Disney Does Dvd

When DVD first came on the market, some of the studios embraced it wholeheartedly, immediately starting to pour new and, soon after, old titles into the young medium. Others were more cautious, back until consumers beholding began to show acceptance, wary of the commercial failure of laser discs. Conspicuous in its absence was the Disney Studio, and the buzz in the market was that, until Disney endorsed DVDs, the new product was still suspect.

Well, Disney has observed the market, noted the booming sales of DVD players, and opened up its oh-so-valuable vaults, officially granting its imprimatur, to the delight of parents and children alike. With kids in the habit of playing favorite movies over and over until the tapes are fading, pictures are suffering from dropout, and sound is muddy, a crisis was springing up in the VHS arena. The problem was compounded by Disney's carefully conceived sales plan that keeps pulling titles off the market, making replacements impossible. With DVDs, the situation became less critical, since the discs are virtually indestructible with normal play.

The first wave of Disney classic animated features swept into the stores in time for Christmas shoppers to load up, with proper urgency ensured by the limited shelf life of 60 days each, guaranteeing that sales (at $39.99 apiece) would move rapidly. Meanwhile, the consensus is that the wait was worth it. Disney features have never looked better on the home screen than they do in the DVD format, whether the 60-year-old "Pinocchio" or the two-year-old "Hercules."

We sampled golden oldie "Pinocchio," middle-aged favorites "Peter Pan" and "101 Dalmations," and newcomers "Hercules" and "Mulan," and found that each looked brand spanking new. Their colors are as vivid as the day they first hit movie theaters, and the sound of the older movies are better than ever in Dolby. Moreover, with DVD's capacity for bonus features, each disc has a little extra, ranging from French and Spanish language tracks to music videos to original theatrical trailers to "Making of" features.

Walt Disney Home Video may have been late off the mark in entering the DVD field, but it has hit the ground running, as evidenced by the studio's domination of weekly video store sales charts. Disney and DVD should be making movie magic at its best until the next new technology comes along.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group