-110, A-310, and a two or three other DVD players on display. No A-110, but the salesperson was slick and automatically suggested the A-310 or the "better and less expensive" Zenith DIVX player. Ick. I was also told the A-110 was an "outdated" model and the DIVX player was a brand new model. When I confronted the salesperson with the question of, "The A-110 was released 4-6 months ago, it's old?" He promptly answered, "In a technology world 6 months is really old." Sheesh :) Anyway, the two Good Guys! I went to both had one of those spinning racks, with a bunch of DIVX titles on them. Most of which were DVD titles anyway. The Circuit City I visited had two six foot sections filled with DIVX titles. The TV ads for DIVX have been running heavily out here also. I saw the DIVX ad with the family twice last night during Ally McBeal." Thanks for the update. When the sales guy said that "4-6 months is really old", you should have reminded him that the Zenith player he was trying to sell you was designed over a year ago -- long before Zenith went bankrupt...
We were hearing a lot of hype about the Digital Living Room thing up the coast in Laguna Niguel recently (what a great excuse to hang out at the beach and deduct the trip on your tax returns -- brilliant!) but here's an article from the L.A. Times that provides less techno-babble and more details.
Hewlett Packard is teaming with one of our sponsors, NetFlix to offer purchasers of HP DVD-ROM Drives 3 free-DVD rentals with their purchase. We like it.
This is probably the first press releases that we've seen announcing a single open DVD title, but then again, we're talking "test market" here -- and it's worth the click. Here's the scoop on Warner Bros 25th anniversary release of the newly-restored Bruce Lee classic martial arts film: "Enter The Dragon". As a nice touch, Warner Bros. is hosting an autograph party in San Francisco today with Lee's widow and some supporting cast members. We assume that open DVD will be on display and consumers in The City (my former stomping grounds) will be given a good education on the merits of open DVD -- like the fact that this title and dozens of others from Warner Bros. alone, are not -- and will not be, available on this "Divx thing" we've been hearing so much about. Talk about a Kung Fu kick in the solar-plexis! Ooof!!
September 25th is going to be a very good day for our European neighbors. Warner Brothers is going to reward your enthusiasm for DVD with the release of 25 titles that day, followed by 8-10 new titles per month thereafter. Gee, Warren, how can you keep up THAT pace for very long? Does this mean you're ramping up production? We're not even getting 8 titles a month from WB here in the states! But we sure look forward to getting them! All systems go!
Consumers cry FOUL. One of our inside DVD sPy sources at Circuit City confirmed his suspicions and checked in today with this report: "I checked all the stores in the test markets and I confirmed what I thought was true. I checked the DVD-A110 and the DVD-A310. The stores in Richmond have the A110 on display but none in stock. The stores in SF don't have the A110 in stock or on display. They do have the A310 on display and some stores do have 1 in stock, but considering this is $100 more than the Zenith, I don't think they're going to sell these... even though the 310 crushes the Zenith in terms of quality." Are their print ads no longer promoting open DVD players in the test markets? What must Panasonic think of all this? The apparent message to consumers (especially in the test markets) is abundantly clear: If you're looking for a high-quality, open DVD player -- you're very unlikely to find it in stock at Circuit City. In a related story, we know of at least one consumer who has fired off a formal complaint to the California Department of Consumer Affairs ofver The Good Guys! misleading advertising statement that was reported yesterday.
Bob's latest review: GATTACA, is now available for your reference. This review, like so many others, is sponsored by our friends at Digital Eyes. Want to sponsor one or more of Bob's stellar reviews on The BIG Picture and be seen by thousands of visitors? Send an e-mail or click the "advertising" button above and we'll show you just how easy and affordable it is!
Monday, June 29, 1998
Here are two phrases that any retail operation hates to hear: "False Advertising" and "Bait and Switch". Not only are these concepts reviled by consumers, they are, quite simply, against the law. Our DVD sPy (code-name DANTANA) called The Good Guys! on the carpet for their published flyer that touted: "100 titles available today on Divx" when in fact, there were fewer than one- fifth of that number of titles available. Here's the unedited response from The Good Guys!: "Thank you for emailing us your concern about our June 15th advertisement. Our ad on page 15 states that "...nearly 100 titles are available today from Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks..." This sentence is part of the DIVX introduction-explaining what it is about and that the above companies make many of the DIVX discs and how many are out there today. Unfortunately we have not received all of the titles from the manufacturers which is the reason that the store only had 18 titles available. We expect to have the remaining 80 or so titles next month. We do apologize for any confusion. Once again we appreciate your feedback and hope that the good guys! can be your audio/video electronics provider." To which we can only add: Huh?? And, no thanks.
You have to admire their spunk: We received an e-mail from a rabidly anti-Divx site that contains some pretty useful information. What we really dig are the banners they want us to post on our web-site. Well, okay... just this once.... Our favorites are shown below. Click either one of 'em and be whisked deep into the bowels of the "Why you shouldn't even consider buying a pay-per-view DVD (DIVX) player" website.
Here's another Divx-site spoof to tickle your fancy. It looks so much like the "official" Divx web-site that I would suspect that the real Divx folks might try to put a clamp on this one real fast. Enjoy the very clever and detailed SNL-style humor on this one while you can!
Even the "old fogies" are learning to appreciate the modern-day oracle of our times -- The DVD-ROM drive: Think New Ideas Debuts Revolutionary DVD-ROM Interactive Marketing Program for John Hancock Retirement Services
Toshiba announces a new generation of DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM drives that doubles the speed, among other things.
First one stepped forward. Then another -- and another. Heartened by one Circuit City employee's courage to break ranks and reveal the truth about the company's apparently bogus test marketing practices (see below), The BIG Picture received the following letter from another purported Circuit City employee this morning: "Great site. I'm writing you to agree w/ your CC insider's report on DVD understocking. I work at a store in the Philadelphia, PA area, and have been chronically out of stock of DVD players. The hardest players to find are Sony (interesting that they are the one brand that we carry that is AGAINST divx). Sales counselors at my store do not even bother trying to sell Sony's, because they would never come anyway, if they were special ordered. I know of one man who waited for 2 months for his special order to arrive before buying elsewhere. Meanwhile, some sales counselor friends of mine informed me of Bryn Mawr Stereos and Best Buys selling out of dozens of the same units in a week. And along those lines, BB and BMS feature huge HT displays to show off DVD units-meanwhile, my store "features" DVD in a non-HT display w/a 20" Proscan tv, placed behind a support beam - not very noticeable. All this has been a thorn in my side for a long time now, and it's great to see someone getting the word out there." In a subsequent note, this employee added: "the only DVD players that our store might have in stock AT ALL are panasonic's (and ProScan's) current models (and even then, there is only one of each at any given time). I have seen ONE Sony S-7000 come through our store in the entire year and a half that DVD has been out." Our questions of the day are:
1. If Circuit City is not trying to compete with the open DVD market, then why wouldn't they stock the most sought-after, highly acclaimed DVD player on the market since the introduction of DVD?
2. Are these apparently deliberate acts of "inventory sabotage" (in order to skew sales in favor of Divx) even legal? Do we smell the hint of a possible antitrust violation?
WEEKEND UPDATE:
Our latest DVD sPy claims to be a Circuit City insider (we are working to verify this) -- with full access to Divx hardware sales info. We wanted to know if Divx was outselling open DVD players in the test markets and here's our answer according to the sPy: "Divx is definitely selling more but not because of Divx itself. We have standard DVD players on display, but rarely have them in stock, and it takes about 2-3 weeks if we special order them because our warehouses don't have any either. The company line is to inform the customers about Divx and if they are "still comfortable purchasing a DVD player" (their words, not mine) then sell I should sell them one. We are not discouraged from selling open DVD in so many words, but with our stock problems, they might as well be telling us to do that. I really don't like telling my customers about Divx, especially with our stock problems, but I'd rather have a well-informed happy DVD customer than sell them a DVD and have them come back and have them yell at me. I do like to help people with their buying decisions, but my job is a little harder with the Divx debacle." This CC insider has promised to send new information our way about mid-week, and we'll post it here.
EDITORIAL COMMENTS If it is proven true that few, if any CC stores are stocking standard DVD players -- even those not participating in the test markets -- it would seem to indicate that Mr. Sharp is trying to "stack the deck" in favor of a Divx purchase, which should come as no surprise. However, no statistics of any relevance or legitimacy can be drawn from the "Divx experiment", when Divx is the only available DVD hardware for purchase. It's like taking the Pepsi Challenge and only serving Pepsi (sorry, but we're out of the stuff and won't have any on the shelves for three weeks. Wanna buy a bottle of Pepsi in the meantime? It tastes just as good!). If the news that our CC insider is providing is proven accurate, then at best, the "test marketing" of Divx is a sham, fooling no one but perhaps the shareholders backing it. While trying to skew sales of Divx in favor of open DVD is predictable and to a degree, unremarkable, the act of deliberately short-stocking open DVD players during the test marketing would be deceitful, unethical and reprehensible, in our opinion. There have been no reports of DVD hardware shortages, so it would a appear that any "de-stocking" of open DVD players would be a pre-meditated act of desperation, designed to prop up the sagging image of Divx.
We can only hope that when customers of Circuit City (and perhaps Good Guys!) don't find an open DVD player in stock, they'll smell a rat and take their business elsewhere. As for our new inside contact, The BIG Picture appreciates your sharing this information and trusts that you are providing your prospects with all the available data on Divx versus open DVD.
It's not fair to paint all Circuit City and Good Guys! employees with the same broad stroke of condemnation. As evidenced in last week's uncovering of internal Good Guys! correspondence relating to the subject -- and the fact that CC employees and at least one purported Team Divx insider have spoken up against Divx as well, we now have compelling evidence that the embers of truth and conscience are still burning amidst the current party line of Divx/Circuit City/Good Guys! management that would seem to imply: "We know what our customers want better than they do." We encourage more Circuit City and Good Guys! employees to share their information confidentially. E-mail your Divx-related information to editor@ohms.com and fax any supporting documents to our San Diego, California offices at 619-673-9487.
--Jeff McNeal, Editor
The BIG Picture DVD News Daily
Bob's latest review is ready for your perusal: MAD DOG AND GLORY. The flick that reverse-typecast Bill Murray and Robert DeNiro -- and introduced most of us to the charms of Uma Thurman. I'm not sure in which way I envy Bob Banka more -- in his masterful skill at creating memorable and compelling reviews -- or the luxury of time that he must have in order to compose them. Both, I guess. But with a full-time audio production business, this website and three others that I maintain -- along with a wife, three active kids, a dog, two cats, a parakeet, a gecko lizard and four goldfish to look after.... sigh... I just can't compete!
The DVD sPy has returned with a new Divx "insider" sales report in which he states: "Just letting you guys know about Divx sales in the test markets. I've been keeping track of sales in the CC stores in the test markets since June 14. Before that date I don't have specific numbers, but no more than 10 players were sold from June 8-14. Here's what I have so far: from June 14 through yesterday at 6:00pm EDT a total of 88 players have been sold in CC stores. I don't work in a test market, but I can check inventory in any CC store nationwide. I don't know any info on good guys! sales, but they should be around the same or less. I'll send you guys a weekly update on sales." Good work, 007, we'll look forward to your next communique...
Are you ready for 3,000 DVD movie titles by year-end? Stereophile Guide to Home Theater has two new DVD-related stories: DVD Video Gains Momentum and Sears Drops Out, RCA Joins Divx, Launch Costs Rise. Thanks for the tipoff, Max! EDITOR'S NOTE: It looks like Trillium 9 has been confirmed as a legitimate "Team Divx" insider. His earlier prediction of a Sears pull-out of Divx support, dissatisfaction with the Zenith nameplate and grumbling Circuit City stockholders have been confirmed in this story! For further details, check my post in The BIG Picture Forum.