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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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DVD NEWS DIGEST
1 -
Lord of The Rings: Return of The King (Widescreen 2-Disc Edition)
New Line Home Entertainment Traditionally, studios release their films on DVD five or six months after the premiere. But DVD and video sales now generate more than twice as much revenue as theater showings, says Adams Media Research. Theater owners worry that folks will find it easier -- and cheaper -- to wait for the DVD rather than brave the lines at their cineplex. A studio executive, however, claims that theaters are influencing quicker DVD releases by playing films on more screens, thus shortening box office runs and allowing studios to get DVDs to market even faster.
Prices for DVD recorders and portable CD players fell sharply in April, leading declines in consumer electronics, as retailers slashed prices to clear store shelves for new models, according to an industry study. Leading the April declines were DVD recorders, whose prices fell 9.9 percent to an average $365. The devices, which allow consumers to save broadcast or home video directly to DVD disks, and in some cases copy pre-recorded DVDs, are so far found in only a few homes. "I expect to see those continue to come down," said a researcher. "This is one of the fastest decliners, because it is a category that is trying to get market acceptance that came in at a pretty high price." A few products posted higher prices in April, the researc firm said, including portable DVD players, which rose 4.1 percent to $265.
Hollywood studios plan to increase monitoring of online film trading, as part of a broader antipiracy campaign aimed at quashing Net movie piracy. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said it will step up antipiracy education efforts, including working closely with colleges to create student "codes of conduct" and taking out newspaper and magazine advertisements. The group said it isn't ready to file lawsuits against individual movie-swappers, as has the Recording Industry Association of America, but that step may not be far off. Online movie-trading through peer-to-peer networks, while never as prevalent as song-swapping, has become more of a concern to studios as broadband Internet connections and DVD burners have moved into the mainstream. Between 400,000 and 600,000 films are illegally downloaded each day, the MPAA said, quoting industry estimates. June 14 - CNET: Next-generation DVD Moves Ahead The DVD Forum steering committee has approved version 1.0 of the physical specifications for HD-DVD read-only discs and voted to require that makers of HD-DVD video playback devices build in three video codecs, including the VC-9 technology used in Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9. Approval of version 1.0 of the HD-DVD physical specifications gives manufacturers a green light to begin producing devices, said an analyst with researcher IDC. The DVD Forum could give Microsoft credibility in pursuit of content as it shops its codec--compression-decompression algorithm--to partners outside the PC business. In addition to requiring the VC-9 codec when products are made to the HD-DVD video specification for playback devices, the DVD Forum steering committee also mandated the inclusion of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC (H.264). All three codecs had received a provisional nod from the Forum in February, subject to conditions including an update of licensing terms and conditions. June 11 - Jiji Press: Japan's DVD Recorder Shipments Almost Triple in FY '03 Shipments of DVD recorders in Japan in fiscal 2003 surged by 2.9-fold from the previous year to 2.17 million units, helped by price falls, a private research institute said. The Japanese DVD recorder market swelled in the year that ended March thanks to a fall below 100,000 yen in unit prices for models equipped with hard disk drives, the Multimedia Research Institute said. For fiscal 2004, shipments of DVD recorders are estimated at 3.3 million units, on the back of growing demand ahead of the Summer Olympic Games in Athens in August, the institute said. June 8 - USA Today: DVD Adds More Life to High School Yearbooks Many high school students this graduation season are leaving with two yearbooks — a print version and a DVD. A graduation-supply
company has started testing DVD yearbooks to accompany the traditional
big book. A DVD "adds more life to the yearbook," says Manorin Sieng, 16, a sophomore at Long Beach Polytechnic High School near Los Angeles. "The pages come alive." Some schools even wait for graduations in May and June. Cameras are on hand for the ceremony, and the DVD gets mailed off in summer instead of being handed out the last week of school. "That's the beauty of DVD," says a producer who worked with 25 schools to produce DVD yearbooks. They cost schools $6 to $39 each, depending upon how elaborate the final product is. Most schools sell 500 to 1,500 copies of the DVD yearbook, the producer says.
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