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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated February 13, 2007 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
1 -
Snakes On A Plane New Line Home Entertainment
In 2005, 18.744 million DVD players were sold in China. The market retained a rapid growth while sales revenue grew slowly due to the intense competition. Sales volume rose by 2.242 million units, or a 13.6% increase compared to 2004. A recent report also forecast that China's DVD market will enter a new round of replacement period, and product reconstruction and technological innovation become the main issues for market development; high patent fees restrict China's product exports
Movies cost so much to make that studios often hedge bets by shooting different windups and letting test viewers decide. And thanks to DVD, you can see them all. Many movies add alternate endings as a bonus feature on DVD. Take The Guardian, a drama of Coast Guard courage. In the theatrical cut, Kevin Costner sacrifices himself so prize student Ashton Kutcher can survive when a wire pulling them to safety frays. In the alternate ending, Kutcher hangs onto Costner's hand, and they both make it to a helicopter before the wire breaks. The upbeat ending was shot as "a safety valve," director Andrew Davis says. "You've spent two years on a movie, you want to make sure people are happy with it at the end." But the studio stuck with the drama of the original, without even test-screening the alternate.
Netflix has said that they will begin delivery of TV shows and films online. Customers will be given choices in rental plans ranging from 6 hours of viewing time per month up to 48 hours. Picture quality varies according to a subscriber’s bandwidth capacity. DVD quality will be at around 3mbits, however a picture will still stream all the way down to 1 mbit. The company will first roll out the service to 250,000 existing users per month, then scale to meet the needs of their 6 million subscribers. They are claiming that they will be fully scaled by June.
Seeking to further define itself just over a year after its split with sister company Viacom, CBS Corp. said it has established a separate unit for its fast-growing DVD business, which will be called CBS Home Entertainment. "DVD sales for television series continue to grow, and a dedicated unit in this area puts us in a better position to exploit more of the vast programming assets in this company, to focus on worldwide distribution opportunities, and to grow our revenue even further, said Bob Madden, president and chief operating officer of CBS Television Distribution. Box sets of entire seasons of TV programs -- something that would have been far too costly and unwieldy during the VHS era -- became a viable proposition with the advent of the more efficient and storage-friendly DVD. Even as overall DVD sales began to see a slowdown in growth during 2005, the TV on DVD category remained strong, even amid concerns about oversaturation. end
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