DVDs steal show
By Margaret A. McGurk
Cincinnati Enquirer
Jeffrey Carpenter is hooked on movies. Three trips a month to the multiplex is only the beginning. At least as often, he buys movies on DVD. In a little more than two years, he has collected more than 100 titles, often drawn by such extras as deleted scenes, alternate endings and on-set interviews.
Carpenter, a 24-year-old Cincinnati school psychologist, is the very model of a modern media consumer, one of more than 46 million who have propelled the DVD industry.
DVDs sold about 5.5 million copies in 1997, when digital videodisc players first became generally available in the United States. Last year, shipments reached 685 million, nearly $9 billion worth, according to Adams Media Research data cited by the Video Software Dealers Association.
The turning point came in March, when DVDs twice outstripped tapes on weekly rental revenue charts, and DVD rentals accounted for just short of half of all take-home movie business. By the end of the year, VSDA expects DVDs will dominate the market.
Movie exhibitors earlier this year celebrated record-breaking 2002 revenues and admission figures at their highest point since 1957.
It is not a coincidence that the movie- watching boom coincides with the DVD explosion, said Ted Sarandos, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix (www.netflix.com), the five-year-old online DVD rental firm that recently crossed the million-member mark.
"A DVD is like a film school in a box," he said. Inspired by the background information attached to favorite films, DVD watchers develop wide-ranging — and voracious — appetites. For example, he said, "We carry 13,500 films, and last month 13,000 of them were rented. The taste is very broad."
"It is clear that DVD is creating a ferocious consumer of entertainment."
His conclusion is supported by the Video Store Magazine's 2002 home entertainment study, which showed that people who buy and rent DVDs also go to the movies most often.
Eric Dietrich, a writer/producer for WCPO television in Cincinnati, agrees that DVDs feed the appetite. "You want to go see more and more things," he said. "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a good example. My in-laws were really not interested at first, but because we had the DVD and I talked about it so much, they ended up watching it, and saying, 'Hey, this is good.' Your access is broader. You don't feel cheated if you see a bad movie now and then."
While DVDs may not take business away from the movies, they can change the way people experience movies even more than can VHS tapes, because of the feature-heavy technology.
Watching a movie in a theater offers a different sensation from home video, Carpenter said.
"Going to a movie is more of an escape, a release. If it's something really good, I like to see the movie gigantic, right on a nice big screen. You can't get any bigger than movies."
Lou Hamilton, owner of Audible Elegance in Montgomery, Ohio, sells high-end equipment to the expanding ranks of fans installing advanced theater systems in their homes. He sees today's powerful audiovisual electronics bolstering the growth of DVD.
"People who are videophiles, they are going for all the extras, they are going for the full immersion of the experience," he said. "Customers want to get every ounce of both the video and audio experience created by the director."
Falling prices also fuel DVDs' popularity. The average price of a player was $491 in 1997; now it is $118, according to research firm NPD Intelect. Low-end models sell for as little as $60.
The next wave about to break into affordable range will make DVD recording common; in short order, high-definition DVD machines will follow.
Eager fans are ready to pounce on the new features. "If the discretionary income is there, I'll buy it," said Dietrich. "I'm definitely one of those who like to be on the bleeding edge of new technology."
