Hollywood — As technology issues resolve and DVD-player penetration levels soar to 20 million households (with another 10 million expected by year's end) in the United States, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel for fans looking for their favourite films not yet available on DVD.

Topping Amazon.com's most-wanted DVDs list — compiled from customer requests — are George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the three Indiana Jones films (which are Lucas/Steven Spielberg collaborations), and Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future and Schindler's List. Both Lucas and Spielberg have hesitated to release their best films on DVD until the format gained a foothold in the market.

According to Universal, E.T. may be phoning home next spring. The movie will be re-released in theatres to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and Universal Studios Home Video president Craig Kornblau promises a DVD release will soon follow. "Our approach is to create an event ideally around an anniversary of a film or re-release like E.T.," Kornblau explains. "We don't want to just throw a DVD title out there."

Last summer, Universal released a special-edition DVD of Jaws in tandem with the film's 25th anniversary and shipped more than one million units, according to the studio. Kornblau says that both Back to the Future and Schindler's List are on the studio's DVD release schedule, although he declined to give specifics.

Lucasfilms Ltd., which controls the rights to the Star Wars films, has hinted that Lucas may release the movies in order, starting with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. That title is due on Oct. 16 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The older titles are episodes four, five and six. "We're not sure what the current plan is, but if it's [to release them] chronologically, we'll have a fair wait," says Peter Staddon, Fox's senior vice-president of sell-through marketing. "Lucas is his own man and will develop his own plan."

Paramount Home Entertainment, which distributed the Indiana Jones series on VHS, is still waiting for a green light on a DVD release. Michael Arkin, senior vice-president of marketing, says, "That will be a mutual decision, and we'd never make a move without Spielberg's or Lucas' input."

While Spielberg and Lucas have delayed releases until the market was ripe, other directors, such as Francis Ford Coppola, have waited for the technology to improve. "I'm a fan of DVD, but in the format's early days, they didn't have the authoring process down," says Coppola, who held off releasing The Godfather trilogy until this year. The five-disc set (containing three hours of bonus footage) arrives on Oct. 9 from Paramount Home Entertainment. (Coppola's revisited version of his 1979 classic Apocalypse Now, which opened in theatres on Friday as Apocalypse Now Redux, is scheduled for a November DVD release from Paramount.) According to industry sources, Coppola was not satisfied with any of the authoring and compression companies available when he began shopping for a facility to digitize the film several years ago. In the end, he built his own facility in Northern California, as part of his Zoetrope production company.