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Warner Home Video
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Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video (for Warner Communications, Inc.). It was re-named Warner Home Video in 1980. Though some other Hollywood movie studios changed their "Home Video" units' names to "Home Entertainment" with the advent of DVD in the late 1990's, WHV's name was never changed.
The company releases titles from the film and television library of Warner Bros.
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Encyclopedia
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video (for Warner Communications, Inc.). It was re-named Warner Home Video in 1980. Though some other Hollywood movie studios changed their "Home Video" units' names to "Home Entertainment" with the advent of DVD in the late 1990's, WHV's name was never changed.
The company releases titles from the film and television library of Warner Bros. Studios, as well as programs from other Time Warner companies. Currently, they also serve distributor for television and/or movie product released by BBC, Lifetime, Cartoon Network, Turner Entertainment Co., Court TV, Adult Swim, TNT, National Geographic Society in the U.S., and product from the NBA, NFL, and NHL.
Some early releases were notable for being time-compressed in order to save tape time and money and to compensate for long-playing cassettes being unavailable in the early days of home video. One example was 1978's Superman in which the film was released in a 127-minute format, compared to its 143-minute theatrical release.
In the early 1980s, Warner Home Video was the U.S. distributor for the Mr. Men and Little Miss video series.
Warner Bros. began to branch out into the videodisc market, licensing titles to MCA DiscoVision and RCA's SelectaVision videodisc formats, allowing both companies to market and distribute the films under their labels. By 1985, Warner was releasing material under their own label in both formats.
Warner also experimented with the "rental-only" market for videos, a method also used by 20th Century Fox for their first release of Star Wars in 1982. Two known films released in this manner were Superman II and Excalibur.
In 1997, Warner Home Video was one of the first major American distributors for the new DVD format, by releasing Twister on DVD. Warner executive Warren Lieberfarb is often seen as "the father of DVD".
In the UK, WHV distributes most of the DVD releases of Icon Entertainment International, and also distributes Icon releases in Australia and Equinox Films releases in Canada.
In 2000, WHV was given the North America distribution rights for BBC Video titles, where as previously they were distributed by CBS-Fox from the 1980s to the late 1990s. Many CBS/Fox releases of BBC Video titles were reissued under the WHV label, first on VHS and now DVD. This partnership between WHV and BBC Video continues to this day.
In 2006, WHV announced they would enter the market of releasing original direct-to-video films, a market that has proven lucrative for studios over the past few years, and which has for the most part been dominated by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. They announced much of their output would be followups to films that had done well at the box office theatrically, but wouldn't be expected to do well if a sequel were to be made. The first release under the Warner Premiere banner is the prequel The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning.
On September 26 2006, WHV became the first company to street a title in three formats on the same day and date with the home release of The Lake House on DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD. With Paramount Home Entertainment switching from neutral in the high definition video camp to solely to HD DVD in September 2007, Warner Home Video was now at the time the only major distributor to support both high definition formats, though this changed at the end of May 2008. From June 2008, Warner Home Video released new high definition content on Blu-ray only.
They also licensed Appleseed EX Machina, the sequel to the cult anime film Appleseed. ADV Films will produce the dub.
Also, for a number of years from the 1980s to the late 1990s, WHV was the distributor for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer video titles in Australia.
United Artists films were released on video by WHV in the UK until the early 1990s
Beginning in 2008, WHV became the distributor for the various Peanuts television specials. This was a very fitting move, as Bill Meléndez, which directed and produced many of these specials, once worked at WB's animation unit as an animator.
Since New Line Cinema became the division of Warner Bros. in 2008, WHV will distribute its films on DVD and Blu-ray via its home video arm.
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