DVD Conference at CES ‘99: The Future is Bright

At a DVD press conference held during this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, a representative from Best Buy said that DVD players were the “runaway hit of the Christmas shopping season.” Manufacturers could not keep up with the demand.

Christopher Payne of Amazon.com said that the top 5 movies sold by Amazon during the 4th quarter were all DVD titles. He said that the new ownership of the hardware (the players) is driving demand for software (the movies, etc.), and predicted that 80% of future orders will be for “backlist” (catalogued titles rather than new releases) as is the case with book sales.

The VP of DVD marketing for Toshiba said that advertising by retailers of DVD players will increase more than 10-fold this year. Chris Phillips of Microsoft said that 80% of all new computers will be shipped with DVD-ROM drives by Christmas ‘99. He also said that the owners of those machines will become a new market for movie distributors, and said that Microsoft is now committed to using DVD discs for distributing software to its network of developers.

Columbia-Tristar’s Ben Feingold said the way to sell DVD titles successfully is to “jam as many special items and features” onto the disc as possible. This bodes well for consumers looking for alternate camera angles, alternate scenes, interviews with directors and other added features that the DVD format makes possible.
-Stephen Muratore