Blu-ray, Batman light up home video

Home video's two biggest stories of 2008 served as bookends for the year.

In January, Blu-ray took over as the sole format for high-definition discs when behemoth Warner Home Video announced its exclusive support, sending the rival HD DVD plummeting into the abyss of failed audio-video formats. And this month, "The Dark Knight" became the hottest release of the year when it sold 3 million copies on its first day of release. Connecting the two events was the news that 20 percent of those copies were Blu-ray.

In general, Blu-ray is growing faster than DVD. The installed user base of Blu-ray players, at an estimated 2.5 million, is at least double what DVD was at the same point in its life cycle. And that doesn't include the roughly 8 million PlayStation 3 video-game systems that also are capable of playing the high-def discs.

Blu-ray's growth has come at the expense of standard DVDs, whose sales are expected to be down 6 percent, said industry analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital. New releases on DVD are taking the brunt of that decline, he said, with older titles on DVD off by only 2 percent.

My picks for the year's best releases include:

"The Dark Knight" was the home-video event of the year, but Disney/Pixar's "WALL-E" wasn't far behind, another critical and box-office winner. The wealth of extras on the three-disc edition put other new releases, including Batman's and Iron Man's new outings, into the cosmic dust bin. In fact, Disney's press release for the robo-powered charmer even included a chart to track all of the supplements among the various editions.

Its high price ($240) put "Murnau, Borzage and Fox" out of reach of most viewers, but the stunning 12-disc set remains an immense achievement. It celebrates two of Hollywood's great early filmmakers, Oscar winners F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage. Besides their 12 movies, which include restorations of 1927's "Sunrise" and "7th Heaven," the set boasts a plethora of scholarly extras. Other candidates largely involved special editions of previously released titles, with the makeover of the original sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and a lovely redo of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" making huge impressions.

Among first-season debuts, there was no stopping the "Mad Men" express. Lions Gate did a fabulous job with the home-video version of AMC's Emmy-winning show about the 1960s ad scene, especially the Blu-ray release. As long as we're on the new format, major props go to HBO for a breathtaking Blu-ray release of its acclaimed World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers."

Randy A. Salas • 612-673-4542