Has a film ever changed you?
If you're a fan of home cinema, then there's a good chance that a movie has (hopefully) touched you in some way or stuck with you over the years.
But how many films have actually changed home cinema?
There are many great reference discs out there which have surely opened some people's eyes to the possibilities of truly immersive home cinema, but only a handful of film titles can lay claim to have impacted the industry.
We're going to go through some of the most notable firsts in home cinema below, as well as a few pioneering titles which single-handedly changed the industry.
It's an interesting mix of absolute classics, smaller innovators and a few films you probably wouldn't expect. See how many you own...
1976: The first-ever VHS is... disputed
So what was the first film to kickstart the home media revolution? Well, no one's really sure. A long-standing rumour suggests that South Korean drama The Young Teacher came out on tape in 1976, shortly after JVC released the technology, but this claim has been widely contested.
The first Western releases are a bit more certain – Magnetic Video released the first 50 titles in a wave in 1977, which included classics such as M*A*S*H, Patton and Hello, Dolly!
1995: Batman and Jack Ryan bring surround sound home
Okay, bear with us here – surround sound technically entered our living rooms in the 1980s, when Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic used a matrix to decode stereo into multi-channel sound. But surround sound as we know it today, with completely separate, discrete channels, came a bit later.
Batman Returns made history in 1992 as the first film to be released in cinemas in what is now Dolby Digital, making digital sound and 5.1 the new standard. However, it wasn't until the 1995 release of Clear And Present Danger on LaserDisc that a discrete Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track was available on home media.
Dolby Digital would then, of course, become the audio specification for DVD, and is still in use today, even if it has been superseded by the object-based Dolby Atmos.
1996: DVD arrives with a Harrison Ford double bill
DVD premiered in Japan with four titles in December 1996: Eraser, The Fugitive, Assassins and the fittingly futuristic Blade Runner: The Final Cut.
The format reached the US a few months later in March 1997, with 32 titles on launch day, including Twister, which became the top-selling DVD of the year and a notable early demo disc for the format.
DVD arrived in the UK in June 1997, when former What Hi-Fi? staff members were distinctly unimpressed with the Thomson DTH-1000U in our first-ever DVD player review. We were limited to region 2 imports from Japan at the time, however – DVDs didn't hit UK shops until 1998, when Mars Attacks! topped the first UK DVD chart.
Sony would later add a DVD drive to the PlayStation 2 in 2000, which would launch a DVD boom – with veteran AV experts contending that home cinema really took off when the disc-based format arrived. While DVD (and most physical media) is undoubtedly facing some challenges, they're still being made and released 30 years later – a lifetime in AV terms.
1997: DTS roars into home cinemas with Jurassic Park
We're sure many home cinema fans are familiar with DTS. But did you know the dinosaur mega-hit Jurassic Park played a key role in its development? Not content with revolutionising digital effects, director Steven Spielberg did the same for digital sound too, investing in the creation of DTS to showcase the film's sound design and various dinosaur roars.
This resulted in Jurassic Park becoming the first film to debut in cinemas with DTS surround sound in 1993, and also claiming the title of the first DTS home video release when it debuted on LaserDisc in 1997.
Dolby Digital and DTS have had a heated rivalry ever since, with DTS also creating several more advanced versions – including their own object-based codec, DTS: X.
2006: Adam Sandler and Arnie bring us Blu-ray
With Sony set to kit out the then-upcoming PlayStation 3 with a Blu-ray disc drive, it's no surprise that the Japanese tech giant also led the charge when it came to the discs themselves in June 2006.
50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Underworld: Evolution and xXx were the very first Blu offerings courtesy of Sony, along with MGM's The Terminator.
A real mixed bag then (was anyone who purchased a ludicrously expensive early Blu-ray player reaching for an Adam Sandler rom-com?), and HD-DVD arguably had a stronger launch line-up with The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom Of The Opera and Serenity earlier that year.
However, we all know how that one went – HD-DVD waved the white flag in February 2008, and Blu-ray continues to be sold to this day, though it's of course competing with its successor...
2010: Avatar leads the 3D charge
Avatar was not, in fact, the first 3D Blu-ray – that honour goes to Monsters Vs Aliens in 2010, which was initially only available with Samsung 3D TVs or Blu-ray players.
However, almost anyone who invested in 3D home theatre technology at the time (which wasn't many, let's be honest) did so because of the Avatar effect, hoping to recreate the visual splendour of James Cameron's blockbuster at home. Avatar would have its 3D home premiere on Sky on Christmas Eve 2010, with a 3D Blu-ray release two years later.
Studios had mostly abandoned 3D Blu-ray by 2018, though certain regions worldwide still receive new releases. The most notable recent worldwide release has fittingly been a remaster of Avatar, as well as its two sequels – Avatar: Fire And Ash was released on 3D Blu-ray as recently as May 2026.
2014: Dolby Atmos arrives with a Michael Bay bang
Brave was the first feature-length Dolby Atmos film after a special installation at the El Capitan Theatre for its premiere in 2012.
However, it wasn't the first use of Dolby Atmos on disc – that honour goes to, um, Transformers: Age Of Extinction on regular old Blu-ray in 2014. Whatever you think of the film, it is a technical showcase, and it coincided with the announcement of the first Dolby Atmos technology for home theatres.
2016: X-Men, Hitman and Kingsman are the first 4K discs
As What Hi-Fi? reported at the time, the first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs came to the UK in a wave in early 2016, meaning it was a photo finish with no definitive winner.
The eight discs in total were all 20th Century Fox titles: Fantastic Four, Maze Runner: Chapter II - The Scorch Trials, Kingsman : The Secret Service, The Maze Runner, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Life Of Pi, Hitman: Agent 47 and Exodus: Gods And Kings.
While you might call the quality of these films, well, mixed, there's no denying the excitement in the air when this new format was announced, and 4K Blu-rays can now often be found strewn across our test room after a lengthy review session.
It's been a rocky road for 4K Blu-ray since, with some of our favourite 4K Blu-ray players disappearing, key manufacturers leaving the market and Sony seemingly hinting that the next PlayStation won't support any disc-based home media at all. Will we even get another home cinema format? Time will tell...
2017: Billy Lynn's Long, High Frame-rate Walk
Ang Lee's experimental war drama Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was not the first high frame-rate movie release (that was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was released in cinemas in 2012 at a divisive 48fps), but it was the first to take its high frame-rate to home media in 2017.
The 4K Blu-ray was presented in 60fps rather than the 120fps seen in cinemas, but it was still a first for the format. We found both the film and the high frame-rate experience to be a bit hit and miss in our Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk review, noting a hyper-real sense of depth at the cost of a cinematic feel.
It's not a trend that would catch on, however – Ang Lee would return to high frame-rate for his next film Gemini Man, but otherwise home video has stuck with good old regular 24fps.
MORE:
AV engineers reveal the ultimate test scenes to benchmark your home cinema
