|
Home |
Shop with our friends at Harbor and Organa for unique DVDs, CDs, Books, and more.
20% off From DVDLaser.com
Two years after the film was knocked out of the top position, Artisan Home Entertainment's Terminator 2 Judgment Day has returned to dominate the Ten Best DVDs of All Time voting, also capturing the top spot on the Ten Best DVDs of 2000 in our Annual Consumer Poll, thanks to the elaborate two-platter collector's edition issued by Artisan last summer, which in many ways duplicated the collector's edition LD that dominated our LD polls for most of their existence. About 500 DVD consumers responded to our Fourth Annual DVD Consumer Poll (sorry, there aren't enough LDs being released to include them any more), and over 14% voted Terminator 2 the best DVD ever, with 15% judging it the best DVD of 2000.
1997: Terminator 2 Judgment Day
1998: Tomorrow Never Dies
1999: The Matrix
2000: Terminator 2 Judgment Day
The next closest competitor for the Best DVD of All Time, last year's winner, Warner Home Video's The Matrix, scored less than half as many votes, earning about 7%, followed very closely by Disney's Toy Story The Ultimate Toy Box , which also earned 7%. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's Fight Club and DreamWorks Home Video's Gladiator achieved a little over 4% of the vote, followed by Disney's The Fantasia Anthology with just over 3.5%, Disney's collector's edition of A Bug's Life with just under 2.5%, DreamWorks' Saving Private Ryan with a little over 2%, Fox's The Alien Legacy with just over 1.5%, and Fox's The Abyss set and The Criterion Collection's Brazil , both with a little over 1%. Other DVDs gathering significant votes in descending and alphabetical order include Columbia TriStar Home Video's The Bridge on the River Kwai , Fox's Independence Day , Columbia TriStar's MIB Men in Black , Warner's The Wizard of Oz and Criterion's Armageddon .
Gladiator placed a little more strongly in the votes for the Best DVD of 2000, capturing second place with 9% of the vote, followed by Toy Story with 7%, Fantasia with 6%, the critical darling, Fight Club , with a little over 4.5%, Columbia TriStar's The Patriot with just under 2%, Men in Black with just over 1.5%, New Line Home Video's Magnolia with just under 1.5%, and Universal's Jaws and Fox's The Sound of Music tied with just over 1%. Other titles placing significantly in descending and alphabetical order include The Abyss , The Bridge on the River Kwai , Fox's The Rocky Horror Picture Show , Fox's Titus and Fox's X-Men .
1. The Matrix
2. Gladiator
3. The Fantasia Anthology
4. Terminator 2 Judgment Day
Toy Story The Ultimate Toy Box
6. A Star Is Born
The Wizard of Oz
7. North by Northwest
Singin' in the Rain
Vertigo
We always ask respondents to identify their `favorite' DVD in order to make their assessment of the best DVDs more objective. Here, the bestselling Matrix clearly ruled, amassing a little under 4.5% of the vote, followed by the bestselling Gladiator , with 3%. Fantasia gathered a little over 2%, followed by a tie between Terminator 2 and Toy Story with 2%, Warner's A Star Is Born and Wizard of Oz with a little over 1.5%, and a tie between Warner's North by Northwest , MGM Home Entertainment's Singin' in the Rain , which is now available through Warner, and Universal's Vertigo , all with about 1%.
For the Favorite category, there was a much wider response of titles. Others placing significantly in descending and alphabetical order include Fight Club , Saving Private Ryan , Sound of Music , Alien Legacy , DreamWorks' American Beauty , New Line's Boogie Nights , Warner's Casablanca , Warner's The Wild Bunch , USA Home Entertainment's The Big Lebowski , Bug's Life , Columbia TriStar's Das Boot , Columbia TriStar's The Fifth Element , DreamWorks' Galaxy Quest , Universal's Gods and Monsters , Anchor Bay Home Entertainment's Halloween , MGM's first James Bond Collection , Pioneer Artists' Judy Garland Collection , Fox's The Last of the Mohicans , Men in Black , Miramax Home Entertainment's Shakespeare in Love , Criterion's The Third Man , Paramount Home Video's Titanic and USA's Topsy-Turvy .
1. Terminator 2 Judgment Day
2. The Matrix
Saving Private Ryan
4. Gladiator
5. U-571
6. The Fantasia Anthology
7. Jurassic Park
Toy Story The Ultimate Toy Box
9. Twister
10. Fight Club
73% of the respondents have their DVD home video system hooked up to a stereo surround system, while 68% are hooked up to Dolby Digital and 62% have DTS. The Dolby Digital figure has risen just slightly from last year's 66%, but DTS has more than doubled from last year's 30%, which had more than doubled from 13% the year before. For the best DVD audio track, once again, Terminator 2 was first in the voting, earning 8% of the responses, followed by The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan with just under 7%, Gladiator with 5%, Universal's U-571 with 2.5%, Fantasia with a little over 2%, Universal's Jurassic Park and Toy Story tied at just under 2%, Warner's Twister with 1.5% and Fight Club with just over 1%. Other titles with significant scores in descending and alphabetical order include Paramount's M:i-2 , Universal's remake of The Mummy , Columbia TriStar's Air Force One , Men In Black , Warner's The Perfect Storm , Paramount's Apocalypse Now , Armageddon , Das Boot , Independence Day , Sony Music's James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theater , Magnolia , The Patriot , Fox's Titan A.E. , and MGM's The World Is Not Enough .
1. Terminator 2 Judgment Day
2. Toy Story The Ultimate Toy Box
3. Gladiator
4. The Fantasia Anthology
Fight Club
6. The Matrix
7. The Abyss
8. The Sound of Music
9. The James Bond Collection
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Wizard of Oz
74% of the respondents said that the presence of supplementary materials on a DVD strongly influenced their decision to purchase a title, with 22% saying they weren't interested in the supplements and 4% not responding. Close to 16% of the respondents were most enamored with the supplementary section of Terminator 2 , while 6% liked Toy Story and just under 6% liked Gladiator . Fantasia and Fight Club were tied with 5%, while last year's number one, Matrix , had 2.5% of the vote this time. The Abyss earned 2%, The Sound of Music had 1.5% and the first James Bond Collection , Rocky Horror and Wizard of Oz all tied with 1%. Other popular supplements in descending and alphabetical order include Bug's Life , Jaws , A Star Is Born , MGM's This Is Spinal Tap , Image Entertainment's Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil The Special Edition , Criterion's Carnival of Souls , Universal's 1931 Dracula , Independence Day , Magnolia , and Disney's Tarzan .
DVD commentary tracks are proliferating at a rapid pace. Not only is almost every major release accompanied by one, but some have two or more, and even minor or obscure titles have them. Not only are they entertaining and informative, but the next generation of filmmakers (or should we be saying `video-filmmakers'?) could well be learning their craft from the lessons and insights provided. The best commentary track was judged to be director Ridley Scott's adept reflections and teachings on Gladiator , which garnered 5% of the responses, followed by Fight Club with a little over 3.5%. The very funny track on This Is Spinal Tap got just under 3.5%, followed by Terminator 2 , which had 2.5%, Fantasia with 2%, Alien Legacy featuring Scott again, with 1.5%, New Line's Dark City with 1%, and Das Boot and Universal's Mallrats with just under 1%, followed closely by Ghostbusters . Touchstone Home Video's Pretty Woman and Universal's The Thing also garnered significant votes.
1. Gladiator
2. Fight Club
3. This Is Spinal Tap
4. Terminator 2 Judgment Day
5. The Fantasia Anthology
6. The Alien Legacy
7. Dark City
8. Das Boot
Mallrats
10.Ghostbusters
Just like last year, the three most desired DVD titles or collections are Fox's Star Wars trilogy, Paramount's Indiana Jones trilogy and Paramount's Godfather trilogy, amassing 17%, 16.5% and 13% of the votes respectively. There is no official word on when any of them will be released, though we would tend to be a bit more optimistic about The Godfather films than about the other two. We asked respondents to list four titles they would like to have released on DVD. Ben-Hur , scheduled to be released next month by Warner, was requested by 5% of those filling out the poll. Warner's Around the World in 80 Days , requested by 4.5%, could well appear within the next year or two, while The High and the Mighty , which had 4%, is owned by the John Wayne estate and doesn't seem to be going anywhere at the moment. Tied with High and the Mighty is Columbia TriStar's Lawrence of Arabia , which is due in April, followed by Universal's Back to the Future trilogy with 3.5% and Warner's Babylon 5 TV series with 3%, neither of which we have heard anything about, and rounding out the top ten most requested titles with just under 3% is Warner's Citizen Kane , which ought to show up sometime in the next year or so.
Other titles placing significantly in descending and alphabetical order include Disney's Song of the South (who knows--this is the first time, incidentally, in the seventeen years we've been doing our Poll, that a Disney title did not appear on the Ten Most Wanted list), Fox's Phantom Menace (who knows), El Cid (no word), MGM's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (no word), Warner's King Kong (probably within a year or two), Superman (it might appear within the next year or two), Twin Peaks (no word), Koyaanisqatsi (no word), Columbia TriStar's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (no word), Warner's Dr. Zhivago (probably this spring), Paramount's Grease (no word), The Leopard (no word), Let It Be (no word), Warner's Once upon a Time in America (no word), Porgy and Bess (waiting for the Gershwin Estate to wise up), Columbia TriStar's A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (no word), Warner's The Civil War (no word), The Beatles Anthology (no word), Columbia TriStar's Eraserhead (no word), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (no word), The Adventures of Robin Hood (nothing happening), Fox's Call Me Madam (nothing happening), Fallstaff/Chimes at Midnight (no word), Fox's The Simpsons (no word), Disney's Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs (no word), MGM's Some Like It Hot (no word), Warner's The Devils (nothing happening), Universal's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (probably after the theatrical re-release), Columbia TriStar's Funny Girl (no word), Fox's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (coming this summer), Warner's Meet Me in St. Louis (not happening at this time), Columbia TriStar's The Natural (coming in March), Paramount's Once upon a Time in the West (no word), MGM's Pennies from Heaven (no word), Paramount's Saturday Night Fever (no word) and To Live and Die in L.A. (no word).
A surprising 69% of the respondents say the prefer a menu appear on the screen to prompt them to play the film, with 25% saying they don't like it (we can't stand it, either, but worse is the plain inconsistency in the prompts not only from one label to the next, but even with the labels), and 5% undecided. Nobody likes being forced to watch commercials, however, or at least 98% don't. Most respondents voluntarily cited Disney and Fox as the worst offenders, but let's not forget Warner's PBS Home Video, the `Public Broadcasting' label, which is the worst of all. 98% also have no use for the parental lock function. 49 % are not interested in having both the letterboxed and the non-letterboxed versions of a film on the same release, but 46% are, with 5% undecided. Two years ago, 13% said they saw a lot of digital artifacting on recently released titles, while last year only 11% did. This year, however, it is back up to 13%, with 71% saying they don't see the artifacting and 16% undecided.
We would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to our Poll and would remind respondents that even if your requests didn't place high on the list, we are often in contact with representatives of the DVD industry and readily relay your desires to them.
Go back to the DVDLaser
Home Page
Design and content copyright 2000 UNET 2 Corporation and Douglas Pratt
