My first plunge into the Home Theatre pool began about 8 or 9 years ago when i bought my first LD player, a Pioneer CLD-3070 and then got a cheap Dolby Surround add-on amp (just drove the rear speakers, you had to use your regular stereo to drive the fronts. and a center channel? forget it!). I eventually replaced that with a Pioneer Dolby ProLogic (woo hoo, a center channel!) amp/receiver. The CLD-3070 then got replaced a few years later by a Pioneer LD-W1 (takes 2 discs, plays all four sides automagically. very nice to have). It seemed that LD would reign supreme for the home theatre crowd. It had a much better picture than VHS or cable. The sound was wonderful. And it raised the standard of how movies would be seen at home: Widescreen/Letterboxed presentations with lots of supplements. Finally, you could see the entire film as you saw it in the theatre. None of this cropping people or action out of the frame. Not only that, but you got extra tidbits in the form of those supplements. A history of the making of the film. Trailers for the film. Cast and crew bios. And for some directors, a chance for them to release the movie as they wanted to originally. AKA the director's cut. The future seemed bright indeed for LD. That is until 1997 and the introduction of DVD.
Ah, DVD. It accomplished in less than 2 years what LD tried to do for nearly 20 years: raise the standard of home video for the masses. Prior to the introduction of DVD, LD was making really good progress towards this lofty goal. But I think it suffered from being seen as a toy for the more affluent members of society what with the higher cost of players and media. And then there was the fact that you had to get up every 30 to 60 minutes to flip the huge discs. Not very appealing for the masses. We won't even mention the funny black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. And then came DVD. It was targeted towards replacing the VCR as the playback medium for home video and was priced to that aim. And it has achieved it in a big way. The majority of DVD's these days are being released in Widescreen/Letterboxed format and with tons of supplements. When there is a Pan-n-Scan edition released oftentimes theres a letterboxed edition on the same disc (or in the same package). Apparently the fears of people not liking the black bars were a little unfounded.
And of course I couldn't let myself be left behind in this new video revolution. So back in Decemeber of 1999 I took the plunge and got a Sony DVP-S530D DVD player. Why the wait? I wanted to wait for 3rd generation hardware to appear before taking the plunge. I figured it would be a lot more stable by then. And it appears to have been a smart decision. Now, since I had this shiny new DVD toy that boasted really good sound (aka DolbyDigital), I had to get a new receiver that supported Doilby Digital (as well as DTS). So at the same time I got a Sony STR-DB930. Dolby ProLogic was really nice, but Dolby Digital is even better. Discrete rear surround sound. A dedicated subwoofer channel. A lot cleaner sound. It's really nice. What's sad is that I still seem to have better sound at home than most movie theatres do. The theatres are starting to get better sound systems in, but it seems to be a slow uphill crawl. But I digress...
And what's the point of having all this superior hardware if you don't have a good TV set to watch it all on? The old 19-inch color TV that only has an RF-input doesn't do the picture of DVD any justice. So, well before DVD was available I bought a Sony KV-32XBR45 set. 3 sets of A/V inputs including am S-video input, IR wireless headphones for late night listening, adjustable color temp, etc, etc, drool, drool. The only thing it really lacks are component video inputs, or a 16:9 compatible mode. The next set will hopefully either be an HDTV set with component inputs, or at least a 16:9 set with component inputs. I'd love to take the HDTV plunge, but it's a wee bit out of my price range right now.
My current collection of LD's and DVD's is constantly growing, though with the advent of DVD the LD portion seems to have stopped, or at least is severely stalled.