More DVD Products

With its expanded memory, and higher quality images and sound, the digital video disk format has long been regarded as a potentially huge source of revenue for Hollywood. But consumers have been slow to embrace DVD, partly from the lack of available DVD products.

Since March, DVD titles have been available in a few U.S. markets, including Los Angeles. Sales average about 20,000 units a week, according to trade publication VideoScan.

But sales are expected to boom as more studios begin releasing their films on the new platform, according to analysts at Dataquest.

Enter Pacific Ocean Post, a Santa Monica-based visual effects house, and Cinram Ltd., one of the world’s largest manufacturers of multimedia products. The two companies, hoping to capture this young market, have launched a joint venture to create, edit and press DVD titles.

“We’re going to convert a lot of the [movie] studios’ works to DVD, as well as create a series of our own original titles,” said Dave Larson, executive vice president for new ventures at Pacific Ocean Post. “Our new DVD facility can handle the entire creative process from beginning to end.”

Once the product is created, Pacific Ocean Post staff transfer the digitally stored film to Cinram’s newly acquired pressing facilities in Anaheim. (The Toronto-based manufacturer--which has other factories in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Latin America--supplies video and audio cassettes, CDs and DVDs for film studios, record companies and computer software firms.)

The two firms began working on DVD projects earlier this month, though neither will discuss the titles in production until later this year.

P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com