Warner Home Video story

American; initially from the Warner Communications offices at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, its world headquarters moved to the Warner backlot in Burbank by the early '80s. Warner Home Video was founded in 1979 as WCI Home Video by one of the big record companies of the time, WEA, as a vehicle for the legendary inventory of films from the record company's parent Warner Bros. In January 1980, it released its first tapes, including Flavours of China, a culinary-how to video. A few months later, it took on the more famous Warner Home Video name; until midway through 1981, the company would still use the WCI logo on films.

One of the most controversial moments in home video history came when Warner hooked the cities of Denver and San Francisco, along with the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana for a rental-only programme that began on October 15, 1981; it was opposed to by many video dealers and by the rock group Queen; one of the slated titles, Queen: Greatest Flix, ended up being the first of their product to be issued across the 50 states and Canada by EMI, which gave the label worldwide rights to their recordings. The program lasted for nearly one year, and 1983 started with minimal usage of similar rental programs run by Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Disney.

It also issued material from Orion Pictures (and retains ownership of each film that the studio made as a joint venture with Warner Bros., which it was from 1979 to 1982), Filmways Pictures (which Orion bought out after severing ties with Warner), New World Pictures, United Artists (their own films outside the US and Canada and the pre-1950 WB inventory outside of the US), The Ladd Company, New Line Cinema (well before it was taken over by Time Warner and well before it became part of Warner), and NBC.

On March 26, 1997, Warner became the first major studio to release motion pictures on DVD, for which it deserves some hearty cheers on its own; on that day, it issued 33 such products (including MGM/UA Home Video titles per their deal with Warner at the time, New Line titles, and a few music titles). Warner Home Video currently releases DVDs and Blu-rays for outside companies including BBC Video (only in Region 1), Sesame Workshop (mainly for Sesame Street), WWE, Viz Media, Mattel (holding American Girl made for TV and theatrical movies along with 1987's Masters of the Universe theatrical movie), and selected back catalogue titles from Paramount, and also releases titles from fellow Time Warner companies HBO, CNN (mainly the CNN Original Series and the network's archival material) and Cartoon Network.

We'll be going off to Part 1, the Warner movies from the days of the Big W.