HTML recreation of the DVD screensaver.

With Netflix raising prices, HBO Max removing dozens of programs from their line-up, and Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery going after eachothers throats over South Park of all things, I'm starting to wonder if people are starting to forget about the king of home video, the DVD.

The DVD is basically the LaserDisc's smaller, cooler offspring, it started out as some experimental thing, but ended up becoming something far bigger.

Brief history on the DVD

In 1993, Sony (foreshadowing ooh), Philips and Toshiba basically made two different takes on a souped up CD, Sony and Phillips made the Multimedia CD (used for the Phillips CD-I), while Toshiba made the Super Density disc, backed by companies that included, but are not limited to, Time Warner (more foreshadowing oooh), JVC, Pioneer, and Mitsubishi. Sony and Phillips ended up dropping the MMCD nomenclature, and just started calling it the "Digital Video Disc" (even more foreshadowing ooooh). Sony and Phillips saught to end their format war with Toshiba and decided "Hey, why don't we merge our formats?", and thus, the DVD as we know it was made.

The DVD was slowly adopted by home video distributors such as Paramount, Warner Home Video, and Disney (more on them later), but due to the absolutely INSANE pricing of DVD players at the time ($600 up to $1000), the DVD didn't gain popularity until Sony released the PlayStation 2, $299 at launch, it was once the cheapest DVD player, hence why everyone and their grandma had a PS2 back then and why the PS2 was still being supported up until 2014. DVDs are still being released in tandem with Blu-rays to this day.

DVD's Quirks

The DVD had it's quirks, starting with...

Menus

The DVD menus are what made DVDs, well, DVDs, they had options to go to certain scenes, choose different audio tracks (whether it be choosing between DTS or Dolby Digital, or just choosing a different language), and bonus features. You couldn't do that on VHS.

DVD menus are the core of my nostalgia, if I had something which chronicled things I remember from my childhood, it'd have a DVD menu for navigation.

Disney's FastPlay

Don't act like you haven't had that thing memorized word for word.

Disney's FastPlay is this thing where the movie and some bonus features play automatically, despite the name, FastPlay isn't actually all that fast, you have to take the clip-on IDs (like coming soon, now available, etc.), trailers, promos, Disney DVD logo, and the FBI warning and "views expressed" screens for account, which all bloat FastPlay's time by 8-12 minutes. I think all those are for you to prepare by making popcorn or something like that.

HIT Entertainment had their own Great Value version of FastPlay called "HIT Entertainment's Auto Play", however, instead of appearing almost immediately, it appears after the previews, which, in my opinion, makes it useless, since there's nothing before FastPlay aside from the Disney logo, but a lot of things before Auto Play, I personally think they could have made it where the program would automatically play after a minute or so in the main menu.

THX Optimizer

THX, the leaders of noises that frightened a majority of small 2000s children, had certified some DVDs like they did with VHS, but unlike with VHS, THX added a calibration tool to DVDs they certified. You could adjust the saturation, hue, sharpness, and color to THX standard, and it would make your TV or home theater show movies how the creators intended.

My favorite DVDs are...

The original DVD releases of the first six Star Wars films are my absolute favorite DVDs, ESPECIALLY because they each have three different menus for each movie. The main menu locations for each movie (chronological release by the way) are as follows:

These give the DVDs a lot of personality, and that it why I consider these my favorite DVDs.

So yeah, these are the DVD's history, quirks, and my personal favorite DVDs.

Stay tuned for more entries!