First released on the 1st of November 1996, the Digital Versatile Disc is 30 years old today, and despite the arrival of the Blu Ray in 2006, DVDs remain in sale and production to this day.

Do you remember the first film you bought/watched on DVD? Do you still buy them, or have you moved on entirely Blu Ray or digital?

30 already... Happy birthday! I haven't bought one ever since the end of the PS2 era. I don't remember what was the last movie I bought (probably a gag gift for someone who didn't even had a player anymore) but I think the last game was either God of War 2 or Gran Turismo 4 back in '09 if I'm not mistaken.

I actually totally forgot when making this thread that DVD also represented multiple generations of gaming; PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360.

In that respect it was great too, offering a lot more storage than CD but the bonus of movie playback capability, where supported.

How time flies.

I was pretty late jumping on the DVD train (2006), but early jumping on the Blu-ray train (2007).

My first DVD was Tex Murphy Overseer, bought a DVD-ROM drive with that as my first DVD



The drive was 800 Guilders at the time, about $300.

I didn't really start buying DVD movies until a couple years later as I was collecting LaserDiscs at the time and early DVDs were worse quality than LaserDisc. I rented them at first and they were literally recorded VHS versions with subtitles baked in... But at least didn't need to rewind lol.

My newest DVD just arrived today

Not available on Blu-ray. The 2003 concert got a Blu-ray release (it's awesome) but not the 2004 one. Still got a uninterrupted 3 hour 5.1 mix, that's the important part.

The first thing I noticed when playing the 2003 blu-ray was how much more depth and clarity there is in the sound compared to streaming. I've heard the music many times, yet first time on blu-ray felt like a new experience. CD and streaming can't touch a good 5.1 mix, streaming messes up the high frequencies and CD doesn't have the depth of 5.1

Heh, just realized DVD released in 1996, and this is my 1996th thread on VGChartz

I don't think of them as really being a thing until around the year 2000. In 1996, none of the video stores had them to rent, and they weren't for sale anywhere in my neck of the woods and wouldn't be for years. But man, what a short-lived piece of media. Things launch, and in less than ten years, they're getting replaced. VHS went for two decades before that happened (Laser Discs never caught on). I still love them, and have all the ones I original purchased.

I got my first DVD shortly after I got my first VD.
Showgirls, both times.

I'm almost entirely moved on to BD, UHD BD, and digital. New and new to me DVDs only make sense for certain bonus features or scenes not on other formats. Or if the movie is on DVD but not later formats and has no Digital HD or higher.
I first found about DVD around Christmas 2000. A family member got a PS2 and some DVDs. That was when DVD started to become mainstream in the US and other countries. DVD still took a few more years to surpass VHS in market share.
My household and another family member household got DVD players in Christmas 2002. I know in my particular household we got Stuart Little 2 and maybe one or two other movies.
DVD has more official feature films and likely releases in general than VHS by a large margin. A lot of catalog titles got DVD releases and VHS releases more or less died completely in almost every country around 2007-2008. In the US, I know they were mostly dead from 2006 onward.
2003 onward we really started using VHS a lot less with titles like The Lion King and Finding Nemo on DVD.

I mean 30 years and counting isn't that short-lived; it may have only gotten 10 years before Blu Ray arrived, but DVD continued long after that, it's still going today 20 years after its "replacement".