Site created 12/15/97.	page created: 2/23/04 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to The Digital Bits' annual selection of the best and worst the DVD format has to offer... a little something we like to call The Bitsy Awards. 2003 was another huge year for DVD, with a huge explosion of long-awaited titles finally making their digital debut. When they weren't fulfilling fans' wish lists, the studios were busy going back to the well and revamping titles that have already had at least one incarnation on DVD. In some cases, these special editions were worth waiting for. In others, they didn't add anything to what we already had. With the studio floodgates open, you might think that choosing this year's awards would be a particularly daunting task. And sure enough, for many categories we had more back and forth than ever before. There was certainly no lack of worthy candidates for many of the categories this year. But interestingly enough, some categories were easier to pick than they'd ever been. With little to no argument, we quickly reached a consensus on the winners of several key categories. Considering how contentious a group the Bitsy committee can be when one of us gets an idea stuck in our heads, this is no small accomplishment. As the format itself continues to grow and evolve, so too do The Bitsy Awards. After all, you don't see them handing out Oscars for Best Title Writing anymore. This year, we eliminated the award for Best DVD - Menus. While some companies (notably Pixar with Finding Nemo) continue to design amusing and interesting menus, we collectively decided that the degree of variance between menus these days is so slight as to make the entire category a non-issue. We also refined the selection process for Best DVD - Video this year. Instead of differentiating between film-to-digital and digital-to-digital transfers, we split the categories between new films and restored films. Studios are giving more care and attention to classic films than they ever did before, so we wanted to find a way to recognize these efforts without making them compete unfairly with the likes of... well, Finding Nemo. Another way to recognize these films is the long overdue addition of the Best DVD - Classic Release category, with the input of our own Barrie Maxwell. And thanks to Matt Rowe and his efforts with our MusicTAP.net affiliate site, we've introduced two new categories to recognize high-definition music releases as well: Best SACD and Best DVD-Audio. We hope these categories will encourage you to check out this exciting new technology, if you haven't done so already. Finally, rather than ranking the runners-up in each category, we've simply grouped them as "also recommended", a change which allows us to give the nod to more great titles that you might have missed over the past year. We should also note that all of the winners can be ordered from Amazon.com and Acoustic Sounds by clicking the artwork. Each purchase helps to support our on-going work here at The Digital Bits, so our thanks in advance. Anyway, enough gabbing. We've dug our tuxedos out of mothballs and have a table full of awards to hand out, hopefully somewhat faster than the Oscars will next weekend. So without further ado, we invite you to sit back, relax and enjoy The 5th Annual Digital Bits Bitsy Awards! Or as we like to call it... The Digital Bits Bitsy Awards: Episode V - The Bitsys Strike Back! Bill Hunt, Todd Doogan and Adam Jahnke (your ever humble hosts) The Digital Bits Editors' Top 10 Choices Outstanding Achievements in DVD for 2003 Other DVD Awards for 2003
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