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Friday, January 1, 1999
2:34pm PST - Happy New Year everyone! Gary in Sacra-tomato, California wrote to tell us that someone is already using eBay auction to pawn off their unwanted Divx discs. We wouldn't be surprised of Circuit City themselves started to try and dump Divx discs onto the market this way. The last time we checked, no one had offered the minimum bid requested. We'd offer .02 cents, but we already have enough coasters for our coffee table. Meanwhile, R.J. Knuth let us know that another on-line retailer is welling both the RCA and Proscan (same thing) Divx players at www.Shop4.com. Here's their feedback e-mail address. Why not let 'em know what you think?
Thursday, December 31, 1998
3:11pm PST - Columbia has attached a mail-in $3 rebate off the cost of your next movie ticket on THE CAIN MUTINY. Whatever the motivations, the coupon is a cool idea!
1:47pm PST - Looking for a wonderful accompanyment to a New Years Eve spent at home with the family? May we suggest either Sony Music's JAMES TAYLOR LIVE AT THE BEACON THEATER... or for the more traditionally inclined, the NEW YEARS EVE CONCERT, VIENNA 1987, featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker (please, no "weener" jokes) conducted by Herbert Von Karajan. Too tame? Try Warner Music's ROLLING STONES: BRIDGES TO BABYLON. All three discs offer rich 5.1 tracks that will dazzle your senses. We've had the pleasure of sitting through all three of these outstanding discs recently and can heartily recommend them.
11:49am PST - Our friend John Larsen over at the DVD Dish provides a very good read in his "10 Best Films of 1998" picks. Check out what he has to say.
10:50am PST - Our special field correspondent, Dana, reports that Totalmart.com has not only decided to permanenty remove Divx from theoir on-line offerings, they're urging other retailers to do the same. Here's the text of their response to consumer complaints:
Dear Valued Customer
Thank you for your recent input. We have heard from numerous individuals
in regards to the DIVX format. Although we have had the model on our
website, until now we didn't know a great deal about the DIVX format. We
value our customers and have a strong loyal customer base that have
expressed their opinions on this as well. Many new individuals have
expressed their opinions about the DIVX format in addition.
From the input we have had, we have decided to remove the DIVX format
from our website for good. Our first thought was to hold a on-line poll,
however the majority of our customers have asked us to join the boycott
against the DIVX format. From this input we have decided that a on-line
poll would result in a vote of "no" on the question of "Should
Totalmart.com offer the DIVX format on the website?". Rather than use our
resources and time on developing a on-line poll, we feel that the same
time and resources would be better spent on improving the current
features on our website and assisting customer questions.
Upon looking into the DIVX format on various reference websites we have
also formed the view of opposing the DIVX format. From this research and
the input of our valued customers we will no longer offer the DIVX format
on our website.
Although we will be offering our customers less of a selection, we
believe that the removal of DIVX players on our website is a selection
that misleads consumers and that should not be offered. We invite other
retailers to join us in our decision to remove the DIVX format.
Once again thank you for your input. We welcome any more comments or
suggestions.
Sincerely,
Totalmart.com Customer Service
10:46am PST - TBP congratulates Kwasi Chan of Calgary, Alberta Canada for finding our random conest banner and winning the BLADE:SE DVD. What do you say... We do it again! Another copy of BLADE:SE is up for grabs if you can find our random contest banner. Good luck!
10:09am PST - The DVD Group has released some impressive numbers for DVD sales -- both recent and year to date. There's no question: DVD has arrived (just as we all knew it would!). It's no surprise to us which studios have landed at the top of the heap -- and it's not by accident, either.
TOP 20 BEST-SELLING DVD VIDEO TITLES
For the Week Ending December 27, 1998
Rank Title Label
1 Blade New Line Home Video
2 Lethal Weapon 4 Warner Home Video
3 Negotiator Warner Home Video
4 Mask Of Zorro Columbia TriStar Home Video
5 Deep Impact Paramount Home Video
6 Gone With The Wind MGM Home Entertainment
7 Godzilla Columbia TriStar Home Video
8 Good Will Hunting Buena Vista Home Entertainment
9 Top Gun Paramount Home Video
10 Six Days Seven Nights Buena Vista Home Entertainment
11 City of Angels (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
12 Lost in Space New Line Home Video
13 U.S. Marshals (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
14 Tomorrow Never Dies MGM Home Entertainment
15 Austin Powers New Line Home Video
16 The Wedding Singer New Line Home Video
17 Hunt For Red October Paramount Home Video
18 Star Trek: First Contact Paramount Home Video
19 Horse Whisperer Buena Vista Home Entertainment
20 Small Soldiers Universal Studios Home Video
TOP 20 BEST-SELLING DVD VIDEO TITLES 1998
Rank Title Label
1 Tomorrow Never Dies MGM Home Entertainment
2 Godzilla Columbia TriStar Home Video
3 Air Force One Columbia TriStar Home Video
4 U.S. Marshals (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
5 Lost in Space New Line Home Video
6 Lethal Weapon 4 Warner Home Video
7 Starship Troopers Columbia TriStar Home Video
8 Mask Of Zorro Columbia TriStar Home Video
9 Gone With The Wind MGM Home Entertainment
10 L.A. Confidential Warner Home Video
11 Contact (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
12 Fifth Element Columbia TriStar Home Video
13 As Good As It Gets Columbia TriStar Home Video
14 The Wedding Singer New Line Home Video
15 Austin Powers New Line Home Video
16 City of Angels (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
17 Sphere (Special Edition) Warner Home Video
18 Con Air Buena Vista Home Entertainment
19 Top Gun Paramount Home Video
20 Twister Warner Home Video
8:31am PST - Check this ZDNet Article: 1999 - The year of DVD? The author takes a look at what might lie ahead for our favorite home entertainment software.
8:15am PST - Here are the ten most-often read reviews from The BIG Picture for the month of December:
1. Blade: SE
2. The Mask of Zorro
3. Small Soldiers
4. The Hunt for Red October
5. The Negotiator
6. The Peacemaker
7. The Graduate
8. Six Days and Seven Nights
9. Dances With Wolves: SE
10. Body Double
7:40am PST - It's hard to believe that another year has passed. We thought of doing a comprehensive "Year In Review" retrospective, but find the task a bit too daunting. Of course, the major highlights that stand out in our minds were:
March, 1998: Universal announces that it will discontinue the use of jewel case packaging for DVDs. Bob Banka continues to write great DVD reviews, posting them on E-town. Jeff McNeal thinks to himself" Why isn't there a DVD site that can tell the differences between great and mediocre discs!? I think I'll start one!"
April, 1998: The BIG Picture DVD Ratings and Review page launches on April 3, 1998 and later that month, the The BIG Picture DVD News Daily page and user forum debuts...
May, 1998: Peter M. Bracke launches what will eventually be called the DVD File. Jeff McNeal launches the Sony VPL-W400Q LCD projector Forum and FAQ.
June, 1998: In an exclusive expose The BIG Picture reveales that Circuit City is short-stocking open DVD players in order to boost perceived Divx player sales in the test-marketing phase.
July, 1998: The DVD Watcher web site abruptly ceases operation. In another bizarre turn of events, the author of the popular Laserrot's Coming Attractions site posts that he is suffering from a serious illness and the site goes into limbo with no indication of if or when it will ever return.
August, 1998: The long-awaited announcements arrived on August 10th that Paramount and 20th Century Fox would at last begin providing content to open DVD. The BIG Picture breaks the one million monthly page view mark for the first time.
September, 1998: Dreamworks announces that it will finally support open DVD, becoming the last major holdout to submit to the seductive charms of open DVD.
October, 1998: The Team DVD web site goes out with a whimper amidst threatened lawsuits and undetermined static. Team DVD had built a small, but loyal cult following with their DVD reviews and brash style, but brought down their house of cards in part by launching personal, unprovoked attacks against another DVD webmaster, bringing to a close a strange chapter in online DVD reporting.
November, 1998: Two more DVD sites go on-line: DVD Review and DVD Monthly. NetFlix begins to scale back its' advertising presence on the Internet.
December, 1998: The BIG Picture gives away five sets of 12 DVDs in holiday promotion. DVD Resource awards 85 DVDs' to single winner.NetFlix announces that it will no longer sell DVDs' and partners with Amazon.com.
We know that there's a lot more to report as highlights of '98. If you're a webmaster that launched a new site this year (or folded one), please let us know and we'll modify our "year in review" rundown.
Wednesday, December 30, 1998
5:59pm PST - I just got off the phone with Gary "Bear" Williams -- a good friend who likes to come over and watch movies whenever we invite him, which is fairly frequently (as we all know, home theaters are a lot of fun to share). Our daughters are in the same 5th grade class and the Williams' represent your typical upper-middle class San Diego family. This evening, Bear asked me "So... what's this Divx thing I keep hearing about?" After I explained the many "features" of Divx, I had to laugh aloud at Gary's response: "Sounds to me like they should have named it Gotcha instead of Divx."
4:46pm PST - It's a DVD world, baby... Did you know that The BIG Picture was accessed by over 80 countries other than the United States in December? Neither did we! Even little-known places like New Caledonia (wasn't the 'old' Caledonia featured in a Marx Brothers movie?), Oman, Uruguay and French Polynisia are rockin' to the boogity beat of TBP!!
2:40pm PST - FREE DVD ALERT: Since the news is rather light this week (so far), let's heat things up with another FREE DVD giveaway. Look for our special contest banner on one of our review pages to score a copy of BLADE:SE ...It could appear at anytime (beginning NOW)! Good luck!
1:50pm PST - Word has it that more Divx owners are reporting modem-lock problems (the Divx player refusing to disengage the phone line), prompting more than a few returns of the beleaguered devices. We also understand that Circuit City is charging a 15% "re-stocking" fee for returned Divx players and that they are not accepting returned Divx discs. One of the reasons given? They're afraid that people are making copies of Divx movies. Uh... Gee... Isn't what all that watermarking, macrovision and triple DES encoding supposed to prevent?
1:44pm PST - Pulp down under... We've been told that Pulp Fiction is now available in region 4 as an anamorphic (that's Widescreen enhanced for you newcomers) title. However, the chap that sent us the news says that based on our description of the region 1 transfer, the region 4 pulp is probably not a true anamorphic transfer, but rather one of those "electronically cheated" versions we've been hearing about. In other words, it still looks pretty bad. What a shame.
12:58pm PST - Just like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup... Home Theater Forum didn't have news. The Digital Bits didn't have a user forum. Both sites are now aggressively cross-promoting the other.
7:55am PST - You learn something new every day in this business... This will probably be of greater interest to fellow DVD webmasters and reviewers, but we found this tidbit rather entertaining from a general standpoint. After reading one of our reviews recently, one of our contacts at Warner gently, but firmly, informed us that it is incorrect to write "Warner Brothers" at any time -- and that "Warner Bros." is the only way studio name should be displayed. "Have you ever seen any of our material with Warner Brothers written on it"? she queried? My response: "Yeah, but isn't Bros. simply an abbreviation of 'brothers'?. You never hear anyone saying Bros., they say brothers!" This bit of semantics and education aside, we will henceforth refer to one of our favorite DVD-producing studios in print as Warner Bros. We wouldn't want you to accidentally confuse them with (God forbid!) Warner Brothers.
7:46am PST - Holy mackerel! Bob Banka delivers one knockout-punch of a review of Martin Scorcese's 1980 masterpiece, RAGING BULL. Like a heavyweight champ himself, Bob squares off with NY film critic Pauline Kael (retaining his sensitivity and credibility in the process) and paints a portrait of this DVD that's nearly as lyrical and poetic as the film itself! If a first-class plane ticket arrives in Bob's mailbox with an invitation to join Robert DeNiro or Martin Scorcese for a plate of linguini, we won't be surprised. Jealous, but not surprised. Go Bob!
7:20am PST - Special Field Correspondent Dana discovered this interesting thread on the DVD Resource Forum. Apparently Divx, like a cockroach that's built up an immunity to DDT, is still twitching -- testing the waters of direct on-line sales through Internet distributors with mixed results. Of the two stores carrying Divx, one has already pulled it from their site, pending further study, in direct result it seems, from complaint e-mail received.
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
4:43pm PST - The week between Christmas and New Years is often a slow one. Many studios are taking the week off. Today, it seems that any real news is in woefully short supply. In the meantime, here's a tip: Check out Trimark Picture's science fiction thriller CUBE when it becomes available. This "B" movie gets a B+ for originality and an A- for execution. And I do mean execution.
Submitted for your approval... The BIG Picture enters another dimension with reviews for TWILIGHT ZONE: VOL 1, TWILIGHT ZONE: VOL 2, TWILIGHT ZONE: VOL 3 and TWILIGHT ZONE: VOL 4.
In a typo yesterday, we misidentified one of our contest winners as Gary Olson. It should have read Gary Larson. We apologize for the error.
Monday, December 28, 1998
10:52pm PST - In today's New York Times, DVD gets a cursory mention as one of the darlings of the 1998 Holiday shopping season.
12:26pm PST - We've just put the wraps on another review for you. This time, Jeff takes aim with LETHAL WEAPON 4. Can this title stack up to the other films in the LETHAL WEAPON franchise?
10:46am PST - The Milwaukee Business Journal gives a big thumbs up to DVD as a business presentation vehicle in a seemingly misnamed article called "Disc Risk."
10:37am PST - Roger Winston alerted us to this nice DVD write-up in Denver's Rocky Mountain News. The article also veers off to report on HDTV, which is lampooned referred to as "Hyped, Delayed, Television".
10:25am PST - Congratulations once again to our five winners of The Twelve DVDs' of Christmas! Pictured from left to right are Gary Larson of Rochester, MN, Brian Eberling of Crystal, MN, Susan Burke-Huston of Decatur, IL, Michael Jacobson of Jacksonville FL and Nick Suter of Appleton, WI
10:13am PST - If you've been holding off on buying MY FAIR LADY while waiting for our in-depth review (coming soon) -- no need to put it off any longer. This disc is outstanding in every respect. Fans of the movie will be -- to borrow a phrase forom our Australian cousins -- gob-smacked.
10:10am PST - Musicland reports $5 Million in DVD sales for one week. SYTD sales figures top $50mil. Executives cheer.
9:08am PST - Stephen King's MISERY was a great book, that made for a very good movie... and now, a very nice DVD. Check TBP review of MISERY from your friend and ours, Bob Banka. And wafter you finish that one, check out Bob's impresions of Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. Can't get enough of our reviews and thirst for more? Okay then! Try a little BLOOD FOR DRACULA, if you dare... Blech.
9:07am PST - The CBS Marketwatch NouveauGeek (who bears a remarkable resemblence to Ellen DeGeneres) chronicles the underhyped and overhyped for '98. Thanks to special field correspondent Dana, for spotting this one.
9:00am PST - One of our Circuit City counterspies e-mailed us some Divx sales figures for 26 Circuit City stores grouped in his or her particular region. A total of 2,769 Divx players were sold as of about a week before Christmas. The fewest sold at any one store was 26 players. The most for any one store was 176. Our contact reports that in the days leading up to Christmas, his/her store received shipments of new Divx players, but no open DVD players were delivered. So basically, if consumers walked into a Circuit City store looking for DVD this Christmas, Divx was probably thgeir only choice. This would be consistent with Circuit City's short-stocking of open DVD players during the Divx test marketing phase last summer.
WEEKEND UPDATE
More new reviews from TBP... Here's a belated look at David Mamet's THE SPANISH PRISONER. But hang on -- another new review or two are on the way today!
Sympathy for the devil... Here's what's perhaps one of the first true, pro-Divx articles we've seen that aren't based in Richmond, Virginia. The author, Scott McPherson, thoughtfully includes his e-mail address for your comments.
We hope that Santa brought you everything you wished for yesterday. Once again, we'd like to extend our warmest thanks to all who participated in our first annual "TWELVE DVDs' of CHRISTMAS promotion. It was a thrill to be able to give away five sets oof 12 DVD's to five different winners, in five different ways. The best is yet to come... Look for some exciting news and events to be coming your wayin '99 from your friends at The BIG Picture.
Forgive me for sharing this, since it has nothing to do with DVD and is rather self-serving, but on Christmas eve I received a most unexpected and treasured Christmas gift. I received an e-mail by my mentor and friend, Jay Conrad Levinson -- author of the best-selling marketing book of all time, printed in 37 different languages. I was informed that my name appears in the dedication section of the third edition of "Guerrilla Marketing" now on store shelves. To be honored in such a way is a very humbling experience.This distinction comes by way of the voice-related audio production business I launched nearly ten years ago. I started On-Hold Marketing Systems (now you see where ohms.com comes from) with little more than a solid background in a related field (radio broadcasting & production) and Jay's book - which was the first printing of Guerrilla Marketing -- and the rest as they say... To learn more about Guerrilla Marketing and the tremendous impact this book has had on small and large business worldwide, click here.