avi-nn.narod.ru was the personal page of a Nizhny Novgorod collector of films in MPG4 and DivX format, hosted on the free narod.ru service from 2003. The site was named exactly as it described itself: "MPG4 and DivX films that I have on CD. Nizhny Novgorod"[1]. The owner gave the city and contact details right on the front screen: "N.Novgorod — tel. 8-29051426," pager 303000 subscriber 9051426, mail avi-nn@narod.ru[1]. No company stood behind the project: it was one person's private collection, posted publicly as a list.

What was on the home page

The page opened with a brief self-description: "I try to collect only hit films in good quality, so to speak — blockbusters on license :)," as the home page put it[1]. Below that was the launch date — "The site started on 30.01.2003" — and a promise: "The list of films will be constantly added to"[1]. There was a link "Other collections"[1].

There was no direct offer to sell or trade on the page. That the collection lived for more than its owner's own use is suggested by three things: the phone and pager numbers given, a "Have in reserve (on the hard drive)" section, and a "Need films" section — a list of what the owner was missing[3].

How the list was arranged

Most of the site was taken up by a table with columns: title, actor or director, running time, translation, size, and "type — genre"[1]. The main list held more than a hundred titles[3].

The list's value today lies in fields that no one but the collector kept. The "translation" column distinguished "Dubbed," "Voice-over," "Sync," as well as original soundtracks — French for "Notre-Dame de Paris" and English for "Tom and Jerry"[3]. The "size" column gave the picture resolution: from 352x288 for "Sniper" and "Hackers" to 696x512 for "Runaway Bride"[3]. Two-disc releases were marked separately — "The Lord of the Rings 1 (2 CD)," "Pearl Harbor 2 CD," "Back to the Future 4 CD 2 parts," "The Three Musketeers 3 CD"[3]. The same films appeared twice in the list when versions differed: "The Matrix" — in voice-over translation with 680x312 picture and in dubbed with 640x288[3].

The genre labels were homemade: alongside the familiar "Action," "Comedy," "Cartoon," and "Sci-Fi" one found "Extreme" for "Vertical Limit," "Hist. Battle" for "The Patriot" and "Braveheart," "Philosophical" for the film "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"[3]. The owner did not fix typos — "Irony of Ftae," "Ice Aeg," "Die Hrad 1-2" remained in the table as is[3]. Alongside American blockbusters sat Soviet and Russian films marked "Rus.": "Kin-dza-dza," "Heart of a Dog," "An Ordinary Miracle," "The Formula of Love — Count Cagliostro," "Treasure Island," "Well, Just You Wait! (1 disc — 18 episodes)," "Peculiarities of the National Hunt"[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod The Internet

The site made it into the directory of the nn.ru catalog, from which its catalog description is also taken — it repeats the home page's title word for word. According to our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating data, avi-nn.narod.ru's Counter.nn.ru figure stood at 23 — 655th place out of 1,046 catalog entries with a non-zero rating, against a median value of 42. In other words, the page sat noticeably below the middle: a small home page, not a notable node of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

In the results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2004 vote, avi-nn.narod.ru does not appear — no votes for it were recorded[4].

Nineteen years without a single edit

The owner never kept the promise to keep adding to the list. The surviving fragment of the earliest snapshot, from April 4, 2003[1], matches word for word the text of the snapshot from March 30, 2022[2]: the same contacts, the same pager, the same start date, the same order of films. The page stood on narod.ru for nineteen years in the form it had taken in its first weeks of existence — the collection stopped roughly at "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Ice Age," that is, at films from 2002.

The last known snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated October 4, 2022[3]; a check of the domain showed the site no longer loads. A third-level address on a free hosting service cannot be resold, so avi-nn.narod.ru has no new owner: the page simply vanished along with the platform that hosted it.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2022 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, October 2022 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote results, 2004 (archive)