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It was twenty years ago today.... (1 Viewer)

Cees Alons

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Cees Alons
In 1997 a new medium for movies was about to appear. Better, perhaps, than laserdisk. Called DVD.
But during the first period, new films on DVD would only be available through a limited number of sellers in the USA and from a limited number of studios.

So what to do? I succeeded in ordering a DVD-player on the (pretty new itself) Internet. Then I found a retailer (Digital Eyes) who was willing to sell (and send!) me several of the new titles that would appear. I even had contact on Telephone with Mark Harrill, the owner. And I started to look for sites and forums where the new medium was discussed.

I found DVDresource (by - the now late - Steve Tannehill). Shortly after receiving the first movies on DVD I realized that my TV-set had a button labeled "compressed", which then displayed the "anamorphic" side of the DVD correctly (and without loss of resolution!). After I posted that information there, it went (as we would call it now) "viral". People asking all over the net for 'setting codes' of many TV-sets and many brands which didn't have a separate function button for it (only very few mentioning my post, though :) ).

Soon I found a reference to "our friends on The Home Theater Forum" on Digital Eyes' site. I went there, lurked a couple of weeks and then registered as a member. This was the reply:

Wecome Message HTF.jpg


The rest is history.
I never sent that last mentioned e-mail.


Completing the tone started in the title of this post:

It's wonderful to be here
It's certainly a thrill!


(And I also still don't know exactly who Billy Shears is - or was.)


Cees
 

Osato

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Feb 7, 2001
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Tim
In 1997 a new medium for movies was about to appear. Better, perhaps, than laserdisk. Called DVD.
But during the first period, new films on DVD would only be available through a limited number of sellers in the USA and from a limited number of studios.

So what to do? I succeeded in ordering a DVD-player on the (pretty new itself) Internet. Then I found a retailer (Digital Eyes) who was willing to sell (and send!) me several of the new titles that would appear. I even had contact on Telephone with Mark Harill, the owner. And I started to look for sites and forums where the new medium was discussed.

I found DVDresource (by - the now late - Steve Tannehill). Shortly after receiving the first movies on DVD I realized that my TV-set had a button labeled "compressed", which then displayed the "anamorphic" side of the DVD correctly (and without loss of resolution!). After I posted that information there, it went (as we would call it now) "viral". People asking all over the net for 'setting codes' of many TV-sets and many brands which didn't have a separate function button for it (only very few mentioning my post, though :) ).

Soon I found a reference to "our friends on The Home Theater Forum" on Digital Eyes' site. I went there, lurked a couple of weeks and then registered as a member. This was the reply:

View attachment 39465

The rest is history.
I never sent that last mentioned e-mail.


Completing the tone started in the title of this post:

It's wonderful to be here
It's certainly a thrill!


(And I also still don't know exactly who Billy Shears is - or was.)


Cees

Awesome! Thanks for posting!!!
 

Alf S

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Alfer
Hard to believe it's been over 17 YEARS since I joined hear. I think The Digital Bits was my first go to site to find out anything and everything about DVD.

I remember how a buddy of mine and I (both of us were early early adopters) were so pumped to see DVD displays going up at Best Buy and we'd visit weekly to see what new movies came out. A few months after launch, I remember being with my wife at BB looking for a washer dryer set (we just got married) and I pointed out that they had an "open box" Toshiba DVD player. She had no clue what it was but out of the blue she agreed that it might be fun to own so we snapped it up. Like pointed out above, the rest is history.

I must admit, that I haven't really bought many DVD's or Blu Ray movies for several years as I didn't find the bang for the buck aspect of it worthwhile anymore and I don't like "collecting" movies just to have them sit on a shelf rotting away for years. That was the main reason I quit buying every movie that came out, I'd buy them, watch once, and toss on a shelf or in a box and a few years would go by and I'd think, "Why am I wasting time and money buying these things??" so I went almost cold turkey.

I still like watching movies but I've moved on from discs and we now stream probably 75% of what we like to watch.

HTF has been and always be one of the most valuable tools out there for me to gather up info about tech stuff, be it A/V or computers, or smartphones or any number of other topics, that's what makes this place so great. :)
 

Dave Moritz

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Hard to believe it has been about 16 years since I joined this forum. I think I may have come across it doing a google search and it has been and is a great source of information about movie and hardware. I occasionally go to Digital Bits and AVS Forum but Home Theater Forum has always been my go to for information.
 

ChristopherG

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Chris
I am a relative HTF youngster compared to you guys. I followed Dennis Nichols over from another forum and lurked for almost a year before actually joining. Still love the HTF. I often wonder about other members from the past like Holadem, Zen Butler, and others who's names escape me and how they are doing.
 

RobertR

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Dec 19, 1998
Messages
10,675
About 20 years for me as well. HTF has always been a great information resource, and a good social gathering place. I love the memories of the HTF meets.
 

jcroy

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jr
In 1997 a new medium for movies was about to appear. Better, perhaps, than laserdisk. Called DVD.
But during the first period, new films on DVD would only be available through a limited number of sellers in the USA and from a limited number of studios.

So what to do?

(On a rambling tangent).

I vaguely remember the same time period. (IIRC, the Star Wars trilogy being back in theaters?)

In those days, I was looking for as much technical details as I could find about how the dvd system functioned. Checking out various online newsgroups + websites, it was very difficult to find any detailed information about the technical details of dvd. (For that matter, it wasn't easy to find technical details about how laserdiscs functioned either).

In hindsight, it appeared the dvd consortium might have pursued a "security through obscurity" model when it came to the security of the dvd system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

(It wasn't until late-1999 when the floodgates opened, where the dvd css encryption system was completely cracked and the details published on many websites).


Nevertheless in spite of the absence of detailed technical information, my then-wife ended up buying a dvd player sometime around xmas 1997. Thereafter, I picked up my first dvd (T2) which turned out to be defective. When I first played that T2 dvd, it froze within the first 20 minutes or so. It went back to the retailer, where I ended up with a refund. (ie. They had no more dvd copies of T2 in stock at the time).

This very much abruptly ended any potential "dvd hobby" I could have had in those days. (My then-wife was the one who was mostly buying movies on dvd, where she later got the entire dvd collection in the divorce. As a token gesture, she gave me all my dvds which she really hated, such as Cheech and Chong, etc ...).
 

Osato

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Tim
I didn't join until 2001, which probably was due to my lack of home internet access. Or it may have been I didn't discover the site until then...??

At any rate, I love the forums, people and reading about films!
 

jcroy

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jr
I often wonder about other members from the past like Holadem, Zen Butler, and others who's names escape me and how they are doing.

(As an offtopic aside).

Everyone has their own reasons for abandoning a particular forum, message board, newsgroup, chatroom, etc ...

Of all the online forums I have been on over the past 25+ years or so, I largely abandoned them typically for one of two big reasons: being banned or loss of interest (on my part).

For that latter case, it was usually me losing interest in the particular topic, hobby, niche, etc ... which a particular message board centered on. I don't even bother checking out old message boards anymore, which I use to frequent in the past. Not even for reasons like: nostalgia, curiosity, emails asking to come back, etc ... For most they're now a closed chapter in my past, which I have no interest in opening up again.


About a year ago, this particular HTF forum almost became another one of those "closed chapters" for me, when I abruptly stopped buying any dvds/blurays and went cold turkey (ie. complete abstinence). (I even wrote a "farewell post" at the time, thinking I was never going to come back here).
 
Last edited:

Peter Apruzzese

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I noticed I joined here in December 1999, probably after lurking for at least year or more - I got my first DVD player in August 1998. Like Cees, I found this place via Steve Tannehill's DVD Resource page. I used to work in wholesale video distribution at the time and loved sending "anonymous" tips about release dates to Steve and some of the other sites since we would get them a few days earlier than the press. I remember Steve scooping everyone with the announcement that "Titanic" was coming to DVD in late summer 1999 - I had to scan the paperwork and send to him before he'd publish it. :)
 

TravisR

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I noticed I joined here in December 1999, probably after lurking for at least year or more - I got my first DVD player in August 1998. Like Cees, I found this place via Steve Tannehill's DVD Resource page. I used to work in wholesale video distribution at the time and loved sending "anonymous" tips about release dates to Steve and some of the other sites since we would get them a few days earlier than the press. I remember Steve scooping everyone with the announcement that "Titanic" was coming to DVD in late summer 1999 - I had to scan the paperwork and send to him before he'd publish it. :)
If it was on DVD Resource (or The Digital Bits or DVD File), I probably read it. :)
 

jcroy

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jr
I remember how a buddy of mine and I (both of us were early early adopters) were so pumped to see DVD displays going up at Best Buy and we'd visit weekly to see what new movies came out.

For some strange reason, I don't remember seeing many huge displays of dvds in those days at various retailers.

IIRC the only places I went to semi-regularly which had such huge displays, was Circuit City. In hindsight, I now realize CC was pushing DIVX and not dvd. (Fortunately DIVX died shortly thereafter).
 

dana martin

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has the time gone by that fast, i was a lurker for a long time about 3-4 years, because of Bill Hunt's Digital Bits page, kept referencing this place.

one thing that i do miss from those earlier days, was the Studio Chats, they all have different ways to let us know what is coming.
 

Mike Frezon

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Still love the HTF. I often wonder about other members from the past like Holadem, Zen Butler, and others who's names escape me and how they are doing.

@Zen Butler isn't just a "past" member, Christopher! He still pops in on occasion. :D

Personally, I wonder about Rob Lutter and Rain (and his nostril). :laugh:

My mission now will be to get Parker stop in to this thread and leave a note! :rock:
 

Aaron Silverman

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I RARELY buy any discs any more, and I don't stream anything (aside from watching On Demand through cable). The public library by my house gets all the new releases, plus a number of classics, on Blu. But I'll be here on the HTF until they pry my keyboard from my cold, dead hands. :)

I actually did buy something a few weeks back -- the Planet of the Apes blu set (of the original five films). I couldn't find my copy of the original movie on DVD, just my non-anamorphic Fox set (with the "classic" horrifying spoiler case). I wanted my son to see the original before we checked out the new movies.

Of course, we were unable to go the day they had the triple feature, and still haven't seen any of the new ones. And, naturally, the other night I was in Walmart, and they had the same set for $2 cheaper and including some store-exclusive mini lobby cards. Some things never change! :)

On another memory-related note, did you guys also get a Facebook notification the other day that it was RAF's birthday? I miss RAF. . .
 

Scott Merryfield

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I joined here in 1998 after lurking for awhile. I do not remember exactly how I found HTF, only that I was searching for sites with information about the new DVD format. The site was such a friendly place, so I enjoyed hanging out and posting -- something I rarely do on other Internet sites. Ron and company have kept this a very friendly place all these years, so it is still a great site to hang out and discuss movies, home theater, etc.
 

Yee-Ming

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2002 for me: easy to remember because it was a few months before I got married, and I was researching HT gear to decide what to buy for our new home. Still have the same speakers and subwoofer, although the receiver has been upgraded once and the (then DVD, now BD) player a few times, as well as the TV. Even upgraded the home. Perhaps most importantly, still have the same wife too :)

I too am no longer as active here as I used to be -- I haven't upgraded any equipment in a while, partly because I simply don't seem to use the full rig as often anyway, and because the tech seems to have stabilised at a good level and I no longer feel the need to push for any further improvements. Also, I buy fewer discs these days, again because accumulating a further pile of them seems excessive. If anything, I find I mostly check into the TV section to read up and occasionally discuss TV shows. And occasionally After Hours, hence this.

I too used to read old stalwart sites like The Digital Bits, DVD Resource, and DVD File regularly. But I haven't been to the Bits in quite a while, and the latter two are now defunct. I was concurrently active on another similar HT-centric forum, but which was based in Singapore (i.e. local to me), and at one point was amongst their top-10 posters of all time, but I barely go there at all now, for similar reasons.
 

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