Model Citizen

I wrote this for a competition over at AV Talk asking:
You are allowed one shot (or one post) where in your own words you will write about what is in your opinion 'the greatest single inovation we've seen in A/V (audio, video or both) in the last 10 years and why it has had the impact you mention'

My answer:

DVD.

So much in life these days is like having a first beer after a hard days work. You pull back the tab or prize open the cap, hear the whoosh of the gas escaping, then take that first refreshing mouthful. And that's the trouble, the second swig never seems to match up to the first, and the rest of the liquid is just that, liquid.
It's very hard for something to keep that "first taste" experience, but looking back over the last 10 years there's really only one contender.

Dateline 1997. I'm working at a printers in Laindon, Essex, when a new job comes in. It's a flyer to advertise a new magazine coming out called DVD Review. It's going to be printed in metallic blue and has Pierce Brosnan on it in a scene from Goldeneye. I've started to hear a lot about this new DVD technology, Digital Video Disc it stands for then, later to be changed to Digital Versatile Disc, it's going to have film on it that's so much better than your old VHS cassettes. It will have stunning moving menu's that you can click on to get trailers, behind the scenes footage, hidden extras. There will be different soundtracks that can be changed at the touch of a button, some will have the director and cast talking about the movie. There will be an angle button that you can press to watch the same scene from a different view. This new DVD technology sounds awesome!



I do some hunting on the Internet and find that Pioneer have got some players coming soon. There's a very special DV 717, which I am destined to acquire at a later time, but Pioneer have bought out "The Beast"! it's the 909, it can play DVD's, VCD's, LD and just about anything else you can throw at it. It costs me £900. I buy this as I know I can start picking up all those old Laser Discs that people dont want anymore now that DVD is here, and I do. This new DVD technology has a price though, and I now have to buy a new amp that can take a fiber optic connection. I have to buy more speakers and a sub woofer, but the local shop Woolfmans helps me out and soon I have a basic home cinema.



Then it's time to finally buy a DVD. There's not that many to choose from when I visit my local supermarket (no online shops yet for me). There's Face Off, a "flipper" disc that has the movie spread on both sides of the disc, but I go for Contact a Jodie Foster film.
When I get home and play it the "first taste" is incredible. We're in space, there's radio waves playing all around the living room. Then the radio waves get older and older and slowly the sound starts diminishing from the rear speakers, then it's just stereo, then it's just mono and then we are in the eye of a small girl as our trip through space finishes.
I stop. I am literally stunned by what I've just seen. I'm sitting in a room surrounded by shelves of VHS tapes thinking, all this has to go and be replaced, because from this point on anything other than this wonderful new technology is going to be a poor second.
The next few months that follow in Essex, there's a running joke about me on commission with Pioneer due to the amount of DVD players my friends and workmates buy after seeing what I've seen. Contact get's played over and over, the car chase from Ronin, another favourite, has the room rumbling with the sound of impact from DeNiro's rocket launcher, even sample discs showing future titles get played again and again and still the first taste is as good now as it was then.

10 years on I'm still watching DVD's that make my jaw drop. The look of Appleseed, the quality of LOTR, the menu's of The Italian Job and Terminator 2.
It's been a superb 10 years for the home cinema enthusiast and the joy that is DVD.