A redesigned user interface and professional-level tools bolster authoring capabilities. By Jeff Sauer, Aug 1, 2004 If there's one DVD creation application that turned the tide of authoring from daunting to drag-and-drop simplicity, and from exclusivity to something everyone could do, it would have to be Sonic's original DVDit! Introduced some five years ago for a then-measly $500, DVDit! was a tenth of the price of the nearest competitor. More than that, it was an intuitive-to-use, dramatic departure from authoring's status quo. Apple's 2001 launch of iDVD was a tidal wave in the democratization of DVD, but it was a year and a half earlier when DVDit! first opened the DVD floodgates. Five years later, DVDit! is in its fifth revision, but you'd hardly have known it unless you've been following very closely. Since its bold introduction, DVDit! has sloshed only in the shallow waters of the DVD pond, for the most part superceded by other products both the higher and the lower end. It has wallowed in a product line swelled by Sonic's acquisition and gasped for breath amidst falling DVD authoring prices and rising feature sets. Click here to read the complete Video Systems review