DIGITAL L.A. : SHORTAGE OF OUTLETS CARRYING DVD MOVIES CREATES NICHE.

Byline: David Bloom 

The rise of DVD as a way to watch home movies has been slowed in its initial months by a lack of titles in the high-quality format. But with nearly 1,500 titles (not counting X-rated fare, which is booming by all accounts), that's becoming less and less of a problem.

Except for one thing: Where are you going to find a place that sells a decent selection of those available titles? A good video store may have 10,000 movies on VHS tape. But few stores carry even a smattering of what's available on DVD, because there aren't enough players in homes for them to make money with rentals.

It's a classic chicken-and-egg technology problem, but one that Marc Randolph thinks he can solve. Two months ago, Randolph opened NetFlix, an online service that rents and sells all the available non-X-rated DVD titles, ranging from blockbusters to Hong Kong karate films.

NetFlix charges $4 for a seven-day rental, plus $2 shipping that includes a handy postage-paid return-mail envelope, for a single title. Rent more at one time, the price drops for each additional title. And if you like the movie enough to keep it, rental charges will count toward the $19.95 purchase price.

Randolph would like his company, based in the Santa Cruz area, to become the Amazon.com of DVD. To this end, he is using many of the same techno tricks, such as software to make purchase recommendations, extensive background information on each movie, and the ability to look for titles in many ways, including by the film's type, its actors or director.

``The Web allows you to draw associations between films in millions of ways,'' Randolph said. ``You can do it in very personal ways, based on what matters to you'' rather than what matters to a store manager organizing displays.

Randolph is betting that DVD will eventually replace videotapes as the way to watch home movies and other entertainment. It's more durable, has much higher audio and video quality, and can provide a delightful array of special features.

Randolph said his decision not to carry X-rated titles is a practical one because of uncertainties with obscenity laws in some states, especially since the federal Communications Decency Act was thrown out of court.

``I don't need (the adult film titles) and at this point, I'll just let things sort out,'' Randolph said. ``What I'm avoiding is the district attorney in Kentucky who gets behind in the polls and files a case against me, and I have to fly my high-priced lawyers down there to deal with it.''

The company does sell some NC-17 films and the R-rated shows created by Playboy and some others that typically run late at night on cable television.

Even there, NetFlix worked with an industry trade group to figure out which ZIP codes lie in problem areas. Software in the NetFlix system automatically blocks sales or rentals even of those titles in those areas, just to be sure.

To try out NetFlix, go to its Web site at www.netflix.com.

No need to buy it

One of the unexpected pleasures of the massive J. Paul Getty Museum of Art is its substantial involvement in decidedly post-modern technology that may affect the art world.

One recent example is the ``Transarchitectures'' seminar, which drew together some of the top brains in fields as diverse as architecture, game design, literature and sociology to talk about building virtual communities.

William Mitchell, the dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Design, gave a terrific keynote speech on how much a post-industrial society, with more people able to work from their homes in a distributed economy, will look a lot more like pre-industrial society, with its artisans living and working in the same mixed-use neighborhoods.

But he also drew some chuckles in talking about his experiences online, particularly with bookseller Amazon.com and its personalized recommendation software.

The first time Amazon.com gave him a recommendation, Mitchell said, it suggested he buy ``City of Bits; Space, Place and the Infobahn.'' The author: William Mitchell.

``I think they need to introduce an extra loop into the software to check for authors,'' Mitchell said wryly.

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Photo: Nearly 1,500 movies, including ``L.A. Confidential,'' are available on DVD format.