How did we end up with so many DVD’s?
How did we end up with so many DVD’s?
By now, it is more than a safe bet that the average American home has a good selection of videos to watch. And I’m not talking about the three-headed monster of cable or satellite television programming here.
No, it’s home video. Likely started with VHS or maybe Betamax video tapes. Maybe transitioned to Laser Disc and then to DVD and the formats it seems to be spawning. All of them have the simple pleasure of being able to watch what ever you want to when ever you want to. And thanks to a desire by movie studio management to enhance their revenue streams, technology made it easier for us all to participate.
Before home video came along, the choice pretty much boiled down to finding an episode of your favorite television show on 16 millimeter film. Admittedly, not something everyone could take advantage of, but there were folks who managed to do so. The first Star Trek convention I ever attended (The Red Hour Festival, held at San Francisco’s Lincoln High School in 1975) used several 16mm color film prints of the original series episodes shown on a big screen in the school’s theater-style auditorium.
But when home video players and then recorders came along, it was only a matter of time before the option of watching a movie at home was explored. At first, the big thing was the idea of renting movies. Merchants would invest in the cost of a title and then amortize it over a number of rentals. Consider that the average movie on tape had a price in the $75 dollar or better range and you begin to understand why rentals were so popular. Check this Time Magazine article from December of 1984 to learn a bit more about how home video recorders or VCR’s were changing entertainment.
A couple of things changed that. The first was a little national cable television service called Home Box Office or HBO. This offered exactly what the title implied - the opportunity to watch movies in the privacy of you own home. And coupled with the new home video players and recorders, you could even save a copy of that favorite movie for yourself, at a much lower cost than buying one. Another article from Time Magazine in March of 1988 tells the tale.
It was Paramount who broke the price logjam when it released it’s first title at a price that was even close to reasonable. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” became the first VHS title to sell a million copies when it came out at $29.95. Disney followed closely when it released “Lady and the Tramp” likewise for under $30. As the Time piece tells (thanks, you can hit me later), an average title, such as “Beverly Hills Cop II” was released at $89.95 per copy. “Lady & The Tramp” had it’s own notation to the home video story as Disney and Peggy Lee (and ultimately her estate) ended up in court over the revenues from home video sales (the market being unforeseen at the time the artist created the work and hence revenues unforeseen as well.)
The real culprit for low priced titles was likely just the growth of the market as a whole. If the more popular titles were being offered at bargain prices and selling well, it made no sense to out price the less well received titles, “Beverly Hills Cop II” being a good example. Sell more copies overall and make greater revenues seems such a natural today.
Now with DVD, the cost of producing a disc for sale comes down to pennies. (That’s also one reason why digital piracy is so easy and such a threat.) Today, the real costs behind that $19.95 copy are promotional. And again, the more we buy, the more titles that seem to come along. And now with Blueray and HD-DVD, it seems that we’ll all be doing our part to keep home video entertainment a viable product for a long time to come.
An unfortunate by product of the popularity of the product is that fewer people are going to theaters to actually watch first run films in theaters. That’s a shame because part of the pleasure of movies, at least for me, has been the shared experience of an audience enjoying a film. Hearing them get the response the film makers wanted is a real treat for me. One of my favorites came last year with Warner Brothers “The Ant Bully”. Director of Digital Photography and Head of Story Ken Mitchroney describes a sequence from the film in his blog that the audiences just loved every time I saw it in the theater. That shared experience just is missing at home on a small screen. And that’s just a shame...
In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the titles from my home video collection here. Not an in-depth dissection of a film, but simply an appreciation of some fine films and film making. So be sure to come back for more!
Media, My Media
Tuesday, February 6, 2007