WIN A SONY DVD PLAYER!!!
Ozemail just send around their email for the latest competitions, and one of them is from Chaos Music who are giving away some DVDs and a Sony DVD-ROM PLYER..Click HERE for full details (the competition also lists this site as a link for DVD info...very groovy indeed..although they spelt the site name wrong...no-one EVER get's it write...jeez)

OVER 50 DVDs for Region 4 this MAY
So what's your credit card limit???.....hope it's high.....here's a rundown of what to expect for DVD release this May.....it's gonna be HUGE for Region 4.

Buena Vista ( 9 )
Con Air, Crimson Tide, Dead Poet's Society, Face/Off, From Dusk Til Dawn,
Good Morning Vietnam, Phenomenon, Ransom, 6 Days 7 Nights

CEL Music ( 21 )
Subway, Mr Johnson, Five Corners, Red Sun, Night of the Living Dead,
Charade, Invaders from Mars (original), The Terror
Royal Weddings, Young Duke (3 John Wayne movies pack), McLintock
Where the Red Fern Grows part 1 & 2, Baker's Hawk,
Hercules & Young Pocohontas(animated double pack),
Anastasia & Snow White (animated double pack),
Secret of Hunchback of Notre dame (plus a bonus CD-ROM)

DVD Australia
(updated soon)

CTS( 4 )
The Big Hit, The Cable Guy, Nowhere to Run, Swept from the Sea

Polygram ( 10 )
Sleepers, Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie, Trainspotting, Andrea Bocelli,
Bryan Adams Unplugged, Three Tenors, Spiceworld, Lord of the Dance,
Cats, The Game, Bean - Amazing Adventures of, Bean - Exciting Escapades

Roadshow (4..not Confirmed)
Blade, Boogie Nights, Rounders, Halloween:H20

Warner ( 8 )
Copycat, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Eraser,
Lethal Weapon 2, 3 & 4, A Perfect Murder

Click HERE for a look-see at Blade
Click HERE for a look-see at Boogie Nights

If you can read the back of the BLADE DVD Slick you will notice the Inclusion of "Deleted Scenes & the Alternate Ending"..very groovy

PS Warner have released CITY of ANGELS nearly 2 weeks early!!!!!!

Buena Vista May Releases
Warner May Rleases

DVDown Under now accepts DIRECT DEBITING
Hate having to send cash/Cheque or Money Order via post and then having to wait those few extra days to get your DVD Case Covers and what not...well Fear-Not, for you can now DIRECT DEBIT us your payment.....goto DVD STATION for more details 

Columbia Tristar's Australian DVD web site
I've been meaning to go to the columbia tri-star films for a while (i keep seeing the adverts on telly for it)....and i was quite suprised to find a DVD page on it....

Click HERE to suss it out.....it's even got this months DVD releases...so it's obvously kept up-to-date....kudos to CTS for this....

PS it's CEL Music that are releasing DVDs NOT CEL Entertainment....who have apparently received a truck load of calls over this (some not too pleasant I hear :-(

And then there were More
The DVD market must be growing in OZ as in the next few days there will be a new DVD on-line reseller to surface......I've had the chance to check the site out recently, and it looks pretty sexy..will let you know the URL in a few days when they offically go online.

Another 16:9 Transfer from the Disney Chain...
Just received word that Roadshow's Pulp Fiction was taken from a True 16:9 Transfer.......while it wasn't the best looking transfer, i thought it looked pretty good for a modest budget movie none-the-less....With Disney having other International Distributors release their product on DVD, i guess there is little to no strong-hold over these distributors so releasing these DVDS in there true Anamorphic Glory is an option....WOOHOO.......as a result of this sort of thing....it seems a few people have woken up to this fact and are importing these DVDs for themselves rather than the same non 16:9 DVD released elsewhere...

Still nothing offical from FOX
Seeing as the head honcho from Fox Was in town yesterday and thought today would be a good day to call up and see if that three letter word was mention......sorry to report that there is STILL NO WORD from TCF Australia on the DVD front....Considering that the Official Announcement from Warner about the Buena Vista Deal was only a short time ago and their First DVD will be released in May, it's probably not too much to get worried about as there's still FIVE MONTH to go til the World Wide September release of Titanic, and the region 4 DVD would most likely be taken from the same worldwide PAL transfer.....we can only hope.....as well as it being anamorphic

FOX denying us DVD on a TITANIC proportion
(Sorry, couldn't resist the above headline..promise it won't happen again :-))

So will we be getting Titanic on DVD this September, or won't we???......well, if you asked Twentieth Century fox in both Brisbane and Sydney today, then the answer is NO........As far as they willing to say, TCF Australia have no plans to release any DVDs for some time yet.....on several occasions i was told that around July/August, or Later this year we would be getting FOX DVDs, but after mentioning the international press release to them both today, (which they were not even aware of..althought the fax of the press release I sent them should enlighten them a little :-) it is not happening for OZ at this stage......personally I think this will not be the case as i hear around the traps that that Fox's Int'l president is coming to Oz in a few days time to discuss a few things..hmmm wonder what it may DVD ...err i mean "be")....no, while this was certainly a pisser to the DVD boost we would really like to see in Oz i think it's just a bit of smoke being blown up our arses
"til the ship sets sail".... (say that line a few times why don't you)

While I'm at it....with the HUGE succes from MATRIX so far (which looks to be a killer region 4 DVD for Chrissy hopefully), i heard another rumour that Village are already looking into making us a Matrix 2......and i haven't even seen the first one yet....jeez

More Good DVD news from Roadshow
As I mentioned yesterday about VRS releasing uncut DVDs, it seems that we are getting the uncut version of Blade also (this was the same for our Theatrical release too)........BTW if you are after uncensored PAL versions of Tomorrow Never Dies and Goldeneye, you may want to look into the German releases as they used a different master to the UK ones.....(pity we don't get those masters for release here)

CEL Music bring DVDs to OZ
Starting in Early May 1999, we can expect no less than 21 titles from CEL Music......titles range from The Terror (jack nicholson & boris Karloff) to the animated Snow White (no-no it's not the disney one:-)........some of the discs are actually double.....even TRIPLE features..and ALL are sold for a disgustingly cheap $19.95......this price is EVEN CHEAPER than the USA prices....for more details on CEL Music DVDs click HERE

The Roadshow Report!!!

Roadshow to add MORE Extras???
A little birdy told me that We will soon see even more extras on Roadshow DVDs.....no specifics were given, but needless to say that it seems they'll be able to include some/all the extras found on the USA releases.....which i hear will appear soon

SCREAM 2 info
Mike D has already reviewed Scream 2 and was quite please with it's quality.....he was of the impresion that Roadshow had used a 16:9 Transfer for this DVD rather than taking a matted widescreen version and interpolating it to the 16:9 format......(Disney owned Studios are only allowed to release matted Widescreen (or non 16:9 DVDs) in the USA at present....after some digging around i was able to CONFIRM that Roadshow did in fact use a TRUE 16:9 transfer for Scream 2....KUDOS to them...PLUS it includes a Dolby Digital 5.1 track as the DEFUALT track and a MPEG2.0 track for Stereo surround....

Roadshow DVD site updated....FINALLY
yes it's true...after many, many months,  their DVD site hase been given a long deserved update.....you will find info on some upcoming DVDs too..

Roadshow releasing DVDs UNCUT
Unlike some of the USA releases, Roadsow are in some instances able to release the uncut version of a movie on DVD........Mirimax's  54 and New Line's Wag the Dog, will be released in OZ in their original UNCUT versions......it's apparently got a lot to do with the source (tape format) in which Roadshow gets these movies on....with Roadshow using Digital Betacam (for eg) it means the are often able to get new line titles with the extra footage..as was the case with Austin Powers, and the upcoming Wag the Dog...very groovy indeed

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Region 4 Armegeddon Delayed
Received word today that Armegeddon has been pushed back to a JUNE release....

Updates, Updates and more updates
After quite a bit of phoning around yeserday i have CONFIRMED details on Upcomng DVD releases from Buena Vista (who will be releasing well over 10 DVDs per month til Nov 99), Columbia and Universal
The other DVD distributor Release pages can be access via the Studio Releases Index

MELBOURNE Home Entertainment Show 1999
Being in Melboune this past week i took the opportunity to take a few hours off and go to Jeff's Shed where they are housing the Home Entertainment Show for 1999 (which started the morning of my flight back to Brissy).  Seeing as it was the first day of the show, some of the stalls were still settting up, but generally speaking everything was in place.  Every where you walked stalls were demo-ing The Fifth Element (which i beleive was the region 1 version shame on them)....Toshiba had their RTPV all over the place, and The Mega Mart Even had their 55" 16:9 model on Demo....although the dickheads were playing Tomorrow never dies (a 16:9 DVD) in a NON 16:9 mode so everyone was all squished.....I also got the chace to check out the Heavily publisised Australian designed dvd player, the START DS2000VN, which is region selectable via the remote.....it's a pretty basic machine with only a few more extras than you'll find on the sammy dvd905...(the STARTS OSD tells you more info about the audio you are listening to).....one MAJOR screwup with this player is that for the Video output type you can select from S-Video and RGB from the main menu...however if you take a look around the back, you will NOT find any sort of RGB output......ummm yeah well.....(the remote control really sucks too, but that's just a personal thing).....Panasonic/Technics has a pretty good stand going...they had the new panasonic 560MU dvd player running it's component outs into a 33 inch Tv..(looked very clean and smooth)...Digital Imports had a great stand with pretty much EVERY DVD released in Australia for Sale...i was quite shocked to see them selling Amaray cases for a ridiculously high $4.00 each (more than TWICE what we sell them for here...plug plug:-)....the best stand was the Amber Technolgy section who had a bloody HUGE 3 metre widecreen Projection setup with 2 rows of 4 seats and the sony S7700 DVD player...very nice...

Overall, there was quite a bit of gear on display, but nothing that really ticked my fancy i'm afraid....we got in at 11:15 and were out of there by 12:30........One section you may want to look out for as it is really easy to miss, is the Carlton Audio section which is UPSTAIRS and away from the main HT area...

I'm glad i got to see it, but didn't find it anything to really rave about

New SONY DVD Players coming in June 1999
I was able to confirm the prices of these 2 machines at the Melbourne Home Entertainment Show...unfortunatley They did'nt have either model on Display, but rather the DVP-S715, and the ever-so-sexy S7700.
Sony Australia are to release 2 new players to the OZ market in June 1999.click HERE for more details