Disney and DVD

I was not the earliest adopter to DVD that I knew. I knew people who had DVD players in the late ‘90s, when there weren’t a lot of things released on DVD. Actually, I think two of them also had LaserDisc players. I bought my first DVD player in the summer of 2001, personally, and the first movie I bought was UHF. But already, there were Disney options. They tended to be pricey, but one of the first movies I bought on the format was Candleshoe, my most beloved Disney live action. What I didn’t know was that it had taken Disney a while to make up their mind to do DVD releases.

Now, it’s hard to blame them. Disney actually managed to make the right decision in the Format Wars of the early ‘80s, releasing Dumbo on VHS in 1981. On the other hand, they were at the same time releasing movies on LaserDisc. Finding a list of the releases for it is a challenge, but still. LaserDisc release was never more than a niche format, given I’ve only known a handful of people who owned the players in my life. Furthermore, you younguns in the audience might be unfamiliar with Betamax, tbut believe it or not Disney was still releasing movies on it through Mission Impossible. Gen X-types can tell you all sorts of other formats that came and went in those years.

By 1999, though, it was clear that DVD was the wave of the future. The LaserDisc was heavy and as I recall even more fragile than the DVD, and it was much larger. VHS was more durable still, but we’d all gotten the hang of discs by that point. No one is willing to tell me what the first CD released by the company was, but it was some time in the late ‘80s. A DVD could store more information, meaning it could give you special features—and boy howdy did Disney have special features to spare.

Some sources I’m seeing say that George of the Jungle was Disney’s first DVD release. This does not appear to be true; the DVD release does not seem to have happened until 2000, though the movie itself had come out earlier. It appears, in fact, to have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, released on DVD on September 28 of 1999. Wikipedia says George of the Jungle, but its source for that is a Hollywood Reporter article about how studios were boosting their DVD sales that has nothing to do with anything. I’m going to go with the Disney wiki I use for things like this on the premise that anyone contributing to a Disney wiki really cares about Disney history. Unfortunately, it’s really lousy at citing sources.

I remain, even in these days of streaming, a dyed-in-the-wool physical media owner. Including a lot of my Disney stuff. Well, naturally; Disney+ hasn’t given me The Misadventures of Merlin Jones or The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, though you sure can get The Castaway Cowboy even now. Obviously, these days, there’s BluRay, which is a whole different story to be getting into. (Format Wars II: Digital Boogaloo!) I’m surly that Disney appears to have given up on their exceptional Vault Disney releases, which were Disney’s answer to the Criterion Collection. To be fair, Disney’s never really wanted us to have our Disney properties without regularly paying for them.