DVD just grows...................................
sltrib.com
Saturday, May 1, 1999
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DVD Sales Explode Will Tape, CDs Go Way of Vinyl?
Prices drop. Gadget amazes electronics industry
BY VINCE HORIUCHI
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
At first, Digital Video Disc players were sold on the shelves of electronic stores and high-end stereo shops. Now you can buy them in grocery stores.
The DVD player, the device that looks like a music compact-disc player but runs movies, has become one of the biggest electronic gadgets ever sold, according to industry experts.
In its first two years, the DVD player has outsold CD players and videocassette recorders in the same time period.
"It's exceeded all industry expectations," said Amy Hill of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) in Arlington, Va. "It's one of the hottest-selling consumer electronics products ever."
In Utah, DVD players now are sold at Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer, Kmart and Super Target as well as electronics shops. And the prices have dropped from an initial $500 a player to $299.
"Wal-Marts and Targets are in every market. That kind of penetration never was seen on laserdisc," said Trent Fordham, a West Jordan man who runs a DVD-appreciation Web page on the Internet called DVD Post. "That is what helped videotape for 20 years."
Fordham first started a movie-lovers homepage on the World Wide Web in 1997 but shifted the focus to everything DVD because he liked how the new video format brought the movie-theater experience home.
"I became a huge DVD enthusiast right off the bat," he said. "It was everything I liked in video that wasn't being served on videotape -- the sight and sound and durability."
DVD looks like a CD but holds a lot more information, so it can display digital-quality video as well as sound. That means movies have twice the resolution of regular videotapes and sound that comes on six separate tracks, including one for rumbling bass.
The huge storage capacity also means DVDs can hold three-hour movies on one side of one disc. And many movies come with extras.
The movie "Blade," for example, also has three separate documentaries about the making of the movie and on vampire lore, as well as deleted scenes, and a separate audio track where you can hear star Wesley Snipes talk about the movie as it plays on your television.
Many DVD movies also are in two different formats, a version called pan and scan where the movie fills the entire TV screen and another called letterbox where the picture is in widescreen, which is how the movie makers intended it to be shown.
Like compact discs, DVDs also are durable. Since only a laser shines on the disc as it plays, the movie will look as pristine on its 1,000th viewing as it did on its first. Videotapes begin to degrade after the first play.
The number of movies on DVD also is growing rapidly. Now, there are more than 3,300 movies on the new format.
"There's a wide variety of genres that are being released, and they're all doing well," said Danette Martinez, video manager at the Media Play in Salt Lake County's Brickyard Plaza. "It was just new releases that were doing well, and now it's everything."
The tremendous growth is showing that the world of DVD is no longer just in the hands of videophiles but now making its way toward everyday movie viewers.
"We actually have a lot of different people, just all kinds, buying them," said Nick Reif, video manager at the Super Target in Salt Lake County, which sells DVD players and movies.
More than 1.9 million DVD players have been sold to retailers since the technology first was introduced March 24, 1997, according to CEMA, which tracks sales for the electronics industry. And sales have been skyrocketing since DVD first hit the market.
Since Jan. 1 of this year, 477,000 players have been sold to retailers, a 300 percent increase over the same period last year. For the first two weeks of April, there was a 400 percent increase in sales vs. the same time last year, according to CEMA.
"The growth rate will be more for DVD than VCRs after five years," CEMA's Hill said. "One of the explanations for this is that some electronics products sort of train consumers and get them used to them, which leads the way for other products. Cordless phones taught consumers or got them used to cell phones. That's what CD players did for DVD."
DVD is enjoying phenomenal growth despite an earlier threat known as Divx, a second video format that works like pay per view. You buy a Divx disc and have 48 hours to watch it. After that, the machine will not play the movie again until you pay for another viewing period. While you can play DVD movies on a Divx player, you cannot play a Divx movie on a regular DVD player.
The format has been struggling in face of fierce negative publicity from DVD enthusiasts and the fact that its main backer, electronics chain Circuit City, has been unable to find a second investor. Also, while all of the Hollywood studios are now releasing their libraries of movies on DVD, giant movie makers Columbia/TriStar and Warner Bros. are not producing Divx movies. That means blockbusters like this Spring's "The Matrix" will not show up on Divx.
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