I confess to having a penchant for purchasing movies that borders on an addiction. While some people collect first edition leather bound classics by Dickens or Dumas and others hunt down $3 500 antique Chinese snuff bottles, I collect movies, a considerably cheaper indulgence if cost was a concern and unlike Faberge eggs they are much easier to come by. I feed my habit from all sources, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Blockbuster, the Virgin Megastore and the now defunct Tower Records not to mention all the ones I get from business associates. Every week like clockwork FedEx or UPS leave packages on my doorstep with yet another movie treasure. Since I have such a steady stream of incoming purchases I never really know what to expect when I tear open the packages. It's like getting a birthday present every other day, one which I add to all the others that are piled up in my screening room. While it may not be the library of Alexandria, it pays homage to an art form that spans from old classics to modern blockbusters, film noir to French new wave and corny TV shows. But something is shaking the foundations of my archive. Technological advancements in the form of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD and the maturing of the format have conspired to render my library of several thousand lovingly catalogued, almost pristine DVDs as obsolete as an 8 track to an iPod.

In order for you to fathom the extent that this threat poses to my collection, one I have invested years in compiling, you need to go back a bit and remember how significantly a flat plastic disk changed the way we enjoy and archive our media. In the late 80's audio cassettes were usurped by CD's and the following decade that reliable old standard, the video cassette was in turn overtaken by the DVD. Clunky and mechanical magnetic tape just could not compete with the digital dance of ones and zeros on the shiny metallic surface. The superior audio and video quality of the DVD was so apparent that once you had watched one, the scratches, jumps and graininess of your VHS tapes was suddenly impossible to ignore. Unlike the video cassette recorder which took several years to become affordable enough to catch on, DVD players tore an unstoppable swath through the home video market to reach 90% of the population in 10 years as opposed to the 25 years it took VHS to achieve the same penetration. Average player prices dropped steadily until you could purchase a basic one for about $40 putting them well within reach of the average household.

To Hollywood studios which had been faced with stagnation of the home video market it was a desperately needed lifesaver. DVDs meant that the studios could not only refresh the market by issuing their new movies out on disk but they could also rerelease their entire catalogues in this new format and rake in a windfall of revenue for almost nothing. An added bonus was that at the time the format was difficult and costly to pirate unlike VHS tapes so they quickly jumped on board and began to churn titles out. DVDs were cheaper for studios to produce. New DVDs retail for an average of about $20 but cost only $2 to press and package, a gigantic profit margin. Rental giant Blockbuster said good bye to 'please rewind' by phasing out a quarter of the VHS inventory in its 7,800 stores by 2001 at a cost of $450 million.

Home entertainment became a bigger cash cow for Hollywood than the box office. As a result theatrical releases were almost being reduced to the role of teaser or marketing campaign for the huge eventual rollout of the movie on DVD. Even if a movie tanked in theatres the investment could always be rescued on DVD. The home video market racked up $18 billion in sales in 2005 and has grown annually at a pace of 66% to $24 billion since the introduction of the DVD in 1997. Movies were being rushed from theater onto disk at such an alarming rate that the practice was eventually blamed for causing a drop in theater attendance that had reached a twenty year, all time low. In 1998 the average time it took for a movie to get from big screen to disk was about 7 months; by 2006 it was 4 months. And the worse a movie performed at the box office the faster you could buy or rent it on DVD, so eager were studios to recoup their investment. 'Miss Congeniality 2, Armed and Fabulous' which was underwhelming in theaters took less than 3 months (88 days) to reach the shelves and I am ashamed to admit, I own a copy of that too. I never claimed that I only bought masterpieces.

Then Pixar's 'The Incredibles' and DreamWorks 'Shrek 2' happened, sending shivers through the complacent industry. Both movies (huge successes at the box office) succumbed to lower than expected DVD sales and this catastrophe caused a subsequent drop in Pixar and DreamWorks shares since both studios had projected big sales figures for their respective animated titles. The speed at which new DVD movies were being released had led in an overabundance of choices. Manufacturers just did not have room to stock them all; resulting in thousands of unsold DVDs being shipped back to make room for the new ones being released every Tuesday. The format had reached a plateau, it was the VHS story all over again and soon retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City were reporting lower than anticipated sales numbers. In addition the former overachieving format was being faced with competition from the internet, improved TV shows and the growing popularity of TiVo. Hollywood tried to staunch the bleeding of vital home video revenue by introducing extra features on two and three disks, in special 'platinum' or 'collectors' editions but the high cost of these fancy box titles (average $29) meant it was not a viable long term solution. Enter the high-definition DVDs.

The 'my format is better than yours' war between the Toshiba developed HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray competitor has retarded the rate of consumer acceptance of the newer high density mediums. Despite their improved picture and audio quality buyers are still waiting around to see which one becomes the dominant format before they shell out their hard earned cash for a player that retails for $500 and up or invest in a collection of the disks themselves. Last years sales of high-definition DVDs were disappointing (only $29 million) but 2007 is expected to be a bumper year with projections as high as $749 million for both formats according to a report on the home video market. The slowly dropping cost for players has contributed to the upsurge as well as the growing availability of HD content from broadcasters and cable networks. Most cable packages now include some HD channels and this is helping to introduce consumers to high-definition. As they become cheaper, high-definition DVDs will ultimately be responsible for a bigger chunk of annual DVD sales figures. Currently these new improved formats make up a mere 3.5% of the total home video purchases and rentals this year but are expected to jump to 33% in 2010 and 64.8% in 2013. However they will have to face competition from other outlets like cable, satellite and the internet which are also projected to become a $5.2 billion market.

This year the world's biggest video rental company announced that it was going to exclusively carry Blu-Ray starting with 170 new titles at 1 700 Blockbusters. Since last year Blockbuster had been offering movies in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray at 250 of its stores. It was not playing favorites at the time but as soon as it discovered that Blu-Ray was more popular than HD-DVD, outselling it by as much as 70% it put its eggs in the appropriate basket. This was a huge coup for Sony and a blow to Toshiba's baby the HD-DVD. Video rental outfits make up a big part of the home movie market especially in the nascent days of a new format when disks are too expensive to be impulse purchases and consumers are still getting to know the format. Though Toshiba's technology was the first to reach the consumer market in early 2006, Sony took a smarter path and concentrated on courting the content producers themselves, movie studios. Sony which owned a studio itself understood what it meant to be both medium and message and this made it easier to corral Fox, Disney, MGM and Lions Gate into their camp. Universal is HD-DVD's only exclusive studio supporter while Warner Bros and Paramount are still playing both sides, for now at least. Sony's projected sales for its Blue-Ray players has gone up from 100 000 units to 600 000 while conversely Toshiba has lowered its estimates by 44.4% to 1 million players.

Now barely a decade after the format was introduced, with DVDs accounting for the majority of titles you will find in any rental or retail outlet it looks like they are already being fast tracked out. Blame piracy, Hollywood or technology, whatever the reason we now have HD-DVD and Blu-Ray competing to become the new standard and a full on format war is raging with consumers being stuck in the middle. I can be called an early adopter since I am usually quick to pick up on new gadgets, getting the latest phone or computer before the rest of the country even knows it exists. But this is one time I find myself vacillating. It is not just that I am hedging my bets waiting to see which format ultimately comes out on top, there is also the fact that it took me so darned long to put together what I must say is an pretty impressive catalogue of regular old DVD movies. I have 'Arthur' with Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli and 'Casablanca' with Bogart and Bergman and that 1978 masterpiece 'Superman' and thousands of others. The thought of having to start over is not exactly thrilling. I may not watch them all but sourcing and compiling them gave me the same pleasure it would a collector of Venetian glass. Now imagine said collector was told that all his eighteenth century Murano had just been smashed and he had to start over. Ok maybe I am stretching the comparison a little but you get the general idea.

It is certain that DVDs (including my collection) will eventually bow down to either Blue-Ray or HD-DVD but these are not the only pretenders to the throne; other formats and vendors are biding their time itching to get their hands on a part of what is a highly lucrative market. But more about that in the next installment of this saga, I just got 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer'.