What If There Was a Format War and Nobody Cared?

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/but-i-already-have-a-dvd-player' target='_blank'>http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/but-i-already-have-a-dvd-player</a><br /><br /></div><i>"If I were in charge, I’d stop listening to engineers who talk about upconverting, deinterlacing, and resolution and start listening to my wife, friends, and strangers. They don’t care and you don’t have enough marketing budget to make them care. Find something to add to your player/format that will capture the imagination of the public. Because if you don’t, all you’re selling is a fancy DVD player. And everyone already has a DVD player."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/whywhocaressowhat.jpg" /><br /><br />If you've been following the high-def "war", Tom Andry's article over at Audioholics is a must read. Sales of high-def discs haven't skyrocketed because nobody cares. To most consumers it's "just another disc". Which is precisely why this fight is going to drag on forever. More importantly, sales of HD discs are going to pale in comparison to HD On Demand and HD movie downloads.

[jeffd]

Id say the biggest hurddle for HD movies is that unlike DVD, you need a new TV, an expensive TV. DVD players started expensive, but anyone with a TV larger then 20 inches could easily see the quality improvement over VHS.

HD is quite a bit different, player prices are high, and a GOOD HD tv is even higher.

[RichL]

Amen.

Look at the sales of SACD and DVD-A discs. Great quality audio and what did consumers decide they want? Compressed MP3...

[Jeremy Charette]

Id say the biggest hurddle for HD movies is that unlike DVD, you need a new TV, an expensive TV.

How many people are going to buy a fancy new player, hook it up to an SDTV using composite cables, and wonder why the picture isn't any better than the DVD player they already have? Plenty. It's already happening with the PS3. Those consumers are going to spread dis-information about the clarity of HD, and prevent even more consumers from making the switch.

Me, I just signed up for NetFlix so I can get a few new HD DVDs every week. :D

[Chris Gohlke]

The difference over DVD was more than I expected. I compared the HD version of King Kong to the normal DVD and noticed a big difference. It seemed like the bigger difference were in the brighter scenes. In those the HD just seemed much more vibrant while in comparison, the normal DVD seemed washed out. I've got too many DVD's to consider replacing them all, but the Star Trek/Wars movies and LOTR are on my short list for when they are available. Of course I have added a bunch of movies I own that are in HD to my Blockbuster queue.

[Felix Torres]

The difference over DVD was more than I expected. I compared the HD version of King Kong to the normal DVD and noticed a big difference. It seemed like the bigger difference were in the brighter scenes. In those the HD just seemed much more vibrant while in comparison, the normal DVD seemed washed out. I've got too many DVD's to consider replacing them all, but the Star Trek/Wars movies and LOTR are on my short list for when they are available. Of course I have added a bunch of movies I own that are in HD to my Blockbuster queue.

1- King Kong was mastered in VC-1 which has a wider dynamic range than MPEG2; one of the reasons Sony and the BD crowd had to suck it in and drop MPEG2. Try comparing a regular DVD vs an SD D/L from Video Marketplace one of these days; you'll see a similar difference. DS9 looks great in that form.

2- If your TV is 1080p with zero overscan, you get no video scaling in the display; just a straight mapping of the signal from player. It doesn't matter if its 1080p or 1080i as long as there is no overscan. For quite a while, a lot of PDP owners maintained that ED was better than HD for a similar reason; no scaling is always better than any kind of scaling, no matter how good the processing.