Hey Doug, haven't seen you around much! So your hanging out at the DVD forum eh.

I have a Marantz DV7010 and it's pretty much all I need. I can't all the people complaining about not getting enough material. Remember VHS?

DVD is still the best affordable format you can buy. Sure there is DVHS, but, you have to steal movies to watch them on it.

I have over 350 DVD's in my library. No problems here...

-Larry

"Also I am actually saying that I feel DVD is the year 2000 Betamax."

DVD is the most successful Consumer-Electronics device ever released.

Ever.

I somehow think that puts it in a league slightly above BetaMax :)

-Larry

Or plastic Soda Bottle caps. My Siamese makes a game out of 'stealing' them when I set them down on the end-table. He crawls and squirms and wiggles his way around the furniture like a Tiger on a Daktari episode, thinking the whole time that I don't see him. Once he's made his way to the end-table, which has taken as long as 30 minutes sometimes, he hops up, grabs it, and is gone in a flash.

I usually let him keep it until the noise of it rattling around on the kitchen floor gets to me, or I'm afraid one of the Goldens will get ahold of it and swallow it.

-Larry

I have over 350 DVD's, and only have two basic gripes. Both have already been mentioned.

Why do the cheap, initial-release versions of a movie come out in a nice, hard, plastic case that will last forever and the later, expensive, feature-packed special editions come out in cheap cardboard covers that will inevitably wear out and don't stack worth a damn in DVD cabinets? And whats up with the stoopid DVD-In-A-Can released?

The second goes to the person or persons who designed the current 'anti-theft' packaging. The person or persons responsible should be sentenced to serve 1 year with serious arthritis, along with 5000 hours of community service standing at the exit of Best Buy unwrapping the customers DVD's for them as they exit the store.

People don't think about how their designs will affect other people.

-Larry

..actually... I'll back off a bit and say DVD's don't suck now... but will suck very soon.

ever try to watch on HDTV or a front projection setup?

Only the best DVDs (Star Wars 2, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. etc) will look decent.

A cheapo non-anamorphic DVD will literally be unwatchable.

HD-DVD is 1024i and 740p
Regular ol DVD is 480ip
VHS is like 200+
Beta still Rules!!!

I am keeping my collection low these days, since I know in the future (if I am still around there will be another leap to HD-DVD, such as there was from VHS to DVD)

I have watched DVDs on a widescreen HDTV and they look very good, much better than any other non-HDTV source.

BTW I have had my Sony DVD player (the 7000) since 1997 and it still plays every disc I feed it. In conjunction with my Tivo (1999) it has turned my VCR into a large digital clock. That make me very happy since VHS really does suck.

Current HDTVs usually only do 1080i and 480p natively. So DVDs should look very good compared to almost anything else. Even 720p sources are converted to 1080i by most RPTVs. True HD programming would be the 'almost anything', but there really isn't that much of this yet.

Very true, for those of us that do not have access to HDTV, DVD is the best video source available by far. VHS is of course the worst.

Oh, by the way:

Does anyone know why the early Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones trilogy are not available on DVD?

I'm trying to convert my VHS library to DVD and cannot find these movies anywhere. They're extremely popular, but appear to never have been converted. What's up with that?

-Bruce

Lucas has been too busy working on the new trilogy. Last I heard the DVDs for episodes 4-6 and Indiana Jones were scheduled for after episode 3 is released.

Too busy? How many years has the DVD format been out? Sheesh. Guess I'll just have to keep waiting (sigh).

That's Lucas's story and he's sticking to it. Just be grateful that any of his movies are coming out on DVD - he was a very reluctant supporter of the format.

OMFG!... I thought I went on and on about nothing.