Santa didn't bring the 2001 DCI World Championship DVDs in time for Christmas, but they finally arrived at the circuit's offices after New Years Day.

According to Ed Dempsey, DCI spokesperson, orders will be shipped by Wednesday, January 9.

"We used all digital cameras this year," Dempsey said, which are extra-sensitive to certain visual elements like the bright lines on the field. "It gives us a higher quality, but the digital cameras pick up so much information that the video looked terrible. It started to pixelate."

At that point, DCI went back to the drawing board because the re-mastered footage didn't fit on the usual two disks.

"We had to go to a third disk and re-author," Dempsey said. It's now a three-disk set. It's still six corps; everything's identical. But on the third disk is America/O'Canada."

Adding the third cost will of course increase production costs and affect DCI's bottom line. But Dempsey said the added cost wasn't a major problem.

After making the decision to add the third disk they still had a shot at getting the popular product in Santa's sleigh, but then experienced other delays.

"The company that was pressing the disks ran into some technical difficulties," Dempsey said. "It was one thing after another. It was very, very frustrating because we knew fans wanted this before Christmas. We didn't want to send out a disk that has glitches.

"We're still taking orders," he said. "It's $98. They look and sound great. We thank the many fans that have maintained their patience during the process that was required to make sure this product is the best it can be."

>Orders can be processed through the DCI website.