Quote:
| Video looks better than film - that's a good one LOL. |
'Better' isn't a good word to describe it, but we know what he means. It looks hugely more realistic and vibrant. I'm not saying that film looks bad, since it has it's positive points. But if you put any person who isn't a knowledgeable videophile who understands the differences between film and video in front a film projection and an HD video based projection, and they would all chose the HD video presentation, because the advantages over SD content is so obvious to see.
Almost anyone among even us videoscentic who want to show off our HD systems are likely to put in something like the D-Theater demo disc or recordings of HDNet video based content, for those same reasons. I always show the D-Theater demo tape, which is all video based and which completely blows away anything else out there as demo material.
Most average folks out there could care less about the differences between film and video, and the appeal of film to film lovers. They will all gravitate towards the HD-Video based content. In fact, if you help a non-technical person set up an HD system of their own, they are very likely to complain if the first thing you demo to them is something film based. They just don't see the increased detail as particularly significant. They want to see HD-Video based content with it's vivid image.
To me, this says that film is doomed, not just because it will pretty quickly become far less convenient than high resolution video shooting (probably at higher than HD resolution for the original master copies), but because HD has made video competitive with film in terms of resolution (whereas before it was always high resolution film vs. low resolution video), and people are going to want more of it.
Though film has it's appeal, I'm not at all convinced that it was ever all that superior other than in resolution. Yes it has some technical advantages still of contrast range I guess, but that's not something that you can sell, or even really point out very well, to what will become the average HD consumer as we move fully into the HD world. Its only due to long conditioning that we see the film look as artsy and the video look as cheesy. But I think that will fall away quickly enough now that video can compete on resolution.
It may still be manipulated to some degree or another. At first they'll try to make it look like film, but I bet that that recedes over time, moving more and more towards the 'realistic' look of video. When you think about it, we buy all of this equipment to get a more realistic image, but we use a medium incapable of providing a really realistic image. If you think about it outside of the decades of film indoctrination, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
