Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc,"
is an optical disc storage media format.
Its main uses are video and data storage.
DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs)
but store more than six times as much data.
Variations of the term DVD often describe the way data is stored
on the discs:
DVD-ROM (Read Only Memory), has data that can only be read and
not written,
DVD-R and DVD+R can record data only once and then function as
a DVD-ROM.
DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM can both record and erase data multiple
times.
The wavelength used by standard DVD lasers is 650 nm, and thus
the light has a red color.
DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs respectively refer to properly formatted
and structured video and audio content.
Other types of DVDs, including those with video content,
may be referred to as DVD-Data discs.
As next generation High Definition more advanced optical formats
such as Blu-ray Disc also use a disc identical in some aspects,
the original DVD is occasionally given the retronym SD DVD (for
standard definition).
However, the trademarked HD DVD discs have been discontinued
since Blu-ray absorbed their market share.
What is HD DVD and Blu-Ray Discs?
HD DVD (short for High-Definition/Density DVD)
is a discontinued high-density optical disc format
for storing data and high-definition video.
HD DVD was supported principally by Toshiba,
and was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format.
However, in February 2008, Toshiba abandoned the format,
announcing it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players
or drives.
Since all variants except 3X DVD and HD REC
employed a blue laser with a shorter wavelength,
HD DVD could store about 31û4 times as much data per layer
as its predecessor (maximum capacity: 15 GB per layer instead
of 4.7 GB per layer).
Much like the VHS vs. Betamax format war during the late 1970s
and early 1980s,
HD DVD was competing with rival format Blu-ray Disc.
In 2008, major content manufacturers and key retailers
began withdrawing their support for the format.
Toshiba's withdrawal from the format ended the high definition
optical disc format war,
effectively making rival Blu-ray Disc the dominant format for
high definition video discs.
The HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved on March 28, 2008.
Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD)
is an optical disc storage medium designed by Sony
to supersede the standard DVD format.
Its main uses are
high-definition video and data storage with 50GB per disc.
The disc has the same physical dimensions as standard DVDs and
CDs.
The name Blu-ray Disc derives from the blue laser used to read
the disc.
While a standard DVD uses a 650 nanometre red laser,
Blu-ray uses a shorter wavelength, a 405 nm blue laser,
and allows for almost six times more data storage than on a DVD.
During the format war over high-definition optical discs,
Blu-ray competed with the HD DVD format.
Toshiba, the main company supporting HD DVD,
ceded in February 2008 and the format war ended.
Blu-ray Disc is developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association,
a group representing makers of consumer electronics,
computer hardware, and motion pictures.
I'm going
to offer obscure & well known films
highlighting the 60s Counter Culture Movement,
the Beat Generation,
Hippie Favorites, and Documentaries depicting social change,
social activism, eco-consciousness, psychedelics,
cannabis,
biographies and memoirs of the "players" in our 'movements,''revolutions'
history and herstory,
spiritual teachers and guides, quantum theory,
philosophers, poet-seers,
and whatever is worth our viewing to increase our
awareness and consciousness about the 'New Paradigm'
upon us.
I
will also be featuring Psychedelic 60s & 70s Festival Films, and
Special Rock Legend Concert Films--
Our new Poster Stores now have DVD's and our New Music Stores will
also have them..
Sorry
NO Reviews Here
..if you would like to review a film just click
on the link on each one.
Thanks for
stopping by and please keep checking back this is going to be FUN!
PeaceZenHugs LionHeart
May 2009
History
of the Film Industry
In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first
movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black
Maria,
a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange,
New Jersey,
and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the
camera.
He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades,
wax museums, and fairgrounds.
Other studio operations followed in New Jersey, New York City, and
Chicago.
In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California,
because of the good weather and longer days.
Although electric lights were by then widely available,
none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film;
the best source of illumination for motion picture production was
natural sunlight.
Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in downtown Los Angeles.
Early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape
Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company,
which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production
at the time.
The distance from New Jersey made it more difficult for Edison to
enforce his patents.
The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios,
opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley.
In the same year, another fifteen independents settled in Hollywood.
Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles
area in places such as Culver City, Burbank,
and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando
Valley.
By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production
companies
into wealthy film industry conglomerates that owned their own studios,
distribution divisions, and theaters, and contracted with performers
and other filmmaking personnel,
led to the sometimes confusing equation of "studio" with
"production company" in industry slang.
Five large companies, 20th Century-Fox, MGM,
Paramount, RKO, and Warner Bros.,
came to be known as the "Big Five,"
the "majors," or "the Studios" in trade
publications such as Variety,
and their management structures and practices collectively came to
be known as the "studio system."
Cult Films
Cult film is a colloquial term for a film that has accrued a small
but devoted group of fans,
having failed to achieve fame outside that group.
Sometimes, the group is bound to the film by a shared sense of ridicule
for it, rather than artistic merit.
The term itself
came into usage during the late 1970s -
perhaps among fans of cheap horror films dealing with devil cults
-
and popularized in a series of three books by Danny Peary, beginning
in 1981 with Cult Movies.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and other films
by Ed Wood, Jr.
were among the earliest to attract devotees who revelled in their
incompetence.
Other low-budget science fiction and horror films of the 1950s (Robot
Monster),
along with exploitation films of the 1930s,
which resurfaced in the home video market of the 1980s (Reefer
Madness), were added to the collection.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is possibly the
best-known and longest-running cult film in the U.S.
The movie satirizes conventions of science fiction and horror films
of its time,
and includes elements of transvestism, incest and homosexuality —
all within the context of a Musical film.
Rocky Horror (as its fans casually refer to it) received little critical
attention
or mainstream cinema exhibition when first released in 1975 but, in
short order,
found fans who repeatedly showed up at midnight screenings
at inexpensive neighborhood cinemas, dressed in costume and "participating"
in the film by doing such things as throwing rice during its wedding
scene.
In this case, the film intentionally ridiculed its own subject matter,
thereby entering into the spirit of sarcastic fun often surrounding
the attainment of cult status.
Many significant cult films are independently made and were not expected
by their creators to have much mainstream success.
Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, Female
Trouble, The Hills Have Eyes, Gattaca,
The Evil Dead and Eraserhead have all been commonly acknowledged as
having become cult films.
The 1992 Disney musical Newsies, a box-office
flop, gained a passionate cult following,
largely based online in the form of electronic mailing lists, fan
fiction,
and complex historically-inspired role play websites known as "lodging
houses".
This following may have been a factor in the eventual release of the
movie's DVD version and soundtrack.
Network television, cable television and pay-per-view stations have
also changed the nature of cult films.
Despite failing to meet box office expectations, Blade
Runner was a favorite of early pay-per-view and HBO.
Repeated showings on Comedy Central helped popularize Office
Space and Half Baked.
In most cases, these films tend to enjoy long runs on video,
thus being issued in video "runs" with more copies than
other movies.
The box office bomb Office
Space managed to financially redeem itself
when word-of-mouth made it a popular video rental.
Fight Club and Mulholland Drive have likewise
earned
considerably more in DVD sales than in movie theaters.
Also, cult movies are more likely to be issued on newer video technology
in the technology's early days than other films.
Although films of all genres and plot conventions may become cult
films,
the horror and science fiction and experimental film genres have become
the focus
of those wanting to identify a film as a cult film, perhaps due to
the relatively young and cynical nature of these genres' fan bases.
The identification of a film as having cult status is particularly
dependent upon Generation X,
whose members are most interested in the concept and its films.
Some contend that, in rare cases, a film can be both a huge, major
studio release and a cult film,
because a small, devoted following exists within the film’s larger
audience
(i.e., 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Taxi
Driver and the Star Wars series.)
With advances in web-based film distribution,
films such as Jon Simpkins's Life of a Tennis
Ball
can develop a cult following even without being commercially distributed.
Foreign
Films or "World Cinema"
World cinema is a term used primarily in the West
to refer to the films and film industries
of non-English language speaking countries (those outside of the
Anglosphere).
It is therefore often used interchangeably with the term Foreign
film.
However, both World cinema and Foreign film could be taken
to refer to the films of all countries other than
one's own, regardless of native language.
Technically, foreign film does not mean
the same as foreign language film,
but the inference, particularly in the U.S., is that a foreign
film
is not only foreign in terms of the country of production, but
also in terms of the language used.
As such, the use of the term foreign film for films produced in
the
UK, Australia, Canada or other English speaking countries would
be uncommon.
In other English speaking countries, it would be extremely unlikely
to class films made in the U.S. as foreign films, or belonging
to World cinema,
as American films are reasonably dominant in all English-language
markets.
World cinema has an un-official implication
of films
with "artistic value" as opposed to "Hollywood
commercialism."
Foreign language films are often grouped with "Art House
films"
and other independent films in DVD stores, cinema listings etc.
Unless dubbed into one's native language, foreign language films
usually have English subtitles.
Few films of this kind receive more than a limited release and
many are never played in major cinemas.
As such the marketing, popularity and gross takings for these
films
are usually markedly less than for typical Hollywood blockbusters.
The combination of subtitles and minimal
exposure adds to the notion that "World Cinema"
has an inferred artistic prestige or intelligence, which may discourage
less sophisticated viewers.
Additionally, differences in cultural style and tone between foreign
and domestic films affects attendance at cinemas and DVD sales.
Foreign language films can be commercial, low brow or B-movies,
so to automatically assume that World cinema is "arty"
or intellectual is erroneous.
Furthermore, foreign language films can cross cultural boundaries,
particularly when the visual spectacle and style is sufficent
to overcome people's misgivings.
Films of this ilk are becoming more common,
and recent examples such as Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon and Amelie
enjoyed great success in Western cinemas and DVD sales.
The first foreign language film to top the North American box
office was Hero in the fall of 2004.
HDTV's,
Plasma TV's, LCD TV's,
HDTV
(High-definition television)
is a digital television broadcasting system
with higher resolution than traditional television systems
(standard-definition TV, or SDTV).
HDTV is digitally broadcast;
the earliest implementations used analog broadcasting,
but today digital television (DTV) signals are used,
requiring less bandwidth due to digital video compression.
Non-cinematic HDTV video recordings intended for broadcast
are typically recorded either in 720p or 1080i format as determined
by the broadcaster.
720p is commonly used for Internet distribution of high-definition
video,
because all computer monitors operate in progressive-scan mode.
720p also imposes less strenuous storage and decoding requirements
compared to both
1080i and 1080p. 1080p is usually used for Blu-ray Disc. Learn
ALL about HDTV
Plasma TV
(Flat Planel Display)
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display
common to large TV displays (32 inches or larger).
Many tiny cells between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture
of noble gases.
The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then
excites phosphors to emit light.
Plasma displays should not be confused with LCDs,
another lightweight flatscreen display using different technology.
The lifetime of the latest generation of plasma displays is estimated
at
100,000 hours of actual display time, or 27 years at 10 hours per
day.
This is the estimated time over which maximum picture brightness
degrades to half the original value, not catastrophic failure. Learn
ALL about Plasma TV
LCD TV (Liquid-crystal
display televisions )
are color television sets that use LCD technology to produce images.
LCD televisions are thinner and lighter than CRTs (Cathode ray tube)
of similar display size,
and are available in much larger sizes as well.
This combination of features made LCDs more practical than CRTs for
many roles,
and as manufacturing costs fell their eventual dominance of the television
market was all but guaranteed.
In 2007 LCD televisions surpassed sales of CRT-based televisions worldwide
for the first time,
and its sales figures relative to other technologies is accelerating.
LCD TVs are quickly displacing the only major competitors in the large-screen
market,
the plasma display panel and rear-projection television.
LCDs are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television technology
today,
pushing all other technologies into niche roles. Learn
ALL about LCD TV
MORE
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