olivetalks

When DVDs first appeared on the market, I remember how my brother and I used to discuss our views on the new format. Our conclusion was that we would stick to VHS because as far as we understood, DVDs were going to “corrupt” the films the directors intended to deliver. DVDs promised the possibility of changing languages, subtitles, direct access to scenes, different viewing angles, extras, alternative endings…

Quite a few years later, we have learnt that from the director’s original idea to the final product that arrives to the cinemas, there are modifications made by actors, editors, producers,… and as far as the viewer goes, the possibility of skipping scenes you don’t like of an otherwise brilliant film, is just great. And being able to watch the film in different languages and have subtitles or not, at will, irreplaceable. And between my siblings and I, we must own a thousand DVDs… and have thrown most of our VHS tapes.

But until today, I had not once seen the option of viewing a scene from different angles! And in spite of my earlier complains, my reaction has been: “… wow, cool!” They have it in the first song of the DVD La Oreja de Van Gogh Concierto 2003 and a few others during the concert. You can see the songs performed from 4 different cameras/views. Quite a cool option for a concert when sometimes they choose to show the audience, for example, and you would prefer just to look at the group.

So now they have Blu-Ray and HD DVD… and I feel again what a waste, DVDs are already brilliant… aren’t they? But that’s as far as I will decide before actually playing with some. And I will deffinitely wait till one of the formats wins before choosing a format myself. And for the time being I will continue buying DVDs… they’ve become so cheap!!