Warner Home Video

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.). The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979. The company later expanded its line to include additional titles throughout 1979 and 1980.

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 1990s, Warner Home Video's name has not changed yet.

Catalog

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, HBO, Cartoon Network, Turner Entertainment Co., truTV (known as Court TV until 2008), Adult Swim, TNT, American Girl, Dr. Seuss, Popeye, National Geographic Society in the U.S., and product from the NBA, NFL, and NHL.

History

Some early releases were 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 addition, early film-to-video transfers of films from WCI...
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