The time is right for high-def DVDs
By Kevin C. Tofel 
posted Dec 26th 2005 11:20AM
posted Dec 26th 2005 11:20AM
All of the high-def DVD format focus is
on the war; will Blu-Ray be the victor or will HD-DVD make a comeback. What all of the involved parties need to do
is step back and look at the big picture because I think they're missing it. HDTV sales are at an all-time high and
growing. Here in the United States, we now have a hard-date for the DTV
transition of February 17, 2009. Our daily programming posts
generally indicate more and more high-def content available to the consumer. All of these signs point to a huge boon
for high-def DVDs, but instead, both sides are bickering like it's Betamax vs. VHS all over again.Manufacturers and production studios: listen up: the time for some concessions is now. The longer you bicker, the more confusion you'll create to your potential customer base. These folks ulimately don't care which format is in their player or who has more storage. The public is simply mesmerized by the 1920 x
Read
its 1980 x 1080 not 1980
It seems the average person doesn't even notice the difference between VHS and DVD, so the general public probably won't notice the diference with SDTV and HDTV. We have (gulp) Gilligan's Island on standard DVD, and even now we can see Mary Ann's moustache (slight but still there) on SDTV! How much more resolution do we really need?
Don't get me wrong, we watch newer TV shows and movies too, but for most people the improved quality isn't noticable even with a screen a good bit larger than 42 or 60 inches. We have a Canon SX50 projector connected to our computer, and our picture measures 128" diagnal. For our "Higher-Demand" pictures (LOTR, Star Wars, Disney's Dinosaur, ect...) we buy the DVDs from Australia or England, PAL encoding, with about 100 more lines of resolution. Many people can see quite a difference between the two of them (I do), but most don't (go figure?..).
Check any search engine with "UMD sales". To my surprise, the sales are skyrocketing, they have lower video quality than DVDs and are comparable to VHS! Look at I-pod videos, and many do! After watching that stuff, anything looks HD!
Most people don't need or care about the higher quality HDTV anyway, and if they 'think' they are seeing HD and are satisfied - fine!
So many of these lousy LCD, DLP, plasma and projection TVs make HDTV look worse than SDTV from a CTR, it's another reason why people can't tell the diference.
There's a Circuit City next to where I work, and I pop in now and then on my lunch break to view the expensive junk with no intent to buy them.
This format war is more like a pro-wrestling match. We the viewer are the only ones being fooled. Neither studio wants this 'war' to end. The proliferation of TV series on DVD and the incredible growth that it has fueled in the DVD marketplace has created a massive revenue boost for the studios. The longer the installed base of current generation DVD's remains profitable and people are buying all the TV series from the last 50 years on current DVD's, the more people will spend to upgrade those collections.
The best thing consumers can do to impact the next generation of DVD standards is to start massively pirating existing DVD's. Attack the revenue stream. But this is not likely to happen so we'll all have to wait this out until the market sees an reason to compromise and introduce the new standard.
Actually it's 1920x1080... but whatever... I need my HD content!