Thanks to everyone who requested DVDs through the site or otherwise — it actually made the selection process much easier! A last minute addition was Seven Years In Tibet as I believe a group viewing is in order to commemorate the death of Heinrich Harrer yesterday. The Austrian mountaineer was the first to scale the north face of Eiger in Switzerland, but is now more famous for events after the Second World War began. Captured by the British as a Nazi, he escaped and eventually ended up in Tibet where he remained (as you may have guessed) for seven years, becoming a close friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama. The film is based largely upon his autobiographical book of the same name, documenting his time there. He remained a lifelong friend of the exiled Dalai Lama. If you’re interested in watching too, just let me know.
Sony are expected to release a Blu-ray drive early this year and sparked off more interest by announcing several movie titles for the format at CES. They are no doubt hoping that PS3 sales will also increase adoption of Blu-ray as the console naturally features its maker’s format. A similar-looking list is also available for announced HD-DVD movies, the opposing format. They have won over Microsoft who revealed at CES an HD-DVD drive would be made available for the Xbox 360. I’m interested to hear which list you find more appealing. Of course, my advice is to avoid them both until a clear winner emerges or dual-format players are readily available. To be perfectly honest, until you have a high definition TV and a decent surround sound speaker system the upgrade is as virtually worthless anyway. I should perhaps add as a caveat that my reluctance is somewhat strengthened by a desire not to replace my entire DVD collection just yet. And while it’s lovely to see the technology rolling forward, something tells me I’m not alone in that sentiment.
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