How this Site Works
We have our own definition of the terms "HDVD." Learn more about "HDVD" thru the link on the navigation bar to the left.
Our Index of Titles/Alphalist, is the most valuable feature of this website. Go there first to get an overview of the hundreds of works now available. Each item in the list has key info and a link to a detailed story. For example, from the Alphalist, you can see that we now have Romeo and Juliet as a play (Globe, no less), a ballet, an opera, and a gang war movie.
Each story about a title goes thru several stages. First, we list the title on the Titles/Alphalist. We next set up a skeleton news story with whatever information we can glean (sometimes incorrectly) about the title at that time. We then order the title from a vendor paying the same price as any other customer. When we get the disc, we read the package and keep case booklet and edit the facts in our story for completeness and accuracy. Next comes the more subjective aspect of the story. We view each title at least two times and try to give it a grade after discussing the good and weak aspects of the title with confreres. Finally, we try to write a mini-review for each title. Writing the reviews takes more time that you might expect. We are often way behind on this. Sometimes a story will have a link to other material like a major review or article that we have published on the website.
We have a good search tool. For example, our search will tell you how many HDVDs feature Anna Nebrebko with a link to our story on each. But there is one weakness now in our search. It doesn't do a good job searching for words with accent marks used in languages other than English.
You can view all the titles in a specific category. For instance, if you are only interested in ballet, you can you view the Ballet section under "Titles by Category." Some titles get counted in several categories.
You can view all the titles published by a single publisher. (Under "Titles by Publisher"). This function of the site also reveals that a lot of folks are now tipping their toes in the HDVD tub.
This site is not a collection of links to other stuff. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive guide to fine-arts HDVDs right here. We do link to amazon to make it easy for you to support the website by buying titles from amazon.
We are not just trying to report on what's out there. We hope, thru constructive criticism, to influence the standards followed by the industry for the production of fine-arts titles. High quality in every aspect of producing videos is more important to us than to a movie buff or sports fan. For example, as good as the lossless sound now is on most of our HDVDs, we are still not satisfied. We believe the industry should also reveal in product descriptions how the sound recordings were originally made and that the industry should move promptly to recording with 96 kHz/24 bit technology. We have a number of recording made this way from the Japanese and AIX, and we can hear and appreciate the difference.
As you can tell from reading about the definition of "HDVD," we expect downloading to one day be important to us. But now you will not see any download on the Alphalist. At the moment we know of no title of interest to us that is available with video and sound quality comparable to the Blu-ray disc. If we are wrong about this, please help enlighten us!
To help us improve the site, sign up as confrere. Then you can:
- Post comments to stories
- Use forums
- Help us with grading titles
- Contribute reviews and articles
We are seeking confreres with a serious interest in fine-art HDVDs. We expect to stay in touch with our confreres by email. Registration now is free. Beginning April 1, 2012, we will ask each confrere to contribute one mini-review or $24 each year.
This page last updated January 11, 2011