By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Eric Dietrich and some of his DVD collection. (Joseph Fuqua II photo) | ZOOM |

Jeffrey Carpenter is hooked on movies.

Three trips a month to the multiplex is only the beginning. At least as often, he buys movies on DVD. In a little more than two years, he has collected more than 100 titles, often drawn by such extras as deleted scenes, alternate endings and on-set interviews.

His addiction requires Carpenter, a 24-year-old psychologist with the Winton Woods School District, and his fiancee to negotiate the gap in their priorities. "If I go to the store and I want to buy three (DVDs), she says 'Why don't you buy two?' "

Carpenter is the very model of a modern media consumer, one of more than 46 million strong who have propelled the DVD industry from pipsqueak to goliath, thanks to a shiny plastic disc that has soared to success faster than any electronic consumer item in history.

DVDs sold about 5.5 million copies in 1997, when digital video disc players first became generally available in the United States. Last year, shipments reached 685 million, nearly $9 billion worth, according to Adams Media Research data cited by the Video Software Dealers Association.

The turning point arrived in March, when DVDs twice outstripped tapes on weekly rental revenue charts, and DVD rentals accounted for just short of 50 percent of all take-home movie business. By the end of the year, VSDA expects DVDs will dominate the market.

DVDs arrived with built-in appeal to the most dedicated film fans: They have high-quality picture and sound, plus extra features that can include games, screensavers, full scripts, story boards, trailers and posters. So popular are DVDs that they're converting casual fans into cinephiles and couch potatoes into regular moviegoers.

Boom at the movies, too

Movie exhibitors earlier this year celebrated record-breaking 2002 revenues and admission figures at their highest point since 1957. While movie ticket sales lagged somewhat early in 2003, home video rentals kept booming, setting a new quarterly record of $2.34 billion.

DUE OUT TUESDAY

Movies are released on DVDs every week. On Friday, it was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Most are released on Tuesday, the same day as CDs. Here's some of what's coming out this week: • Darkwolf • Drumline • Evelyn • Rabbit-Proof Fence • Spirited Away • The Transporter

It is not a coincidence that the movie-watching boom coincides with the DVD explosion, says Ted Sarandos, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix, the 5-year-old online DVD rental firm that recently crossed the 1 million-member mark.

"A DVD is like a film school in a box," he says. Inspired by the background information attached to favorite films, DVD watchers develop wide-ranging - and voracious - appetites. For example, he says, "We carry 13,500 films, and last month 13,000 of them were rented. The taste is very broad."

"It is clear that DVD is creating a ferocious consumer of entertainment."

His conclusion is supported by the Video Store magazine's 2002 home entertainment study, which showed that people who buy and rent DVDs also go to the movies most often.

"What we saw is that people who are heavy entertainment users are heavy users across the gamut - movies, DVD, games, the Internet," says Judith McCourt, vice president and research director for the trade magazine.

Broader access

Eric Dietrich, a writer/producer for WCPO-TV (Channel 9) and a dedicated movie fan, agrees that DVDs feed the appetite. "You want to go see more and more things," he says. "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a good example. My in-laws were really not interested at first, but because we had the DVD and I talked about it so much, they ended up watching it, and saying, 'Hey, this is good.' Your access is broader. You don't feel cheated if you see a bad movie now and then."

One factor that distinguishes the DVD market is consumers' eagerness to buy movies instead of renting. With prices often discounted to less than $15, DVD sales total three times rental revenue. VHS tape sales in 2002, by contrast, added up to $3.4 billion, versus $5.3 billion in rentals.

"Renting is a hassle, having to get it back on time," says Allen Ellis, a graduate of the film program at Wright State University, now professor of library services at Northern Kentucky University. "Time is a premium for most folks, I think. I've even rented things where I haven't had a chance to watch them. I have DVDs I've had for months (that) I haven't watched yet, but when I'm ready, it's there. If I buy something, it's because I'm going to be watching it over and over. The price is negligible. I don't think it's an issue."

Hand-wringing by critics and moviemakers who fear that high-quality home entertainment systems threaten traditional films is misplaced, says Sarandos, who predicts movie audiences will grow under the influence of DVD.

"Every technology has grown the entertainment pie," Sarandos says. "Every technology has been fought by the entertainment industry out of fear. The only thing that video impacted negatively was drive-in movies. ... The box office has grown across the board."

The experience

While DVDs may not take business away from the movies, they can change the way people experience movies even more than VHS tapes, because of the feature-heavy digital technology.

Watching a movie in a theater offers a different sensation from home video, Carpenter says.

"Going to a movie (at a theater) is more of an escape, a release. If it's something really good, I like to see the movie gigantic, right on a nice big screen. You can't get any bigger than movies."

Yasue Kuwahara, director of the popular culture program at Northern Kentucky University's department of communications, says, "Watching at home, you are not influenced by others' reactions, for example. Also, you get to do anything you want, you have control over it. You can stop it, you can go to the kitchen, get something, go back and watch it.

"I have a 5-year-year old son, and he grew up watching videos, mostly with a VCR," she says. "He gets frustrated when we go to movies, or even watch TV, that he cannot rewind it. That's the aspect he likes; he's in charge."

Dietrich notes that an audience adds unique appeal to movie-going.

"In the theater with an audience, I can tell you the precise moment in The Sixth Sense when the secret was revealed. We collectively gasped. Obviously, that is a great moment in a theater," he says.

On the other hand, "At home, you can pick apart things you might have missed, things you didn't know about. ... I like to analyze things. I'm very interested in how they pull these things together. "

The ability that DVDs offer to dig into the nuts and bolts of movie-making is a powerful draw, Ellis said. "One thing that surprises me with all the extras is, I thought that would be for the geeks and buffs. But I wonder if that's not really a strong selling point just for the average viewer. How I would have loved to have that in film school."

What movies don't have

One unexpected consequence of the DVD experinence may erode the role of movies as a shared cultural experience: With a choice of alternate endings and deleted scenes, one person's recollection of a movie seen on DVD can be starkly different from the memory of a theatrical audience.

"They used to throw everything away" after a movie's final cut, Sarandos says. "Now it is more and more prevalent to have a DVD producer on the set. Directors have great license to shoot for several different things. They may shoot a scene they know is not going to work in the movie and say, 'Save that for DVD.'

"Joy Ride had a 28-minute alternative ending that really changed the film. The Beach had a second ending that took it, in my opinion, from being a terrible movie to being a great movie."

The specific information added to DVDs, from special-effects schematics to foreign-language trailers, raises the specter of audiences so familiar with the mechanics of movie-making that they are immune to cinematic illusion.

"Does it make audiences more sophisticated? I'd say probably yes," Dietrich says. "But my hope would be that it also makes Hollywood make better movies. I would hope it forces them to step it up, because people are paying attention to the degree they know something is wrong when they see it."

DVDs in home theaters

Lou Hamilton, owner of Audible Elegance in Montgomery, sells high-end equipment to the expanding ranks of fans installing advanced theater systems in their homes. He sees today's powerful audiovisual electronics bolstering the growth of DVD. "People who are videophiles, they are going for all the extras, they are going for the full immersion of the experience," he said. "Customers want to get every ounce of both the video and audio experience created by the director.

"One of the things a good (home) theater can do is bring to bear a third sense," he says, "which is the sense of feel." An example of that sensation is when watching an onscreen earthquake translates to a rumbling in the chest.

The key to the effect, Hamilton says, is not so much the technology of the home theater system as the home itself. "It's the nature of the construction," he says. Commercial theaters usually are built on concrete, while homes more often stand on wood floors, which more easily transmit vibrations that cause physical sensation.

Falling prices also fuel DVDs' popularity. The average price of a DVD player was $491 in 1997; now it is $118. according to research firm NPD Intelect. Low-end models sell for as little as $60.

The next wave about to break into affordable range will make DVD recording common; in short order, high-definition DVD machines will follow.

Eager fans are ready to pounce on the new features. "If the discretionary income is there, I'll buy it," Dietrich says. "I'm definitely one of those who like to be on the bleeding edge of new technology."

E-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com