Here's making a New Year's resolution to update the 2008 Top Ten more frequently! I think I find it hard to get too excited about the Top Ten because the DVD format is so stable at this point. Like I mentioned last year, the days of DVD innovation are long-gone. The format's reached a certain peak above which it really can't go. That's not a bad thing, but it does mean that it becomes more difficult to get really excited about much. I hate to sound blase, but almost all the big titles are out now, so we don't get humongous debuts like Star Wars or the like. The DVD format has become about new titles and refinement of old ones more than anything else, and that's fine.

I also found it tough to decide what was really Top Ten-worthy and to position the various titles. Most years the Top Ten sorts itself out and doesn't require much debate for me. Often we find plenty of titles that are so strong they demand placement on the chart.

In 2007, only one title stood head and shoulders above the rest, and it's number one on my list. After that I just went with my gut, as #2 could easily be #10 and vice versa. I could have jumbled choices two through 10 and made legitimate arguments for each slotting. There were a lot of very good releases in 2007, but other than #1, nothing that came across as truly superior.

So for this chart, I paid less attention to specific grade ratings and just went with my gut. I decided to go with the titles that most impressed me. That made the list even more subjective than usual, but I couldn't think of a really logical way to choose, so I let my lasting impressions decide. I may never watch The Jazz Singer again since I think it's a lousy movie, but the three-DVD package dazzled me in many ways, so it deserved high placement. I may not care for the flick, but I maintained very positive feelings toward the set and went with my gut in that regard.

Of course, the biggest subject in 2007 was the same as the biggest one in 2006: the high-res formats. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray battled it out throughout the year, not that many noticed. A dedicated cult of fanboys invested in one - or both - of those formats, but the vast majority of the world stayed with SD-DVD. According to a Washington Post article I saw, the two high-res formats sold about 14 million discs in 2007, while SD-DVD moved about 2.3 billion. That means the hi-res discs made up less than one percent of sales in 2007.

That'll undoubtedly change in 2008, as I expect hi-res will make more inroads. This seems especially likely now that the "format war" appears to be close to an end. The recent signs make it look likely that Blu-Ray will emerge victorious, so by the time I write my 2008 Top Ten, the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray fight may be a memory. If that happens, Blu-Ray will clearly gain adherents among folks who wanted to wait for the format battles to come to an end.

How will all this affect this website? Back when I wrote my year-end note for 2006, I mentioned the reasons why the DVD Movie Guide remained focused on SD-DVD. With the "format war" apparently close to an end, our eventual move to Blu-Ray reviews becomes more likely, but unless readers overwhelmingly tell me they don't care about SD-DVD and they want their Blu-Ray reviews, I plan to stay with SD-DVD. When one format outsells another by more than 99 to 1, that tells me that more folks will be more interested in the 99 than the 1. In early 2007, all the reader comments told me to stay SD, and that's what I plan to do until/unless I get sentiment to the contrary.

So you tell me: are you sick of the SD reviews and eager for Blu-Ray? Or do you think other sites have been too quick to dump SD-DVD reviews? There's a link to my e-mail address below, and I'd love updated feedback on what readers want.

While Blu-Ray may or may not be in this site's immediate future, readers can look forward to one technological change: a new TV for me! I've finally decided to take the 16X9 plunge, so I'll be moving to a spanking new Panasonic 50-inch 1080p set along with a new upconverting DVD player. I love my old WEGA and think it's served me very well over the last seven years, but I realize that it's become a little out of date for DVD review purposes so it's time to move into the 21st century. The site may take a week-long review break to give me time to get accustomed to the new set. I have to watch a bunch of discs I already know so I can get used to its quality; otherwise, my first reviews will be more about my reactions to the new set than to the quality of the discs themselves. Granted, that'll still probably be the case for a little while, but hopefully my adjustment period will keep things steady.

So that sums up 2007 and where the site's headed as we move into 2008. Be sure to let me know your thoughts on what you'd like to see!

Colin Jacobson, Senior Reviewer/Owner

For the statistically minded out there, I tallied the Top Ten by release dates. October was a big, big month in DVD, as five of the 11 titles came out that month. That's the single biggest month in the history of my Top Tens; never has one month contributed such a high percentage of a final chart. (In case you're puzzled by the reference to 11 DVDs in my Top Ten, remember that I had a tie with the two Fantastic Four releases.) Six other months produced one Top Ten title each: January, May, June, August, September and December.

This left no titles from February, March, April, July or November on the list. Since I don't want to totally ignore the months that didn't chart, here are my choices for the best DVDs from each of the Forgotten Months:

FEBRUARY: Gandhi - Special Edition

MARCH: Peter Pan - Platinum Edition

APRIL: Spider-Man 2.1

JULY: Hot Fuzz

NOVEMBER: Live Free or Die Hard

For more statistical fun, I examined my eight Top Tens by studio. For that span, Disney wins with 20 of the 80 possible slots. They did nothing to help themselves this time, though; for the first year, not a single Disney title made my final Top Ten. Fox comes in second with 15 DVDs; note that I didn't count the two Fantastic Four releases separately, as that didn't seem fair. Everyone else brings up the rear. Warner made the race tighter, as their 14 now has them only one behind Fox. Sony and Paramount both nailed eight slots, which marked a big jump for Paramount since they snagged three this year. New Line came in with six, while Artisan and Universal have two. Anchor Bay, DreamWorks, Image Entertainment, Universal Music and TGA - the latter produced the Rolling Stones' Four Flicks - both came in with one disc apiece, though to be fair, new DreamWorks DVDs go under the Paramount banner; if I nit-picked and separated them, DW would go up and Paramount would decline. No releases from MGM, Criterion or any of the other smaller companies ever landed on the year-end Top Ten, though some of them appeared in the monthly iterations.