After almost a year, still glad to be sitting out format war (1 Viewer)

[Qui-Gon John]

And don't forget, many SD-DVD's, on the displays people have, the picture looks a lot better than what they see in the theater. Especially factoring in marks and blemishes on the prints.

 

[JonZ]

"you hit the nail on the head! I think most HTFers are technology fans rather than movies fans. That is an observation, NOT a judgement. While I like a pristine and perfect print as much as the next guy, it's the MOVIE I'm interested in. If I'm watching, say, Scarlet Street, I'm so engrossed in the film that I can live with scratches, grain, occasional pops etc."

I agree. I remember defending MGM a few years back and taking a beating because people werent happy with alot of their releases while I said was happy to have a rare movie on DVD for $9(at the time paramount was still charging $25 for non16x9 discs). I agree. I just stopped watching VHS about about 2 years ago because movies I had alot of movies I loved that I didnt have on DVD(going region free got me jsut about everything I wanted) and to me, the movie was what was the mot important. Sure Id want to watch it in the best A&V possible. But I wasnt gonna let a inferior copy stop me from watching a movie I loved.


Having said all that. I think the $400 I invested in a player was WELL worth it and I dont regret it at all. Watching some of my favorite movies in HD is wonderful.

Also since HD isnt region coded you can get some BD exclusives on HD from overseas.

 

[Sammy-G]

I'm with you. I'd say about 85% of the titles I'm interested in were released before 1950 or so, so I'm used to and perfectly ok with viewing a film that's not in crystal-clear condition.

And don't worry, I'm 24 and I don't have a cell phone or an iPod either.

 

[Richard Kim]

nevermind.

 

[Mike*HTF]

I agree with many of the posts and have no intention of (and even something of an aversion to) diving into the middle of a format war. Like Serena, I mainly buy classics and with the exception of Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood which I hear look great on HD, there is very little to make me feel like I'm "missing out" on anything. For one thing, the supplements are still almost all in SD so the whole thing feels like it's still in transition. In fact, even on SD DVD it hasn't been until the last year or so that we really started seeing the rarer titles appear. Price point of the hardware is another issue.

 

[Mark Oates]

While I like the idea of HD in general, my initial experiences have been less than thrilling. The UK is a good two years (at least) behind the US and Japan in the uptake of HD in general. While the displays are becoming cheaper, they are 720p rather than 1080p - the few sets capable of showing full 1080 (i or p) are still at a premium price. The displays are also a lot larger than I'm certainly accustomed to and I'm not sure I'd feel overwhelmed in my current viewing position by a 37" screen.

There is very little HD content available as well. Unless you buy into Rupert Murdoch's empire there is scant material on offer, and HD-DVD and Blu-ray have yet to make much impact on the High Street, especially with players currently between five and ten times the price of their SD DVD counterparts.

I was planning to upgrade to an HDready display this year, but I may hang on to the cash and have it do my bank account more good than the local Currys store.

 

[Doug^Ch]

Mirrors my situation almost exactly. I will say though that with a projector and an eight foot or larger image, most standard dvds just don't cut it- especially after seeing how great the movie can look in HD. On a 50 inch or smaller television, a well mastered standard dvd is more than adequate and will be the standard for years to come.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

It depends a lot on the projector. My projector - an Infocus 4805 - has a native resolution of 480p, so it doesn't have to scale SD-DVD sources at all. While I admit that HD-DVD provides perceived increased detail on wide shots, and slightly better color saturation, many of my current SD-DVD's still look stunning 10 feet back from my 92" 16:9 screen.

 

[JohnPhi]

Nice to see I am not alone in my thoughts. I just now upgraded my HT with a new onkyo home theatre system. Now I have the joy of actually watching movies iwth stellar sound. I had a nice system a few years ago that died and I could only afford to replace it with a crappy pannosonic ht in a box that actually had all speakers plugged into the subwoofer.....LOL oh the agony

Anyway, until all the spielbergs, star wars and Indy films start to get announced, I feel no rush.

 

[Yumbo]

That is a COMPLETE myth!
HD on 32" is just as impressive as 185" projected, which I have both plus 50".
HD is a greater improvement over SD, than DVD over VHS ever was.

Anything new in Rundle Mall?

 

[Ric Easton]

I would like to take exception with this one comment. It is because I am a movie fan first that I want widescreen versions of widescreen films! And yeah, back in the VHS days if there was a widescreen version available, thqat's the one that I bought.

I do love technology, but only in so much as it lets me get closer to the perfect movie experience at home.

That said, I am still very happy with DVD and will wait out the format war until it's over.

 

[PaulP]

I watch my DVDs on a 106-inch screen, on which I also watch HDTV, and I'm fully content with that. I'm using the very good upconverting Oppo player and DVD video and audio quality is fine by me. Surely, HD is sharper, but mainly on new titles. Watching Back to the Future on HDNet recently, it didn't look very HD to me, fairly soft. Additionally, the main draw of DVDs for me is and was in the late 1990s the extras. Since extras on HD titles are mostly still in SD (not that they need to be in HD anyway), I'm in no big hurry.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I think we all agree regarding the movie fan stuff.

 

[Jason Borchers]

.

 

[ReggieW]

Well,

I don't think there will be an "obvious" winner of the HD format war until one of them is able to take a nice bite out of the SD-DVD pie.

I really don't see this happening anytime soon.

I think what is being missed is that YES, you can definitely see the benefit of HD content - even on a sub 30-inch display. However, we are actually talking about the "PERCEIVED" step up from SD-DVD to HD media among the general populace. To them, going from VHS to DVD was like going from LP to CD, and we know all of these advantages were HUGE from the consumers perspective. They now see an optical HD disc media which doesn't provide any real benefit to them, as many of these consumers probably just bought HDTV's within the last two years after coming from sub 30-inch 4x3 displays and are enjoying the hell out of their regular DVD collection. The HD players are several times more expensive than SD players and the discs are twice as expensive (on average). The consumer may feel that it just isn't worth the extra effort at this juncture and may feel a bit overwhelmed: 720p, 1080i, 1080p, Dolby true HD, DD plus, PCM, HDMI 1.2, HDMI1.3a, etc; etc;

Get the picture?

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

As for my own approach to upgrading: I was and still am a fan of Disney animation. Several years ago (early-middle 90s) I had a number of titles on VHS, but at one point I concluded that the VHS format really wasn't sufficient - and I had at that time really nothing else in particular to compare it to. Then, suddenly, I discovered laserdisc. I perceived that as a major improvement and collected a number of those giant discs for a few years until they were no more... Then I was "forced" into DVDs. From the start (and that wasn't until 2000 for me) DVDs seemed like a slight, but hardly major improvement over LD on my screen (which is admittedly a small one by HTF standards). I don't doubt that a HD format is better and if it catches on I'm sure I'll buy eventually. I'll probably keep most of my "old" DVDs. I've still got my LDs. I think I can live with more than one format and probably won't start replacing "everything" when the next format arrives in my house. With hundreds of titles on the shelves I'm not even sure I'll ever get to watch all of them again - even though most of them are definitely rewatch-worthy.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I gotta say NO FRACKIN' WAY!

MOving from VHS to SD-DVD, not only did you get a major improvement in picture and audio, you got a much more durable media, (never had a DVD get garbled up in the player or rewinder). As well as the ability to go to any point in the movie, and on most titles a whole bunch of extras you didn't have on VHS. Plus the ability to show subtitles and change the audio to a variety of languages.

Now SD to HD, what, a better picture, maybe a bit better audio. For that you gotta shell out for new players, displays and media with less content (at this stage) than most SD DVD's.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I'm enjoying my classic films more now than ever with my Toshiba HDA2 player's superior upconversion--it even pillarboxes 4/3 movies. Warner especially has put out some excellent HD versions of older films, and there are some titles such as Grand Prix and Mutiny on the Bounty that, while not necessarily classic cinema, are great examples of the grandeur of Hollywood "Road Show" epics of the 60s.

I would agree that the difference between a well mastered SD dvd and an HD DVD or BD is not as great as that between VHS and dvd, not by a long shot.

That being said, those assuming that HD DVD and BD picture quality is comparable to broadcast HD are making a mistake. The two HD optical disc formats (with the exeption of a few early BD releases) don't exhibit any of the compression artifacts, macroblocking, or picture smear that HD broadcast does. Until one has experienced Seabiscuit in HD DVD or Kingdom of Heaven on BD, one has not seen what HDTV is truly capable of.

 

[Simon Howson]

I agree with your post. For a discerning viewer there is a diffierence on even medium size screens, but is that enough for the average consumer to buy a new player and new discs of films that are already owned? Especially when the display they currently own isn't even calibrated properly?

I personally think that going to a progressive scan DVD player was a significant difference if you were interested in good image quality. But many people are stilling watching DVDs on displays that don't even work with progressive scan.

HD is a format for big screens, that is the whole point of using more resolution to present a bigger image without lowering image quality.

 

[Yumbo]

All things being equal, there is nothing wrong with projecting SD at 185".
The same effect is achieved projecting HD at 185".

Parallel results at 50". Display size is relative. Resolution is NOT.

When I say HD over SD is greater than DVD over VHS, I'm talking about picture resolution jump.

240 VHS
480 DVD
1080 HD

Multiply that by horizontal resolution, and the effect is even greater!