RIP DVD Journal

The decade-old DVD Journal has announced that it's pressing the stop button on its operation. As site postings had slowed to a crawl in recent months I figured this was in the works, but I'll miss one of my favorite Monday morning stops. A lot of DVD review sites--and there are a lot of DVD review sites out there since the format emerged in 1997--are fannish and uninteresting, but The DVD Journal was consistently well-written by a group of West Coast film and TV buffs, who knew how to mix the techs-and-specs bric-a-brac with nuanced and thoughtful opinion. I trust their bylines will reemerge elsewhere.

The site's still up there, though, for browsing. While I'm on the subject, a shout-out to some of my other favorite DVD stops: the insanely detailed DVD Beaver, the wide-ranging DVD Talk, and, for hanging out, the Home Theater Forum.

It's said that DVD sales are slowing, and I would agree that the best way to approach the ludicrous format war in the high-definition niche of the market is to simply sit it out. But you wouldn't know it from my living-room cabinets, whose standard-format contents I'm having to rearrange as the shelves reach the boiling point with discs. If only it were all available over the net, in easy-to-file pixel rather than space-consuming hard disk form. I think, though, that the gain in convenience would be mitigated by the loss of community as everyone retreats to their computers to pick up the latest download.