Obsolete?
Dear Gary:
First let me say I am a loyal reader of your fine magazine. I was fortunate enough to even win the trivia contest!
Upon reading the review of the re-release of the original Batman films as the Batman Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997, I saw that there were DTS audio tracks included on these discs. My son commented that this was the first time he had ever noticed a Warner Home Video title that included a DTS track. I was wondering if you could confirm this or are there others?
Stacy D. Lehman
Managing Editor Danny Richelieu Comments:
There actually have been other DTS-encoded widescreen DVD releases by Warner in the past—14 different titles to be precise. True, that is only about two percent of Warner's total widescreen DVD library, but it is still a large ratio when compared to some of the other studios out there. Paramount, for example, has only released nine widescreen DVDs with DTS encodings (seven DTS 5.1 and two DTS-ES 6.1) to date, or about one percent of their library, and MGM has only released four widescreen DVDs with DTS encodings, accounting for just under 0.4 percent of their widescreen DVD library. As a side note, Image Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment pace the pack of major studios with 12 and 11 percent, respectively, of their widescreen releases containing DTS encodings, while Anchor Bay follows closely behind with 10 percent (almost half of which are DTS-ES). So, while your son might be correct in that it is the first time he has ever noticed a Warner Home Video title that included DTS (which would mean he didn't notice the DTS tracks on Twister and American Outlaws, two DVDs that have received WSR's Reference Quality seal of approval), the new Batman Anthology DVDs are not the first releases by the studio to include DTS encodings.
Do you have other questions that only the most avid DVD fan would ever think to ask? Go to or Web site, www.WidescreenReview.com, and search our online widescreen DVD movie database. With more than 120 search fields, and information on over 9,000 widescreen DVDs, it is the most comprehensive widescreen DVD movie database on the Internet.
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