It seems unbelievable that the first DVD I bought came out in 2000. I keep thinking I must be wrong but then I remember that I didn’t have a DVD player until I moved in with my boyfriend and that was in 2000.
It’s hard to remember a time when DVDs didn’t exist.
Men In Black II. I had just bought a Microsoft XBox. Since I didn’t previously have a DVD player, the XBox became my first one.
I bought my dad a DVD player for his birthday in 2001. (It’s easy to remember because his birthday is September 14.) To go along with it, I also bought him The Big Lebowski and The Usual Suspects.
It ended up being incompatible with the TV, and my dad had to go out and buy a new TV so he could watch his DVDs. I think he was excited to have an excuse, though.
To make it more interesting (not counting copied/pirated things, only bought or gifted):
First LP: Snow White Broadway soundtrack
First casette: Michael Jackson’s Thriller
First CD: Indigo Girl’s Rites of Passage
First mintitape or whatever that was: N/A
First MP3 or digital album: Juanes, Un Dia Normal
First film reel: N/A
First Beta: N/A
First VHS: Star Wars Trilogy
First laserdisc: N/A although almost got The Big Blue
First DVD: The Matrix
First BlueRay: N/A for self, but bought Sherlock Holmes for someone else
First MP4/iTunes movie: Under the Tuscan Sun
First casette: Appetite for Destruction
First CD: Nirvana’s Unplugged
First DVD: I think I got a few at once–Singles or The Princess Bride were definitely some of the earlier ones.
First CD: Synchronicity, The Police
First VHS: Blade Runner
First film: 20-minute super-8 version of Star Wars
Not only did the movie look really good on DVD, it was the first I knew of that really took advantage of the format. Special features, alternate angles, multiple audio tracks, and so on. This was the DVD you wanted if you were trying to explain to someone why this new format was the way to go.
In any case, The Matrix was my first DVD purchase. I got it as part of a bundle Best Buy was selling for the PS2 which came along with a vertical stand, PS2 DVD remote (as this was before Sony released an official one), and maybe something else, but I don’t remember at this point. I got the bundle on the PS2’s launch day, after I had picked up my PS2 from a different store where I had it preordered and completely paid for. I believe I might have also bought the documentary Trinity and Beyond on the same trip to Best Buy.
DVD - Beany and Cecil Special Edition, because it had 4 episodes of the original show and recorded reminiscences from Stan Freberg, Clampett and some others.
VHS - A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was a giveaway with purchase at a gas station chain I didn’t normally go to, and I went there specifically to get it.
The first VHS I actually bought IIRC was “A Man For All Seasons” (Scofield)
CD - “Amahl and the Night Visitors” (original cast).
Pre-recorded reel-to-reel tape - “Switched-on Bach” (I think)
LP - Grieg Piano Concerto, Artur Rubinstein.
I don’t remember the first actual disc, but I did buy the first actual VHS/DVD combo player, and also one for my parents. The one for my parents is still in use, actually. Mine broke fast.
Ghostbusters, and The Matrix.
I have subsequently watched Ghostbusters many times. But The Matrix, not so much.
I was an early adopter. Sometime back in 1998, maybe even 1997, I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, and I decided to go in for this new DVD thing. I bought a player and three of the available titles. All of the DVDs they had to choose from fit on one little wire rack in the middle of the aisle at Best Buy. As I recall, on that first outing, I bought Scream, Runaway Train, and Twister. I’m pretty sure there was a law that you had to buy Twister if you were getting a DVD player.
That first DVD player, by the way, set me back $550. It’s still in service at my mother-in-law’s house, in her second bedroom for when the kids are over and want to watch movies.
Starship Troopers. I really liked it - lots of CGI to show off the high resolution format (at the time).
The first DVDs we bought were used rental copies of The Replacements and Galaxy Quest
I recall Twister being one of the big titles that were given away to folks who bought early DVD players. My mind still boggles when I see used copies for sale at a normal price, because in my mind, it’s like Super Mario Bros. for the NES-- a pack-in that’s far too common to be worth much. It was also a really poor choice to showcase DVD technology; early DVD compression techniques (and players’ decompression techniques) were pretty bad, and the rapidly moving objects in the movie just couldn’t be rendered properly. The movie has been remastered a couple of times since that initial release.
I honestly can’t remember my first DVD; I think it may be one of the early IMAX documentary titles-- slow-moving, hour-long videos were better suited for those early players. I was one of the early adopters (as were most laserdisc aficionados), getting my first player in summer of 1997 and ramping up DVD purchases as studios made the switch from LD to DVD and improved compression techniques. It was a tough sell to the (now ex-) wife, since MSRP on original DVDs was $35, just as much as LD, and the players were clunky and expensive. (I bought a mix of the two formats until the end, and still find the LDs for Fight Club, X-Men, and The Matrix to be have higher video quality than their DVD counterparts.)
It was early enough that there was controversy about how DVDs were going to be packaged, and most titles were available in both CD-size cases (whether jewel cases, clamshells, or those horrible Polygram slider cases) and what has become the standard taller DVD-size cases. I gambled correctly that the larger cases would become the standard, but I do wish I’d purchased some of those early titles in non-standard cases, just to have representatives in my collection.
After all, it was the first major picture to come out on DVD. What was the first Blu Ray? I think Serenity was the first of the short lived HD DVD.
Wikipedia says 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Underworld: Evolution, xXx (all of which were from Sony) and The Terminator (from MGM).
It was either X-Men or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
We own dozens and dozens. But I haven’t bought any of them.
Oddly enough, this was one of the first two I bought as well. The other one I purchased with it was “Excalibur”, since it was relatively inexpensive, and also a movie I liked. I had to have something to watch on my new gadget!
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Bought a newfangled super-upgraded computer with a, gasp(!), DVD-ROM. This was the first movie I bought to watch and was not disappointed in the quality of the picture or sound.
As to the ending however… well, that’s a different thread.