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The Royal Tenenbaums is an example of the thoughtful treatment given to DVDs by the Criterion Collection.

What happened in 2002 in the world of home video? You mean aside from my accidentally placing a Powerpuff Girls coaster in my DVD player last March and then spending four hours trying to pry the machine apart? Plenty. In short, the following: DVD players moved into more than 37 percent of U.S. households; the home video biz released 6,000 new titles on disc, 11 of which had interesting director commentary tracks; video, always the ace in the studio's hole when it comes to recouping from a box office dud, burgeoned into an $18 billion worldwide bonanza, more than 60 percent of which now comes from North America; the mail-based rental company Netflix, landed 700,000 subscribers; and Circuit City became the first retailer to publicly dump VHS.

As for the studios: the big story continued to be bootlegging. Hollywood estimates it now loses half a billion dollars on creeps who sit in the back row of The Lord of the Rings, videotape it, and sell the headache-inducing results. (That people sit through shaky, off-centered junk says something about theater ticket prices. But that's another story.) At year's end the studios were fighting back on another front, however: eight film companies filed a lawsuit against CleanFlicks, a Colorado-based video business that offers re-edited versions of blockbusters, minus the sex, violence, and strong language.

Yes, that means you too can see Saving Private Ryan without all that messy violence and sacrifice and courage. (I assume the sanitized edition runs six minutes long.)

Bleary-eyed videodrones had more to celebrate. Home-grown DVD commentary tracks began appearing on the Internet in the form of MP3 files; now the whole world can hear your Marxist deconstruction of The Truth About Cats and Dogs. If DVD got creative in 2002, some producers took it a bit too far. One of the most annoying trends of the year was the DVD special edition that forced you to run a gauntlet of games and puzzles just to watch the extras you already paid for. You can easily identify owners of special edition discs of Memento and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: They're the ones with small indents in their scalps from banging their heads against walls.

A small sample of the discs that made owning a DVD player actually worthwhile: the animated Japanese war picture Grave of the Fireflies finally reached American video; beautiful new editions of The Hustler and Sunshine Boulevard proved that studios could still treat their heritage lovingly from time to time. No genre hit DVD bigger in 2002 than old TV shows: box sets of All in the Family and M*A*S*H shined, while terrific compilations of cult favorites like The Outer Limits and Schoolhouse Rock arrived in exhaustive multi-disc editions intelligent enough to earn a place on your bookshelf.

That said, the following are the 10 (or so) best video arrivals of the year:

1. Singin' in the Rain (Special Edition). Once you saw the exquisite restoration job MGM did on this primary-colors classic and picked your jaw off the floor, no less than an addictive history of the musical awaited. Proof that the future of DVD lies in our past.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition). The satirical Web site and newspaper The Onion has a new box set of books collecting its satire, The Platinum Prestige Encore Gold Premium Collector's Collection, a parody of such editions. What a surprise then, when this overstuffed, over-titled four-disc LOTR delivered: Dig through six hours of methodical production archives, and a longer, more honed cut of the movie awaits. Certain to set the standard for studio special editions.

3. The Griffith Masterworks Box Set and The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894 –1913. Both from the masters of silent film on video, Kino. Both pricey. Both indispensable artifacts that trace the birth of the world's most pervasive art form, handsomely produced with an academic's insight and a historian's obsessiveness.

4. The Complete Monterey Pop and The Last Waltz. With digital sound and chapter stops for quick song access, the concert film is served especially well by DVD, and this year brought two of the best. Once you soaked in the sound that popped out of your speakers, the extras offered some delicious frosting: entire Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix concerts on Monterey, a Martin Scorsese-Robbie Robertson commentary on The Last Waltz.

5. The Royal Tenenbaums and In The Mood for Love. The Criterion Collection continued to set the DVD standard for taste, fascinating bonus material, and overall quality. And not just with agreed-upon classics - these recent favorites received just as thoughtful treatment. Couple that with Criterion's dedication to rescuing overlooked modern gems like Ratcatcher and George Washington, and the company has single-handedly filled a void left open by the collapse of repertoire movie houses.

6. The Educational Archives, Vol. 1-4. You squirmed through them as a student, you'll love them as an adult: Four delirious discs of dating, anti-drug, home economics, and job-training films, handpicked by folks with too much time on their hands. Volumes 3 and 4 actually allowed you to include the sound of a warbling projector.

7. Cameron Crowe on DVD. Some directors have a way with commentary tracks. The filmmaker behind Say Anything ... and Jerry Maguire approached this often-boring DVD special feature like the host of a party, tossing in funny anecdotes, and dragging along the best guests to help out, including the erudite John Cusack and a wry Tom Cruise.

8. Dr. Shock's Tales of Terror. The sole videotape on this list, but well worth it if A. you are from Northwest Ohio, B. you have a strong stomach, or C. you have a healthy love for trash. Local horror film goofballs Doug "Dr. Shock" Agosti and Lance Otto Smith compiled three of their charmingly incompetent, gory Toledo-produced schlocktavaganzas, and gave a fun answer to the question: What kind of movie could I make for $73.14?

9. Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction. What could possibly get anyone to take another long look at the over-discussed career of director Quentin Tarantino? Simple: DVD sets this loaded with thoughtful movie-freak goodness: from smart archival interviews to a ream of movie reviews to a slew of great old Pam Grier trailers.

10. Can't Stop the Music. The Village People movie. Nancy Walker, the Bounty Lady, directs. Steve Guttenberg stars. Musical numbers include "Do the Milkshake." A failure of such massive train-wreck-as-entertainment proportions must be seen to be believed. An ideal choice for your next Bad Movie Night, and the DVD revelation of 2002.

Chris Borrelli's Fast Forward column runs every Thursday in the Peach section. E-mail him at cborrelli@theblade.com.

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