Today marks an incredible twelve years since DVD Plaza opened its doors back in 1999, and thirteen years since I began working toward its creation - it is also the day I have chosen to conclude this amazing journey.

While it would be impossible to recollect everything that DVD Plaza achieved over all these years, our fight against the original Warner cardboard "snapper" covers was certainly one of the most memorable - more so that we then fought to supply you with (free) replacement covers for all previously purchased discs. Even more incredible was that my wife tolerated, and processed on my behalf, all the slicks and orders that were piled throughout our home!

That interstate meetings with studios, and at various industry events, it was often specifically pointed out the role DVD Plaza was playing in the industry was something I was very proud of. Our involvement in the annual DVD industry gala awards each year (including being on the judging panel twice) and our success in launching EzyDVD's retail stores (our exclusive early opening sales such a hit some stores had to close repeatedly to limit the volume of customers) were also exciting times. The number of times we caused stores to exhaust stocks of big sale items, thanks to our PriceCrawler® sometimes before they were even promoted, was impressive.

There were some low points. The music and gaming industries both encouraged DVD Plaza to try and have the same impact on their industries, and overhauling ourselves to meet this alienated some customers (we quickly reverted). Closing down our home entertainment forum and referring traffic to a sister site was necessary to save our escalating bandwidth costs, but likewise in hindsight was a wrong move.

Overall I am absolutely gobsmacked when I think about the huge success story of DVD Plaza - very quickly becoming one of THE most heavily visited entertainment websites in Australia, outranked only by Greater Union. The new technology and remastering that has since taken place with the move to Blu-ray has been as exciting as the original release of DVD.

However, the birth of my daughter two years ago changed my focus in life and it has become increasingly difficult to dedicate time to this business. A new look and feel (GUI in the tech world) I was developing back then for instance never saw day of light - hence using it (PlazaGUI7) on our front page for our closure.

The friendships I have forged through DVD Plaza I will never forget. Matt Goldsmith from DVDown Under I have corresponded with since before I launched this business, and he has shared through my pains as I have with his. Tony Curulli and Glenn Mason were two moderators in particular that were absolute legends in our early days. Jim Zavros was someone I again was close with both before, during, and after EzyDVD - very proud of what we achieved there. The list of everyone at the studios/distributors I worked with over the years is simply too long. The list of clients we had over the years likewise very long. And of course you, our customers and members, is an even longer list - some of you have been contributing in our forums since the day we launched (one guy in particular who actually snuck in a month early while I was still developing the website is still a regular!).

Thankyou everyone for an absolute blast,

Chris Till
Proprietor
DVD Plaza

P.S. Please spare a moment to check out my wife's venture www.sweetcuddles.com - least we can do for everything she has poured in (and tolerated) for DVD Plaza over all these years!

P.P.S. I have already had an inquiry about our trademarks and domains (including pricecralwer.com.au, blu-ray.com.au, dvdforums.com.au, dvdplaza.com.au, etc). Yes I am open to the sale of these - go to our Contact Us page.