Sound film
The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was "The Jazz Singer", released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.
The Sound of Music (film)
The film has been released on VHS, LaserDisc, and DVD numerous times. The first DVD version was released on August 29, 2000 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the film's release. The film is often included in box sets with other Rodgers & Hammerstein film adaptations. A 40th anniversary DVD, with "making of" documentaries and special features, was released on November 15, 2005. The film made its debut issue on Blu-ray Disc on November 2, 2010, for its 45th anniversary. For the Blu-ray release, the original 70 mm negatives were rescanned at 8K resolution, then restored and remastered at 4K resolution for the transfer to Blu-ray, giving the most detailed copy of the film seen thus far. On March 10, 2015, Fox Home Entertainment released "The Sound of Music 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition"—a five-disc set featuring thirteen hours of bonus features, including a new documentary, "The Sound of a City: Julie Andrews Returns to Salzburg". A March 2015 episode of ABC's 20/20 entitled "The Untold Story of the Sound of Music" featured a preview of the documentary and interviews by Diane Sawyer.