Hey guys on the LaserDisc Database! I will ask you guys a question. What was the first DVD you bought? Just letting you know.

Might be nice to introduce yourself first, otherwise you sound a lot like a bot.

Julien

That’s a bot for sure...but this is a good topic. Thanks, bot!

I for sure can’t remember. I can’t even remember the most recent. I have a few hundred DVDs, pretty much all of them were cheap compared to LDs. I don’t even count them. DVD is purely a commodity item for me, like flour or toilet paper or 14 gauge wire. It does the job and that’s pretty much it. It’s a half-baked format.

Mine was a Region 2 PAL version of Mad City and the second one was another Region 2-6 PAL of Madonna The Girlie Show concert. Mad City was stupid. I still own the Madonna disc. My first Region 1 NTSC disc was Blade Runner shortly after. My first box set was the Alien Legacy set. I was blown away with the packaging, interactive menus and ease of access to extras on this box set. The Abyss was the other DVD set that blew me away. They don’t make menus like this anymore.

My first (and only) HDDVD was the big Bladerunner box. I watched it once at a friends house and then before I could get a player they killed the format. It’s probably rotted now. I guess DVD is actually pretty great compared to HDDVD...

I got the Wizard of Oz with my DVD player when I bought but since I got the special DIVX from Circuit City it had a promo for some dvds by mail: Stargate, Lost in Space, Stepmom,Six Days Seven Nights and Lethal Weapon 4 which I didn't keep along the way except for the Wizard of Oz.

Ah Circuit City.. I miss those days. DIVX was interesting. I was so excited about finally being able to visit Fry’s as my local store when I moved to California last year but they closed too. Ugh..

It may have been the Ang Lee Hulk film when I bought my first DVD player.
I think the next would have been the criterion of Solaris, or it could have been third DVD but can't remember anything else.

For me...

First DVD was Reservoir Dogs (US release) that I swapped for... I can't remember.

First purchase was the The Fugitive (PAL French) because the rather new FNAC.fr website made a mistake and listed the DVD at the price of the VHS

I didn't have a DVD Player yet at the time.

Julien

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Operation (Volume) 3
Found it at Kay-Bee Toy Store for $10. We didn't even own a DVD player yet at the time, but I had to have it.

Four Weddings and a Funeral.

It was the 1st edition that was not anamorphic and was two channel Dolby Digital. I recall getting it for free during some kind of event but I can’t remember where. I think I had it for a year before I bought my first player to finally play it.

Tough to remember... It was either the first season of Invader Zim or it was the (then) complete Indiana Jones set. What I do remember for sure is that I bought the (shudder) "full-screen" Indy DVDs because I was 10 or something and didn't know about aspect ratios yet. Deeply regretted my decision a few years later.

First DVD I watched though was Das Boot, which a family friend gave us along with a hand-me-down player. I remember being seriously impressed by the menu, chapter selection, and audio options of this wild new format.

Well the first DVDs I got were the ones that came with the player, Charlie's Angels and What Women Want, I always keep thinking there was a third but I can't remember what it was. Maybe I'm thinking of Brian DePalma's Scarface which was the first DVD I actually bought myself. Or maybe it was that weird UK DVD of Halloween 2 that was cut and pan & scan but also had PCM audio.

Anyway, those were definitely the first ones I got, I just can't remember the order.

I also remember my parents advising against me buying Robocop 2 on VHS before christmas that year, I only found out then it was because they'd gotten me a DVD player that christmas.

Waterworld

I can still remember very clearly what my first DVD was - Basic Instinct ! I bought it in 1999. It was one of those early German PAL DVDs
that only had German audio on them. Picture quality was rather poor but it was nonetheless a huge upgrade over any VHS tape that I had
seen up until that point.

Btw I still have that very disc in my collection and it still plays without any problems at all. I just checked

Pleasantville at a swap meet for $5 in fall of 2000, and Armageddon Criterion Collection at full MSRP later that same day... all about 9 months before I had my first player (PS2), but I did have a DVD drive and hardware decoder in my PC. I was a senior in high school at the time, and my DVD collecting and interest in home theater both took off the next fall when I got to college.

Pretty sure my first DVD was The Life of Brian.

Bought it shortly after I got my first DVD player--a DVL-919 in '99

GUNDAM WING vol.1, back in those heady days of the early-2000's, when BANDAI was initially attempting to push the GUNDAM franchise in the U.S.
and a fairly lowly PANASONIC player (i forget the model)

less than a decade later, i owned several shelves of Anime DVDs alone, and the 1998 PIONEER DV-09 to spin them on.

Dumb & Dumber and Kingpin.

As far as players go, I started with a DVD drive in my PC and a composite out from a Geforce 4 MX. I picked up a junk Apex interlaced player from Circuit City on Black Friday '01 and then a Panasonic RP52 progressive with my first HDTV purchase in Summer '02. I upgraded to a Panasonic RP91 in Spring '04, mostly for zoom for non-anamorphic widescreen discs. My last DVD-only player was a Bravo D1 w/ DVI output and scaling which served me well for several years before being replaced with a Toshiba HD-A2 and Samsung BDP1000.