DVD News

          Compiled and written by Richard Hewison

(1) Official UK launch

The official launch of DVD in the UK finally happened in
mid-October '98, a good six months after the initial unofficial
launch of the format in the shops. By the time the official launch
was ready to go, there were over one hundred Region 2 PAL DVD
movies available as well as a wide range of players to play them
on. However, there has been dissatisfaction from some quarters
regarding the Region 2 versions of movies when compared to the
Region 1 (US) versions. In a nut shell, many of the Region 2 discs
are missing some (and in some cases - all!) of the extras which
usually accompany the movies. For example, "Contact" on Region 2
has only a small handful of documentaries and behind-the-scenes
extras compared to the original Region 1 release.  The Region 2
version of "Mars Attacks!" only has 1 movie trailer whilst the
Region 1 has two, and so on. The reason for these omissions?
Speculation suggests that the BBFC's "œ100-per-minute"
certification charges are to blame. It's very expensive to get the
extras certified in this country for a video release as well as
the movie itself, so the extras get the old heave-ho.

(2) Region 1 discs in the UK

The sale of Region 1 discs in the UK is illegal (as it is for
Laser Discs) and FACT have been involved in a number of raids over
the past few months which have effectively put a stop to UK
dealers selling Region 1 discs to UK customers. It isn't illegal
to order from the US and buy for your own use, but you cannot
import the discs and then sell them on. Considering that most of
the time it is usually cheaper to go via US mail order anyway,
this move hasn't had a major effect on most DVD movie collectors.

(3) Anamorphic Movies

A number of DVD movie collectors in the US have been complaining
recently of the lack of 'Anamorphic' Widescreen film releases on
DVD for some major titles. Now might be a good time to explain
what all this actually means!

In the UK a TV set has 625 lines but you only get to see around
590 of them. The remaining 35 lines or so are actually off the top
of the screen and contain extra information like teletext etc. A
DVD movie has a resolution of 500 lines (just over double that of
VHS), which helps to explain why DVD movies look so clear.
However, most DVD movies are presented in Widescreen (WS). On a
movie which has a WS screen ratio of 2.35:1, maybe a third of the
screen is taken up by the black bars at the top and bottom of the
film image. This means that some of the extra resolution used by
DVD is being wasted on black areas which show nothing at all! To
make the most of the resolution, some DVD movies have been
processed 'anamorphically'. To take advantage of this process, DVD
players have a 'Widescreen' mode.  When this mode is active, the
anamorphic DVD movie seems to be stretched vertically, so everyone
has long faces. This is exactly how the film has been encoded, so
less of the 500 lines are used on the black bars and ergo more of
the lines are used on the actual film image. However, it obviously
means that film looks a little weird because it's stretched too
much up/down.

To get around this problem, some modern TVs have a 16:9 mode.
When you press the relevant button on your remote, the standard TV
picture is squashed down. What you're seeing is the same number of
lines as before, but squashed into a smaller (vertical) area in
the middle of the screen, with new black bars being pushed in at
the top and bottom of the picture. So, if the DVD player is in
'Widescreen' mode the picture will look stretched, but if the TV
is in 16:9 mode it will squash this down again so that it looks
normal. The result is that the picture is the correct size but the
image quality is much better because more lines are being used to
display the important bit - the picture, whilst the black bars are
mostly generated by the TV set (in 16:9 mode). There is an
annoying side effect of 16:9 mode on some TV sets; they generate a
vertical white line which appears in the top third of the screen
at the point where the generated black bar and the DVD image meet.
A few examples of Anamorphic Region 1 DVD movies include "Starship
Troopers", "Tomorrow Never Dies", "Lost in Space - Platinum
Edition" and "L.A. Confidential", whilst examples of movies that
haven't been processed in this way include "Contact" and "The
Thing - Collector's Edition". If your TV doesn't have a 16:9 mode
then you're unlikely to be concerned about any of this.

(4) New releases

I've already mentioned "Lost in Space", which was released on DVD
in the US in October. This was a kids movie with a suspect plot
but spectacular effects (with the odd exception) and a good
performance from Gary Oldman as the villain, Dr. Smith. The DVD
movie release is crammed with extras, including the Trailer, Music
Video, Special Effects Documentary, Interviews with the original
TV cast, TV episode guide, two different audio commentary tracks,
a quiz (leading to a blooper reel if you get the answers all
correct), and some brilliantly animated menus. The quality of the
transfer from film to DVD is superb. There is a slight problem
with the audio in the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie,
where the voices are slightly out of synch.  This is partially
explained in the director's commentary, where he explained that
they had to do extensive dubbing in post production. It's
annoying, but doesn't spoil the over all effect. A must buy if you
want to show off DVD!

"Godzilla" has also recently been released in the US, as has the
first batch of Paramount DVDs including "Star Trek: First
Contact".












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