[Jeff Krepner]

Sorry to ramble... but where else can one type esoteric thoughts about niche issues???


Does anyone else feel like it's a complete waste of money to buy DVDs at this point? I assume I'll get replies from people with walls filled with DVDs and they will say that it's not a waste, and for obvious reason. But, DVD is really low quality compared to a good HD signal and with HD-DVD coming quick - why bother?. DVD is so inferior, I've avoided getting digital cable with HD because I don't want to spoil myself with HD content and then be forced to watch poopy NTSC (or PAL - Hi there Europe) signals encoded with a goofy and outdated MPEG2 compression scheme. I know that sounds dumb, and is dumb. The old adage about there's always something better/faster/cheaper just around the bend does NOT apply here. Why? NTSC has been around for 50 years and has changed little, at least in terms of signal quality. If and when HD finally becomes the standard, it will likely be the format that we will use for the rest of our lives (another 50years or so). So investing in a good HD content library makes sense. Plus, good HD is close, for all intents and purposes, to 35mm film. And pretty much everything from Gone With the Wind to the latest Olsen Twins flick is all 35mm film. So getting it to HD is natural, hell, HD is modeled after 35mm in terms of 16x9 being close to the Academy standard for most movies. With Netflix (and all the others joining) why buy DVDs right now? Other than ones you baby sit kids with and some serious can't-live-without movies, it's a waste of money. All the people with tens of thousands of dollars invested in DVDs, will have to replace the collection with HD DVD because the quality is exponentially better. Hopefully within 12 months or so we'll have HD-DVD (here in the States). I've got a boat load of LD's rotting away at home so I didn't invest heavily in DVDs, instead I rented and now Netflix. But I compared Raiders Of the Lost Ark LD to the DVD, and there is no comparison. So LD is long dead now. As is 480i DVD, in my opinion. HD-DVD, or HD-Memory Sticks, or Magic Crystals, or HD-Movie Downloads is the way to go. Of course I say this after spending another $50 bucks on the Star Wars Trilogy DVDs. In 12 months I'll buy the HD-DVD versions and can retire my Trilogy DVDs next to my two or three Laser Disc versions I have. I feel bad for those of you with 1,000's of DVDs. Maybe I'm just jealous I didn't have the money to buy them, but I sure hope you watched each and every one of those movies at least 3 or 4 times.


Sorry to ramble.


Jeff

 

[Dean Roddey]

The thing is, in 12 months you probably won't be able to buy the SWs trilogy, it might be 4 years. So for those films that are not of the sort like to get released early in the HD-DVD format (and from the studios who are likely to back the format you want to buy into), you will probably not suffer too much by buying those DVDs if you really love the content. I don't think we should expect anywhere near the speed of content release for HD-DVD as for DVD, so it could be years before you see the stuff you want. When that happens, you can just pass the DVDs on to relatives who will be even years beyond that before they make the move themselves.

 

[PooperScooper]

Like Dean said, it can be years until your favorite DVD(s) get put on HD-DVD. But who says your favorite DVD(s) will ever make to HD-DVD? We're still waiting for some movies to make it to DVD!! If HD-DVD catches on as fast as DVD, you still have a long wait for "acceptance". Also, when HD-DVD finally does make it, I don't think we will be seeing the "2 for $15" specials at BestBuy.


larry

 

[Frode]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Krepner Sorry to ramble.

Indeed. Paragraphs are your friend.

 

[mpennin30]

Jeff,


I have to disagree about the better, faster, etc. We'd be kidding ourselves if we think that HD-DVD is going to be the final format by which movies are released. IMO, technology has grown at a much more accelerated rate in the last 5 - 10 years than the 50 years prior to that. Regular TV may settle into the HD 1080i/720p format for quite some years to come just as NTSC due to the expenses involved in making such transitions. But I believe when it comes to Home Theater presentation, the bigger, better, and faster will continue to apply. There's already players and TV's that I believe (I could be wrong) that can do 1080p and probably beyond. I wouldn't be surprised to see that movies are no longer stored on DVD type discs 10 yrs from now.


I never entered the world of LD myself but I see the point you are making. The question is really one of preference: Do you prefer to wait it out for HD quality DVD movies knowing that it could be years before your favorite movies are available or do you go ahead and enjoy viewing them in the best possibly format at the time? Dean has a good point in that movies I'll want to own such as Star Wars and the Indiana Jones trilogies won't be available in HD for quite some time. I'd rather enjoy the movies now rather than wait another 5 years to do so.


Also, the issue of the competing formats plays into the picture and I know I don't want to waste money buying both players right away, as I know most consumers won't. Therefore we'll be forced to hold out until a Universal HD player is available or one of the formats wins out. And as far as I can tell, both players are supposed to be backwards-compatible with regular DVD ( I could be wrong). This would allow me to still view certain movies that I'm not exactly worried about the highest-quality presentation but still enjoy without needing to by an HD version of them. For example, I won't need an HD version of Cabin Boy or Captain Ron anytime soon but I still enjoy watching these movies from time to time at their current quality level.


How's my rambling?

 

[mossym]

exactly, if you won't buy dvds now, you shouldn't but HDDVD when they come along, because right after them will be a newer format, which will be much better...if you adopt that mentality then you will never buy anything...


also, consider this, HDDVD will probably be more expensive. DVD was really the first mainstream robust media for movies, some of the movies i own i will have no interest in a higher resloution version of them, i just want a copy i will still be able to watch. Some of my favorite movies sure i'll buy the HD versions, but my dvds will still last, not like fragile video tapes,.

 

[Taiser]

We went from a vcr with 240 lines of resolution to a laserdisc with 400? to DVD with over 500 to upscaling DVD players at 720p to 1020i to HDTV at 1020i in less than roughly 20 years.


AND for example...


I fell for the LUCAS Bullsh!t and bought "the last time ever you can see the original trilogy" on VHS only to find out it was being released with the new cuts (which I also bought on vhs ) and now I bought the new dvd trilogy.


My point?? Resolution is KING baby, when the Star Wars series is released on 10000000000000000p I'll be the first sucker in the line waiting to pick it up.


Maybe I'll settle for 10000000000p and won't upgrade after that but hey... I got a good job, cash in the bank, I don't mind spending some dough always nice to have the latest and greatest .

 

[Dean Roddey]

Don't assume that just because we made a fairly rapid jump in the last 20 years that it will continue at that pace (in terms of raw resolution.) Effectively that last 20 before HD were one single format, just delivered on a progression of formats that actually allowed us to see all the quality it was capable of delivering, and upsampling doesn't count here since it is not delivered resolution.


There are such things as discontinuous leaps, and the move to digital technology was probably one of those. It allowed us to make some moves that wouldn't have otherwise necessarily be possible. But consumer formats don't move that fast. HD will probably remain the predominant consumer format for some time to come. There may be some 'boutique' type vendors that deliver higher resolution stuff, but there frankly just isn't much of a market even in the high end right now for content that is as high as 1080p because few people have projectors that can even take it, much less resolve it.


There are 1080p based digital projectors here, lightly, and more coming I'm sure. But I don't think it's a given that those hardware vendors will run out ahead again and try to push forward a higher delivered resolution, though they can make use of higher resolutions and faster GPUs to vastly improve the actual effect of the 1080p stuff we have access to (via tricks like anti-aliasing and inter-frame interpolation and whatnot.)

 

[Gary McCoy]

I think the standard that replaces HDTV will be UHDV:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php?ID=8067


.....which is just in the prototype stage now. I predict we will first see these UHDV systems in large venues like commercial theaters, some years before the home theater equipment is affordable. A few years will pass where we home theater types snivel and complain about having to settle for coarse and clunky HDTV resolutions, then we'll be into another round of upgrades and media collection replacements.


But I do not think it will be the 20 years it took between the NTSC and ATSC standards. Perhaps 10 years tops.


Gary

 

[Frode]

While UHDV as they call it looks nice, I figure the next logical step would be trying to achieve affordable 3d projection. So far one of the main problems has been one of cost. With HD cameras coming down in price it should be much easier to facilitate 3d filming. The one remaining barrier is creating a good display device. HD resolution 3d would I feel be far more realistic than UHDV 2d projection.

 

[solderguy]

UHDV?? I thought HDTV was already near the resolution limits of human vision?

 

[Sc0rp10n]

i just read an article about that guy who does the film restoration and archival - the guy who did it for star wars original trilogy. he said that 35mm film is approximately 4000 horizontal lines of resolution. as far as buying the same old movies over and over and over, once we reach 4000 (we're at 720 and 1080 with HD currently) they really can't get any more detail out of the original film negatives sitting in the vaults in hollywood.


now keep in mind that movies projected on a huge movie screen in a theater are approximately 4000 lines of resolution. do you really need that much on a 62" television screen in your house? no. i don't know if we're going to settle on 1080p or not, but i think HD will be here for a LONG time as a standard.

 

[Frode]

Neither UHDV nor HDTV is anywhere close to the limits of human vision .

 

[HDeviant]

Number one, you have the conn, I'll be in the Holodeck watching Star Trek in 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000P!

 

[Dean Roddey]

Quote:

Neither UHDV nor HDTV is anywhere close to the limits of human vision

Actually, they are pretty close, when you view them from the distance that they are designed for, because the resolution was chosen based on typical viewing distances and the ability of the human eye to resolve detail.


The digital and compressed nature of the delivery medium adds artifacts that reduces the real delivered resolution, but the resolving capabilities of the eye are well understood and at the typical screen size at the typical viewing distance (i.e. not those of us who have big screens and sit too close to them, so maybe a 32" screen at 14'), you couldn't begin to see all the detail in a 1080p image even if the display could resolve it all cleanly and it was completely uncompressed.


And even without delivering more actual resolution, if we had very fast GPUs and a display device with say 2x 1080p, you could start to get the fully theoretical quality of 1080p (using various processing tricks) and it would look absolutely wonderful on a big screen.


Of course, we are having this argument when most of the stuff we'll be seeing is filmed at 24f/s, which is completely unrealistic looking anyway.

 

[thebland]

To your point, I am a firm believer in owning as little software as needed...It is a waste. Me...I prefer to use tha money for system upgrades!

 

[Art Sonneborn]

I have a pretty full shelf and I love to be able to go there when I want and pull out a favorite. DVDs are no investment anyway. I don't buy DVDs with the thought of their depreciation or appreciation but the convenience of having them when I want. I bet if I picked my 25 favorite films I won't see most of them for at least five years. Many of the pre 1953 group perhaps longer. Many Bogart films for example are just coming out in DVD. Let's see 1997- 2004 that's a long time. If I had an unlimited life span perhaps . I enjoy the ones I have if they have a superior brother be it superbit, DTheater or Blu Ray disc, and it's one I love, I'll buy it.


Art

 

[vballer]

I think it will take a while before HD DVD becomes critical mass like DVDs currently are. The transition from VHS to DVD was fairly easy, since all that was needed was a DVD player for a relatively low price. The transition to HD DVD is going to take longer because people now have to buy new TV sets *and* new DVD players.


Most of us here on this forum think this is no big deal, but I like to think that we here are the minority as far as buying A/V gear, even if the price of these items are coming down daily.

 

[hoyalawya]

I still buy DVD but have completely stopped double-dipping since the beginning of the year. Negligible improvement in PQ, except from non-anamorphic to anamorphic, just is not worth it (to me) anymore.

 

[thebland]

Quote:

Originally posted by thebland To your point, I am a firm believer in owning as little software as needed...It is a waste. Me...I prefer to use tha money for system upgrades!

I say this after buying 5 D-Theatertapes today....