CULTUREVULTURE.COM
A CultureVulture ("CV") feasts in his home theater
on fine-art titles that are obtained by him via HDVD.
What Is HDVD?
The term HDVD stands for three related types of video form factors:
High Definition Video Disc
High Definition Video Download
High Definition Video Device
To learn more about HDVD, click
here . . .
New . . .
since May 25:
Under "What's Available Now?," we have a two-part description of each
title that can be ordered or pre-ordered. The first part gives basic facts
about the title. The second part, in italics, is a "thumbnail" or
subjective description with more information to help you
decide if you would like the title. CV1 recently became the first member
(other than CV0) to contribute a thumbnail, which you can read under
Tamerlano (Opus Arte). Thanks again, CV1! You can write a
thumbnail about any title. When you read about the titles, you can see
we still need thumbnails for quite a few. Member have already offered
to do thumbnails for Semele, Luisa Fernanda, Die Entführung, Don
Giovanni, and Don Pasquale. We would welcome a thumbnail from you as
well. [June 1]
Opus Arte is now delivering Hansel and Gretel, Le nozze di Figaro,
and La Gazzetta in England. [June 1]
Opus Arte is now taking pre-orders in England on Cosi fan tutte
for release July 1. [June 1]
TDK released its Richard Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos, and it is
being delivered by Presto in England. It's still due out in the U.S.
on June 30. [June 1]
Arthaus released its Caravaggio and its Die Walküre,
and they are being delivered by Presto in England. These titles are
still due out in the U.S. on June 30. [June 1]
Amazon.com in the U.S. is now filling orders for the Opus Arte Don
Giovanni, Gizelle, and Lohengrin; the DG La Traviata,
the Arthaus Das Rheingold, and the TDK La finta giardiniera. [May 26]
What CVs Want
CVs want titles that come out in HDVD to be played in their home
theaters. Now CVs can have at home a visual presentation
of a quality comparable to high-fidelity sound. We now are entering
into the golden age of home theater.
CVs are interested only in fine-art titles. The masses will devour
their movies, old TV shows, and worse. But when the HDVD factories
are not busy making Terminator titles, they will find time to make
records of operas, ballet, plays, classical music, and art documentaries.
There's going to be pretty fat pickings, even for us CVs!
Our Mission Statement
Here, CVs learn about the fabulous new fine-art titles available on all
forms of HDVD. They they save money on their expensive passion by flocking
together to buy HDVD titles at the best prices and to loan, barter, buy,
and sell used titles until gorged.
What's Available Now?
We now count 84 fine-art HDVD titles you can buy or pre-order!
For our alphabetical list of titles,
click here . . .
Find out a lot more about these titles and what the
publishers are doing by clicking on
What's
Available Now?. . .
What's Coming?
At least some 10 additional new titles are probably coming
out in 2009. Get more information by clicking
here . . .
Read Reviews About:
Where's the Best Place on the Internet to Buy High Definition
Video Discs?
We will help you find the best places on the Internet to buy HDVD
products that provide at least
a 720p picture with at least 5.0 high fidelity sound. At the moment,
it appears that only discs offer this level of quality. We hope to help
you locate discs produced anywhere no matter where you live. We now know
something about this of interest to folks in Europe and the U.S. We have
little insight as to the resources available to consumers in
South America, the East, India, or in Africa. Please let us know
if you have information to share about this.
In Europe, the best resource may be MTD Mail Order at
www.mdt.co.uk. MDT specializes in
classical music. They recognize Blu-ray as an independent
product category (see tab at the top of their website),
which makes it easy to find what we are interested in.
They seem to be agile and get titles up for sale or
preorder fast. Finally, they are set up, it appears, to
deliver all over the world. Another excellent vendor is Presto Classical
at www.prestoclassical
.co.uk. They specialize in classical titles and have an extremely
well-organized and beautiful website with a special link for the
Blu-ray titles.
Opus Arte at www.opusarte.com,
harmonia mundi at www.harmoniamundi.com, and
other publishers in Europe have their titles for sale on their
own websites (usually priced at full retail). We provide links
from some discs to some of these publishers.
Amazon has a separate operation based in the United Kingdom
at www.amazon.co.uk,
Germany at www.amazon.de,
and France at www.amazon.fr.
In the U.S., Amazon at www.amazon.com
is the leader in Internet sales and often has the best prices. We
generally link to them
from this website. If you are in the U.S., please buy thru
this link to support this site.
Most of the Blu-ray discs are released
in Europe first and get to the U.S. weeks later. Often cduniverse at
www.cduniverse.com
posts a disc before Amazon gets around to it. If we learn about it,
we will then link to cduniverse until Amazon catches up.
If you are in the U.S., you may want
to order from MDT (see above) if you are in a hurry
to get a new title or they have a special going. Please let us know
about the availability of product in your market if we have
missed it.
If you are in Canada, you may prefer Amazon at
www.amazon.ca because
it prices in Loonies.
We know of only one Blu-ray title that was published in Japan
for that market. We bought it from cdjapan at
www.cdjapan.co.jp. That disc
wound up costing us about four times what a comparable disc
would cost in the U.S.
If you are in Japan, we assume you have several ways
(including cdjapan)
to buy discs produced in the West (probably pretty cheaply).
Want to Be a CultureVulture?
CVs from all over the
world will work together on this website to promote their interest
in fine-art HDVD titles that they can show in their home theaters.
We will tell you how to locate and buy each title published. The world
of fine-art HDVD titles will be a new entertainment category that
is not covered now by any other website or magazine. Fine-art HDVD
titles will be published by many different resources across a number
of different art types. We will bring it all together for your convenience.
We aim to present at least one thumbnail report or review about each
fine-art HDVD title that comes on the market. By the end of 2009, we
believe there will be about 125 Blu-ray and HD DVD dics on the
market. Members are encourgaged to write reports and reviews on discs. We
also hope to have articles on HDVD subjects. For more on this, click
on our policies.
If and when feasible, we will give you a way to loan, barter, buy,
or sell used titles to other CVs. Fine-art HDVD titles will be expensive.
But they will also have a high value for their size and weight.
By flocking together, CVs can use the mail to hold down their costs
as they collect only the titles they want to keep.
If you have a title you want to lend
barter, or sell, tell us by email. We will post this information
and go to work helping you make a deal.
We hope to have a forum for members to discuss fine-art HDVD
titles and home theater gear.
Ideally, we hope to have a website with no advertising. Then the
website would be independent from the HDVD industry and supported
solely by members. The alternate, of course, would be to have sponsors
from among the businesses that sell into the CV market.
All of this will require a more sophisticated website than what
you are reading now. Currently, CV0 works up this site 100% by hand
using nested HTML files---an old-fashion, flat, non-interactive, public
bulletin board operation. We have been studying content management
systems for some time. We now hope to set up a site late
in 2009 or in 2010 using Drupal software that is designed for
community websites with interactive features.
What Does it Cost?
Join now for free.
When we reach the point that this site is providing the services promised,
we hope to go to a subscription format and charge annual dues. Our
best guess is that this will be sometime in 2010 or 2011.
Dues and/or advertising likely will not bring in enough money to
pay the bills. We now have a partner arrangement with Amazon.com.
If you see a title you want, you can buy
it through us from Amazon and they will pay us a commission. The website
may also charge a fee if we broker a deal between CVs.
Join Now! Here's How!
Send us by email your name, snail-mail address, email address, and
phone number. Tell us if you have a special fine-arts interest and
if you are an expert in one of the CV fields. We will stay in touch with
you by email. Each member will have a number, of course. If you are
the next to write in, you will be CV6.
Bookmark Now!
About CultureVulture
CultureVulture.com is a sole proprietorship run by by Henry C. McFadyen,
Jr., known as CultureVulture0 ("CV0"). For more information on
our policies, click
here . . .
The address is 7817 La Sobrina, Dallas, Texas 75248.
972.387.1828 (office also doubles as a law firm)
972.387.4101 (home)
972.692.7676 (fax)
Email to cv0@culturevulture.com (If the email goes to "cv0",
it gets thru the spam filter. Everything else gets trashed.)
This homepage last updated June 2, 2009.
Copyright 2009 by Henry C. McFadyen, Jr. All rights reserved.