I know many of you are eagerly waiting for an update in our “Hotseat” section, but unfortunately a number of scheduling conflicts still have us waiting for a number of people to get back to us. Hopefully we will be able to bring you the next installment of a “Hotseat” interview next week.

Following our announcement this week that “Halloween:H20” is not making its originally anticipated March release, many of you pointed out that this is due to the fact that Miramax intents to release a Collector’s Edition of the film later this year - which are exactly the legal implications we had pointed towards. A number of you also suggested it may be a result of DIVX having exclusive rights to the film - which is not the case. DIVX is not really an issue on these pages, as you certainly noticed, but there seems to be a lot of confusion, regarding DIVX and its licensing policies. “Halloween:H20” is already available on DIVX, as are a number of other titles that are still unavailable on DVD, carrying a teasing “DIVX Only” sticker. What’s the deal with this? Many people believe DIVX has some exclusivity on certain titles as a result of incorrect information from other media and websites. The problem here is that many people see DIVX as the ultimate evil without even trying to look behind the scenes or to understand the underlying business model and practices. This image of eternal evil is getting worse and worse as people continually make up new horror stories about the format.

Anyway, to make a long story short, there is no such thing as true DIVX exclusivity! Films like “Halloween:H20” or the “X-Files Movie” are coming to DVD as well, as we all know. DIVX is just cashing in on a small window they have, trying to make everyone believe they have exclusivity on a title, when in fact they don’t. How does it happen, though, that these films are available on DIVX and not on DVD at this time? Someone must be holding back the DVD release to favor DIVX, right? Wrong!

It has a lot to do with technical limitations and timeframes. DIVX is authoring and producing all their releases by themselves without much assistance of the studios. The studios deliver a master, which is then used by DIVX to create the disc in a very straight-forward process. DIVX can manage all their releases easily and efficiently because of the very limited technical demands and the limited number of releases compared to DVD. DVDs on the other hand are created by a limited number of authoring facilities who are flooded with work and backlogged to a large extend. They simply cannot manage to handle all the titles they should, and many of the titles are delayed as a result of it. Just take a look at the constantly changing street dates and you know what I am talking about. DVDs usually have more content, too, and it takes time to gather and prepare these materials. Time DIVX doesn’t require. With their no-frills standardized menus all they need to do is take the film, compress and encode it, drop it in their menu templates and then burn the master disc. Since they have dedicated people to do this they can do so very quickly and go to replication immediately. While people are still struggling to get the same film on DVD, you can see the DIVX version on the shelves already with a “DIVX only” sticker on the front, declaring the film as an exclusive property while in fact they only managed to turn around much faster. Keep in mind at this point, that creating a DVD can easily take up to several months! Even a no-frills DVD takes much longer to produce because it requires custom menu screens and people physically working on the release. In a compression center that is backlogged for months, that is an assets that is sometimes hard to come by. As more facilities will become available this will certainly change, but for now, that’s the state of affairs.

What about films that are out on DIVX and haven’t even been announced for DVD, like “Ed Wood” for example? They are DIVX exclusive, aren’t they? No, they are not. There is another element that plays into the whole calculation, namely the studios themselves. We all remember all too well that Fox and Paramount have been favoring DIVX over DVD for quite a while, until it became evident to them that DIVX was stillborn and there was no money to be made. This decision was driven by studio executives and has nothing to do with DIVX having exclusive access to these films. DIVX does not have the muscle to force anyone into exclusivity. There is not enough money in the system and DVD is luring as a very lucrative alternative. There is no incentive for a studio executive to throw away money by signing titles off to DIVX on an exclusive basis. Not even the initially rumored sing-on fee makes a difference there because it is too small to get anyone exclusively interested. It was there for studio executives to at least take a shot at the format because otherwise no one would ever have cared for it in the first place. A format that needs to pay people hard cash to get them interested has a pretty sad perspective in the long and short term if you ask me. But let’s face it, Hollywood is about making money, and every chance to make more money that presents itself to the studios is a venue they will seriously evaluate. Exclusivity is a word that is not very popular in Hollywood, however, because the studios love to exercise their rights and use their properties in any way they can. It’s their business. I hear from our Fox representative that the company is preparing a serious number of titles for DVD this year and I’ll be damned if “Ed Wood” isn’t one of them. Just take a look at their latest announcements. Fox is serious about DVD there can be no doubt. It took them a while to see the light, but now they are sending some of their hottest properties our way in amazing releases featuring 16x9 enhancements almost throughout, spiced up with plenty of supplements. There is no such thing as “DIVX Only”. It is a marketing device the company is using to once again mislead customers. While it may be very annoying, unfortunately it is completely legal. But then again, why should we care? After all we are DVD owners, right? It’s pointless to get obsessed with a format that isn’t remotely interesting for us.

Finally, before I go, did you notice that Image Entertainment have just announced their Special Edition of the 40s horror classic “The Old Dark House”? What’s special about this film, you ask? Well, apart from the fact that it is an extremely good and atmospheric horror film in the best of Universal tradition, it stars no other than the unforgettable Boris Karloff and a certain Miss Gloria Stuart. If the name strikes you familiar, don’t look any further, this is the same Gloria Stuart that plays the narrative leading part in “Titanic”. The detail that makes this release noteworthy however is the fact that Mrs. Stuart had been cast for “Titanic” as a result of exactly this Special Edition of “The Old Dark House” - on Laserdisc at the time. Not the film, Image Entertainment’s Special Edition that is. The disc contains a commentary track with the actress and when director James Cameron  an avid admirer of the film  listened to the track he knew that this was the voice he was looking for to tell the story of the sinking “Titanic” in his blockbuster movie.

Have a great week everyone - and by the way, we have added some functionality to our Film Vault search engine. You can now also look for specific language tracks and subtitles. Just select “Language” from the menu and type in the language you’re looking for...

 March 7, 1998

© 1997-99 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved.