Friday, November 20, 1998
1:32pm PST -- A MAJOR PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT from The BIG Picture will be forthcoming at 3pm, Pacific Time. WE NEED YOUR HELP in spreading the word. Please return for details!
9:37am PST - As crystal-clear as looking out your window... Best Buy leads the nation by becoming the first large retailer to stock and sell HDTV's. Panasonic's 56" model with be the store's first display, with RCA & Sony joining the lineup by year-end.
9:35am - In this CMPnet article, it would appear that DVD-playing capabilities are becoming the new litmus test for computer motherboards and processor chips...
9:26am PST - Europe set to ramp up DVD music and video production with new facility in Germany.
9:03am PST - Anime fans will be thrilled to learn that the BUBBLEGUM CRISIS DVD SUITE and CYBERPUNK ANIME CLASSIC are now out and ready to play when you are.
7:55am PST - TWICE reports that DEEP IMPACT will be joining TOMORROW NEVER DIES as the first two, experimental Widescreen Divx releases aimed at gauging consumer demand. Think we'll ever see those sales figures, either?
7:48am PST - We noticed a touching tribute to the late Hollywood producer/director Alan J. Pakula on our forum this morning, posted by Kenneth...
Thursday, November 19, 1998
9:05pm PST - Man, we love getting comments like these on our user surveys: "...found your site while searching for info on projection TV's and home theater in general. I've been long familiar with all of the "technospeak" that salespeople and reviewers alike throw at us, and I will state with confidence that it was a PLEASURE to find your objective reviews and forums to help me make my real-world, real-dollars decisions." Thanks for the strokes. We're happy to provide this website as a service to those that love home theater as much as we do.
9:02pm PST - Like a pit bull... Divx, the DVD spinoff pay-per-view format that refuses to let go even after having its head cut off, is featured in an interesting, in-depth article from E-Media professional. Josh Dare refers to Internet opponents as "Jihad", now, and a spokesman for Zenith says: "There's a vocal minority out there that doesn't like the concept and has been spreading rumors." We disagree on two counts. The information spread on the Internet by Divx opponents has been largely factual -- and we're still waiting for some legitimate (or even any) sales reports from Divx HQ, which have so far, not been forthcoming. The most interesting stats in the article? "Circuit City and its L.A. partner have invested $200 million in the venture, which means they will have to sell about two million machines and 50 million discs, and collect 50 million rental fees, to break even." Lotsa luck.
8:46pm PST - Just a quick note that we watched another one of the Warner Bros. Full Frame "Budget Gourmet" titles last night --a review is forthcoming -- of Harrison Ford's FRANTIC. The Dolby Prologic stereo track had a real thick bottom end and the image quality was grainy throughout, but reasonably sharp. It'll be a three-glober.
8:44pm PST - Here's the official press release announcing Best Buy's forray into on-line DVD sales. A story we broke last week thanks to the eagle-eye of Mick Bernardo. And a special thanks to our Special Field Correspondent, Dana, for bringing you much of today's news, while we were busy uh... eh... doing other stuff.
8:37pm PST - Rollin' rollin' rollin' ..along... NetFlix takes Cinema Disc by the horns and folds it into it's Borg-like collective and just gets bigger and bigger like one of those Macy's Thanksgiving Day floats down 5th avenue... Now that you're competely baffled, read the press release and see what's what.
8:34pm PST - Continuing on the theme of the story below, Warner Brothers is giving a way a free DVD with the purchase of Windows '98. We'll be in serious trouble around here when we can start watching DVD's on the computer. Serious trouble. And we can hardly wait!
8:32pm - PST DVD - Coming to a screen near you. It's no longer a matter of "if" but "when". Check out this ZDNET article about our favorite hobby...
7:51pm PST -- Time for that new review we promised. Your friend and ours, Bob Banka, offers an inside look at he Australian-produced PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK. The first Criterion titles to feature DD 5.1. It sounds very interesting and may be worth a rental, at least. Especially one of those cool free ones from NetFlix if you haven't already taken advantage of that one...
4:57pm PST -- We'd rather not bore you with mundane, personal details, so we won't go into why the news is a "late edition" today -- but be sure and check back later tonight because we'll be loading up a ton of today's news and presenting another new review!
4:46pm PST - WE HAVE A WINNER! Congratulations to Scott Hinds of Montana, who found our random contest banner and is now the proud owner of a FREE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS DVD!!! Thanks yo all who participated! We'll be holding more giveaways in the very near future. Whenever you see the special contest banner displayed on one of our review pages, click it and claim a free DVD!! We'll announce the next free title we'll be giving away shortly. Also, we would liketo apologize for the absence of our banners for awhile today. It was a software glitch that has since been resolved.
12:10am PST - Still no winner of our FREE copy of the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS DVD. A special contest banner will randomly appear on one of our review pages. Follow the instructions written upon it, click the banner, enter the requested information and e-mail us to claim your prize! It's somewhere bouncing around on those review pages... Can you find it?
12:09am PST - Considering that we haven't taken a single day off since our launch last April 3rd, we hope you will understand that we'll be taking Thanksgiving Day off (one week from today).
Wednesday, November 18, 1998
11:45pm PST - NetFlix has posted their top ten rentals for the preceding two week period:
The Top Ten DVD Movies Rented on the Internet are:
1. Godzilla
2. Lost in Space
3. City of Angels: Special Edition
4. Mercury Rising
5. Tomorrow Never Dies - Special Edition
6. A Perfect Murder
7. Twilight
8. Hope Floats
9. Star Trek: First Contact
10. Species II
3:05pm PST - Here's the press release offering more "spin" details (like Divx discs being more "modestly" priced than open DVD -- sure -- if you watch it ONCE) regarding DOW Stereo's sell-out to Divx.
1:15pm PST - Correction, the fledgling newsgroup we mentioned yesterday contained a typo. alt.destroy.dix should have read alt.destroy.divx ...It's author says: "One thing at a time. We'll go after the "dix" in the world (as in Sharp) later. Also, a special thanks to Fred Hunter, who reminded us of some important information we inadvertently left out of our new review of "M". The additions were posted to the review around an hour ago...
12:34pm PST - Remember last night's article about DOW Stereo doing Divx here in San Diego? Here's an interesting article worth sharing with all our Southern California readers. DOW was kicked OUT of the Better Business Bureau last year for "deceptive advertising practices". Is it any wonder Divx sought out the regional chain to sell their wares? Special thanks to reader Chris King for the scoop!
10:54am PST - The BIG Picture has just completed another new review for you. Jeff McNeal examines the controversial, disturbing and critically acclaimed classic, "M".
Tuesday, November 17, 1998
10:19pm PST - There's a fledgling newsgroup being launched and they asked us to spread the word. How can we resist, with a name like alt.destroy.divx ...Look for it on your news server soon...
9:51pm PST - D-O-W DOW S-E-L-L-S OUT. Despite what fast-talking, huckster/spokesman Tom Campbell says, his San Diego-based electronics outlet has just lost THIS San Diego customer (or a few hundred, at least) by jumping into bed with Divx beginning November 21st. They'll begin carrying the RCA Divx player for $399 and champion the entire Divx library, while "expanding" their open DVD software from the top 25 titles to the top 50. That's a former top 40 DJ for ya.. Ugh... What a major disappointment for this San Diego website. And to think I was almost going to walk into DOW to buy a new TV set this week...
9:36pm PST - Okay pal, the jig is up. We think it's a fairly well-known fact that a lot of our regular readers visit while goofing off at work (like all those recent visits from Disney.com) and we think that's teriffic. We also realize that there's a certain number of you who have enjoyed our little chat experiment this week. So... We've remodeled our dedicated chat page and created the all-new DVD Brown Bag chat, with scheduled chat sessions at 9am and 12noon Pacific Time, weekdays. That way, the two coasts can unite during those boring lunch hours at the computer. New friends can be made, ideas exchanged, equipment and DVD's reviewed, etc. Wow! What a concept!! Now, if it only works!! Let's add a third session on Saturday mornings at 8am & 4pm PST. Don't want to wait for the schedules chats? Try restricting your logins to the top or bottom of each hour to improve your chances of finding a chat partner!
9:04pm PST - FREE DVD ALERT!! Sometime between 6am PST tomorrow (Wednesday) and 12 noon PST on Thursday, we're going to hide a very special prize banner on one of our review pages. Only one of you will find it! It will be coded with a special e-mail address link to The BIG Picture. Simply find the banner, read the instructions carefully and click the banner to send us the e-mail that claims your copy of the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS DVD. This banner will only display once -- and for one person only, so be sure and take the time to read the instructions on the banner and follow them carefully! There's no need to worry about others clicking the banner while you're reading it, because you'll be the only one seeing it! This will be the first of many For Your Eyes Only DVD contests -- and ONLY from The BIG Picture! Good luck!
5:41pm PST - But please, we'll PAY you to like it!! We've been getting some funny e-mail regarding Divx today. One guy wrote in claiming that Divx had to pay Future Shop (and throw in some stock options) in order to get the retailer to play ball. Same rumor for The Good Guys! Then, our friend Dana shared a post gleaned from somwhere on the Internet, featuring the story of a guy who said that Circuit City offered customers a $10 gift certificate to listen to a 10 minute Divx pitch. At the end of the the session, there wasn't much interest in the player that you have to hook up to your phone line -- and the guy who wrote the post redeemed his $10 for an open DVD copy of BLADERUNNER.
5:36pm PST - Musicland and Sears are continuing their joint promotion of DVD for the second year. Click the link for the rest of the glad-handing, back-slapping self-congratulatory press release!
5:31pm PST - Amazon.com, the 800 pound gorrilla of on-line book sales, is taking the plunge into video tape and DVD, too. They've been selling DVD on-line for awhile now -- but now it's official..
10:06am PST - Our most 10 often read reviews so far this month (in order). It looks like Paramount and Fox are getting a lot of interest in their recent titles... But do they measure up?
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
PREDATOR
STAR TREK: GENERATIONS
THE BIG LEBOWSKI
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
DANCES WITH WOLVES
CRASH
DAMAGE
TREASURES OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE
SPEED
9:47am PST - We hate to go back on our word... But some time ago, we promised that we'd award the MERLIN miniseries DVD to the 20th webmaster to join The BIG Picture Banner Patrol. We're a patient lot around here, but enough is enough. Soon, we'll be holding a mini-contest for BPBP participants and not only giving a way MERLIN, but also BASIC INSTINCT, RESERVOIR DOGS and THE RUNNING MAN. It's still not too late to join the BIG Picture Banner Patrol if you want in... See the banner past the bottom of the news.... Asd for the rest of our friends - we'll be holding a new givaway for the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS 20th ANNIVERSARY edition DVD sometime this week. Details coming soon...
8:40am PST - All day yesterday and deep into the night, we've been making some changes to the infrastructure here at The BIG Picture to accomodate our future growth plans. So what does all that double-talk mean, exactly? It means that we've had to change the HTML extensions on literally all of our review pages. As our review library grows by more than 30 titles each month, we have been contacted by more than one on-line retailer that has expressed an interest in locking up the review sponsorship of our in-house library. Though no agreements have been reached, we feel that it's only a matter of time before we'll need to control all aspects of banner placement and rotation from one convenient administrative page.
To accomodate the software that allows us to do this, we had no choice but to change the file name extensions on our reviews. While we have updated all the links to our 200+ reviews on this page and our main rating and review index page, we will not be going back into the news archives to update the addresses of reviews that were announced previous to this week. For the time being, all "old" review links with the .htm extension will still function, however, in the near future, they will not. The new extension for all our reviews will be .shtml, which ironically, describes the lunch I had the other day. Pardon the pun. If you encounter any problems with links to our reviews on any pages other than the news archives or forum, please let us know. This change will not effect title searches on our site search engine. The BIG Picture apologizes for any inconvenience that this may cause other webmasters who have provided links to our individual review pages.
12:33am PST - After reading our story about Warner tightening the "Buy 4, get 1 Free" promotion, BIG Picture reader Dre Witt called Warner Direct and here's what he learned: "Apparently the main reasons they pulled the plug on the wide open offer is the increasingly high fraud rate with the promotion (almost a third, bogus receipts, duplicates etc.) They were more than happy to keep the offer going but alot of bad apples have caused the end of it. Big disappointment since the current offer in the grey pamphlets expires 1/31/2000. Interesting to see that the offer was not included in the New Line "Crash" & "Damage" DVDs I received today. Over the last year and a half I've received over 20 free DVDs from WB Direct." Gee, Dre, that would have to mean that you've purchased 80 discs from Warner during the promotion! We'd have say that you've done real well for yourself!
Monday, November 16, 1998
2:12pm PST - Here's a great story in Variety about all those techno-wizards that restore old film elements that are popping up these days on DVD. A great read. Thanks, Dana!
2:09pm PST - Who was it that promised "a chicken in every pot!"? FDR? Oh well, no matter. This article in today's NY Times (as brought to us by Speical Field Correspondent Dana) says that there can be a home theater in every living room. Hmmmm. If Hulk Hogan makes this his campaign platform in the next election -- he just might have a chance...
2:02pm PST - As the "buy 4, get one free" promotion winds down at the end of the year... no more gravy train from Warner. According to our DVD sPy, "I called Time-Warner (1-888-2GET-DVD) an hour ago to check on the ship status of my latest "buy 4, 1 free" disc from WB. The rep told me that they just received word thismorning that they are now going to a "one per household" restriction, like what MGM had done. She said that as a result my free DVD order would not be honored. This would have been the fourth title I would have gotten free via the WB/New LIne/MGM offer." Just for reference, the promotion was originally limited to one freebie per household -- a rule which Warner soon relaxed as a way to say thanks to all the folks that were snapping up those snapper cases... So this re-tightening of the promotion doesn't bother us all that much... but it would have been nice for the folks at Warner Home Video to keep the status quo until the promotion petered out...
WEEKEND UPDATE - Verrrry interesting... A quick check of the top ten domains visiting this site most often has revealed that so far this month, DISNEY.COM has accessed The BIG Picture 963 times in the first two weeks of November. Welcome, Disney! While we've got your attention (and apparently we do), how about more titles, 16x9 enhancement for all your DVD's and lower prices! And hey, have you seen how fantastic Warner's QUEST FOR CAMELOT looks? And for only $19.99!!
Interesting comments from Sony regarding Divx in TWICE. In a nutshell, Sony says that we shouldn't expect any kind of decision favorable to Divx hardware until a "comfortable" installed base of 10 million DVD players are in homes. Of course, by that time, Divx will more than likely be a distant memory.
Say, ever wonder why on most widescreen-enhanced discs, the menus are still optimized for 4:3 viewing? Kinda silly, huh? Well, I had the opportunity to ask Image Entertainment's Greg McKinney that very question and here's what he had to say: "The system we use at Image for digitizing footage is limited to a 640 x 480 pixel dimension. This is the Media 100 system, and the new 5.0 version is supposed to be capable of the 16 x 9 (720 x 480) "anamorphic" proportion. I think there are some systems already doing it..." Greg, by the way, is responsible for the very nice, clean, full-motion video menus for DANCES WITH WOLVES: SE.
Bob has completed his review of another Fox disc: SPEED. Brought to you by our friends at Digital Eyes.I watched another one tonight: HOME ALONE 3. Was it worth $34? Mwwuuuhaaa ha hah ha. Not a chance. It was a three-glober. FOX: You need to "get it together" and start releasing discs that are enhanced for widescreen viewing. Forget about Divx. We know you like Divx and feel a certain obligation to that demon-seed offspring of DVD, but you need to start paying attention to quality. You're off to a good start, but you've got a long way to go.
One of our readers sent in the following info this evening via e-mail: "Found out tonight that CC Sales Counselors get $50 for selling a Divx, vs a normal commission of $8-$10 for a $399 DVD. Saw them sell one, YUCK! My friend works in the store, I couldn't interfere. Please spread the word, keep this anonymous, don't want him to get in trouble! Open DVD sellers need to know too!" We've heard this before, along with an edict passed down to all sales personell that they are to sell at least one Divx player (per week/month/day??). Well, at least your friend's co-worker made his quota -- and fifty bucks. Hope he sleeps well tonight.
Toshiba to rent DVD in Europe, baby! See? What did I just say in the paragraph below? Special Field Correspondent Dana (who has earned his haughty title with almost daily news links to TBP) has found this juicy story that our European friends will love to hear!
I just love news stories that start out with the line "It's time to retire the VCR", even if the author covers his rear by attributing the line to those of use that already know and love DVD. Read this interesting story from Canada's The Globe and Mail. Special thanks to Walter Feddern for e-mailing us the link. Readers like Walter, Dana and many like them are making The BIG Picture DVD News Daily an even better resource with each passing week. But I'm fearful that the DVD sPy as been killed in action...
Believe it or not, I was engaged in a debate on our little chat window (below) this morning, with some fellow that was complaining about all the money Time-Warner and Toshiba are spending to promote DVD this holiday season. What's the mystery? I think the gentleman might have been a Divx shill -- and I must admit -- it was entertaining to joust with him in real time. I'm curious... Would Divx proponents like the opportunity to square off in a moderated debate in our chat window? Send me an e-mail if you're interested. I know that we won't have any shortages of open DVD proponents ready to let the fingers fly -- but the crucial question is if any Divx people are wanting to participate. E-mail me privately. I promise that your identity will be protected insofar as we won't publish names or e-mail addresses of those wishing to participate from the Divx side of the fence. If there's enough interest, we'll post the date and time for the Great Divx Turkey Shoot!
