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  3. Forget Harry Potter. No matter that the film about this schoolboy with magic powers broke all box-office records on its opening

Forget Harry Potter. No matter that the film about this schoolboy with magic powers broke all box-office records on its opening

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问题     Forget Harry Potter. No matter that the film about this schoolboy with magic powers broke all box-office records on its opening weekend, taking $ 94 m in the United States and $ 23 m in Britain, the truly momentous phenomenon in the film industry is not a pre-pubescent wizard but a humble circular piece of plastic：the digital versatile disc (DVD).
    Next year, for the first time, sales of movies in DVD format are forecast to outsell those on video cassette in America, reaching a total of $ 9. 5 billion, according to Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. Already, 80% of American households have DVD players. With a DVD recorder now in the shops as well, something that can record from the TV as well as play the discs, Christmas sales are expected to be strong. A technology considered a flop when it was launched in 1997 is now the basis for the fastest-growing consumer appliance ever.
    Some in the film business complain that people are simply buying DVDs instead of video cassettes; there is no net gain. Yet DVDs can do things that the cassette cannot, such as offer a choice of language in which to watch a movie, not to mention a clearer picture. And the studios have cleverly stuffed DVDs full of lively extra features, such as new clips or interviews with the director.
    Moreover, people appear to want to build up collections of DVDs, rather as they do of recorded music. The DVD is steadily gaining shelf space, even in the movie-rental store, and it should overtake (赶上，追上) the cassette even there within three years. And shops like DVDs, not least because they take up less space. The DVD could well boost the size of the overall home-video market.
    Already, recent releases on DVD, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Star Wars Episode One, have sold millions of copies each. At a time when any revenue growth in the media industry is startling, DVD sales at AOL Time Warner jumped by 44% in the third quarter this year, compared with the same period of 2000, to $ 279 m.
    But how lasting will the DVD effect be? Some 80% of a film’s revenue comes from its distribution after the cinema release：to home video, pay-TV and the like. "The largest single portion of that revenue will be the DVD business," says Christopher Dixon of UBS Warburg, an investment bank, which in turn will help to reduce the risk involved in making movies. "The DVD is the most exciting development in the film industry," he adds, "but every eight years there has been a new distribution platform in the entertainment business. None of them lasts forever. "
When launched in 1997, DVD recorder was considered______.
选项 A、technological breakthrough
B、momentous phenomenon in the film industry
C、total failure
D、the fastest growing consumer appliance
答案C
解析 词汇题。本题考查对flop一词的理解，主要根据上下文来理解。在第二段结尾部分，根据上下文可知，DVD机在圣诞节会卖得很好，而这一技术在1997年推出时被认为是flop，现在已成为增长最快的家用电器，由此可知本句前后两部分是转折关系，所以flop一词肯定表示不好的意思，所以C最有可能。flop意为“失败”。
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