And now for something completely digital...
Although it's been nearly three decades since their original, ultra-classic, series went off the air, the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (and their business managers) have made certain that their unique brand of comic lunacy was always available to the public in virtually every form of media imaginable. From the early days when vinyl record albums and excruciatingly funny books kept the legacy alive, to the repeats, feature films and eventually home video releases of the seventies, to the eighties and the repeats, the high quality, but relatively unpopular, laser disc format, and, finally, to the nineties and a veritable explosion of Pythonallia thanks to (yet again) repeats, video rentals, the WWW and a series of brilliantly conceived computer software products such as the Meaning of Life game, Holy Grail game and Desktop Pythonizer. Now, as the planet's odometer prepares to roll over to a new millennium the Pythons have embraced yet another high-tech medium for the dissemination of their classic comedy: the DVD.
As many of you are doubtlessly aware the video format of the, at least foreseeable, future is DVD, those little silver discs that look just like CD's but hold hours of high quality digital video, music or computer software. Many of today's new computers ship with a DVD drive standard and DVD upgrade kits are flying off the shelves of your local computer shop. Home DVD players, while being a bit more expensive than your average VCR, offers so many viewing advantages over videotape that anyone with room in their entertainment budget should be very seriously considering getting a player as soon as possible. The one thing DVD can't, do, as of yet, is record. There are a couple of formats battling it out to be the recordable DVD of the future, but for now it's a play only proposition. But with all the bells and whistles available with DVD it's more than worth it. With even a standard DVD you usually get the widescreen version of a film, the audio is state of the art, there are interactive menus and you can usually choose from a handful of language and caption options. The picture quality, on a properly mastered DVD, beats even that of the collectors favorite the Laser Disc, with even a basic home theatre set up you will be blown away by your movie viewing experience.
"Great" I hear you say, "So Air Force One, Titanic and Gone with the Wind will look great on DVD but why do I need it for an old telly program like Monty Python, which wasn't exactly a big budget production in its
