DVDs For Those Who Demand The Best

As you may have noticed, many DVD’s now come loaded with so many “extras” that the extras sometimes last as long as the movie itself! In order to accommodate all of this additional material, some compromises often have to be made in audio and video quality. As good as DVDs now look (thanks to great advances in quality control and mastering expertise) there is now an even better “Super DVD”. These new discs do not contain all of the extras that, frankly, many people (myself included) do not even care to watch. A lot of people do like them, but I really don’t care about previews of the movie I just finished watching or the comments of the star’s limo driver. I buy DVDs to watch the movie. There are a lot of people who bought HDTV sets and want to enjoy the best that DVD has to offer. To answer this demand (while we all wait for true HD-DVDs…but that’s another story) Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment (a division of Sony) recently launched "The Superbit Collection." These Superbit titles utilize a special high “bit rate” digital encoding process, which optimizes video and audio quality and offers a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Best of all, they are fully compatible with all DVD players.

When the Superbit project was announced, Benjamin S. Feingold, President of Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment told us: "The Superbit Collection will set a new benchmark in audio and video quality for the DVD format. This new process was developed by an outstanding group of engineers and technicians at the Sony Digital Studios and was designed to give consumers a choice between the highest quality audio and video transfer at a competitive price versus our standard, rich package of value added features." The ‘value added features’ that Mr. Feingold refers to are simply the ‘extras’ I mentioned above.

By reallocating space on the disc normally used for the extras, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the existing DVD video format. The result is picture quality that provides outstanding detail which complements the performance of the latest progressive DVD video players and HDTV sets.

The first slate of Superbit titles already in stores includes Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, along with Johnny Mnemonic, The Fifth Element, Air Force One, Desperado, Dracula, and Panic Room (among others). These titles have been carefully produced by the Sony Pictures Digital Studios best video, sound and mastering engineers.



The studio claims that “Standard DVDs are like fully loaded luxury automobiles. In contrast, Superbit DVDs are like Formula One racecars ­ built for pure performance. We believe that DVD enthusiasts will be thrilled with this exciting new concept.”

You can usually find Superbit DVDs in video stores because they have unique silver packaging that is fairly easy to spot. The next time you want to buy a DVD and really don’t care for all the “extras”, I would check to see if there is a Superbit version available. Try one and I don’t think you will be disappointed. www.superbitdvd.com