Why are people so worried?

Why are people so worried about the mythical HD DVD. There will always be a new format on the horizon. If you keep waiting you will never enjoy your favorite music/movies. Enjoy today, worry tomorrow.

P.S. First one to post in the brand new forum, WOOO HOOO!

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DDS#003

[This message has been edited by ABC (edited 08-18-1999).]

This is not laserdisc vs DVD. There's not one format vs the other. We have a 5" optical disc. We have digital MPEG2 video. Any future HD-DVD player will read today's red-laser SD-DVD's. Allow me to ramble for a moment. Peter, please make note of these comments as the tone of your article may mislead some people:

1. When blue-laser technology becomes viable for consumer use, we will indeed get hi-def movies stored on 5" discs. They will be HD-DVD's.

2.The players that become availalbe to read these HD-DVD's will also play today's red-laser DVD's, as well as standard CD's. They will be multi-format players (heck, they'll probably also play DVD-audio discs, Sony's DSD discs, and have digital fire-wire connections).

3.Those future HD-DVD players will have selectable output resolution for HD-software, so you could, for instace, play HD-DVD's and watch them in 480i on your NTSC 4x3 set.

4.Those future HD-DVD players will also have selectable resolution output for today's red-laser DVD's, so you could watch today's DVD's in 480P or upconverted to 720P or 1080I on your HDTV.

5.Just because a format becomes available doesn't mean every studio will suddenly release every title on it. Think about Disney's resistance just to give us animated titles as well as the resolution of 16x9 on red-laser DVD!!!

6.Bottom line? This is not a format war. It won't be a format war. There's no phenomenon of 'buying into' DVD only to be 'burned' when HD-DVD comes out.

It's a DVD *player* war. Don't spend thousands on a stupid Faroudja DVD player or a THX Pioneer DVD player today that just output cheezy 480I. Just spend hundreds on a nice little red-laser 480I DVD player. The future has an HD-DVD player with your name on it that will upconvert all your red-laser DVD's with near-HDTV quality. Then the debate will be when the studios will work through the copyright so we can watch our HD-DVD collection in native 1080P.

-DaViD Boulet

DaVid,

I think that most people are worried about the laserdisc syndrome, where many of us spent thousands of dollars on movies in laserdisc format, only to have it become yesterday's news when the new kid DVD came out.

Many of us already have thousands of dollars in DVD movie librarys, and with so little concrete news about HD-DVD, the future is still uncertain. So the questions are when will this new HD technology be available, how much will it cost, and will there be any good movies available in the new format.

While it would be a very wise move to make the HD-DVD players backward comaptible, I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion.
Many manufacturers want to sell new, and sell again. So we will have to see if wisdom overrides greed here.

And on the same lines, there is no fixed media standard for HD-DVD yet, not even firm guidelines, so there could be a Beta/VHS standards war, or a group of manufacturers could agree on a standard, and then an upstart could later add a competing product (like DIVX did).

Also, as you mentioned, just like with laserdisc and DVD, many of the studios don't want their best movie moneymakers available to the public in perfect high resolution digital form.

So depending on how well the new DTV hardware copyprotection technologies are, we will have to wait and see how the studios respond with HD movie availability.

Personally, the potential of HD-DVD hasn't curbed my appetite for buying DVDs, with so many great movie titles becoming available at affordable prices.

With DVD rental being more and more common, it's easy to just rent all of the marginal DVD titles, and buy the DVDs that you will watch over and over.

When HD-DVD does finally become available, I will be happy to sell my current DVD versions to buy my favorite movies in HD format.

In the meantime my DVDs are providing me with the best looking home video picture and sound quality that I have seen so far.

-Dean.

Well, I think a reason some are worried is that part of the reason some have been hesitant to jump into DVD is because they are waiting for HD DVD.

I will drop this here before I print it early next week...I will be posting some news via Rick McCallum and Lucasfilm that they are not dong the Star Wars Trilogy AT ALL on DVD, instead opting to wait until HD DVD arrives.

So, that is why some people are worried about HD-DVD...

: )

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Peter M. Bracke
Editor

Peter,

OUCH! That hurts!

..and yet, maybe I should be celebrating.
The one missing piece of the puzzle is the timeframe. Since we have heard nearly zilch from the manufacturers about actual HD-DVD products.

If they are talking about releasing HD-DVD products next year, and Star Wars to make it a BIG splash, then I couldn't be happier, but if Lucas is still talking about 2006, it's an insult.

I can understand waiting for a mature market for DVD, and I can understand the natural fears of digital piracy, waiting for hardware copyprotection to become standardized.

But if the release is more than a year away, it's a foul plan.

Thanks for the news!
A New Hope.
-Dean.

There are posts on another forum, by someone who is apparently "close" to Lucas and Spielberg, saying that those two are waiting for DVD18 to mature before they release SW along with releasing them all after the second trilogy is finished. It was a foregone conclusion that they would be appearing on DVD. This same person called SPR before it became known, and says that Indiana Jones movies will be on DVD early next year. It was also mentioned by this person that there are going to be "hours and hours" of extra footage in each of the star wars movies (hence DVD18). A moderater (it's at the htf) vouched for person posting, too.


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Babe looked out across this vast habitat, abundant with humans and other creatures, and wondered when he would see his first sheep. Then the thought occurred to him: Maybe it wasn't sheepherding. Maybe something else was required of him. Whatever the case, in this place with its dark corners and endless possibilities, the pig felt sure he would find a way to redeem himself.

Timeframe?
Cost?
Media?
Bugs/Glitches?

I can't worry about things I cannot control. Enjoy DVD, heck I still enjoy vinyl. There has always been and always will be something better.

I like the thought of HD-DVD. But it still scares me to think that another format is already being mentioned when DVD just came out. Look how long VHS has been around, it sounds like DVD won't be given the chance. Although it is hard for the mainstream public to change formats. S-VHS was an improvement to VHS and look how far it got.
So I guess I shouldn't worry...

[Rock]

The Rock is not exactly worried, but if people like Lucas are holding off because of a format that isn't really that close to being a reality, then he is disappointed.

That is, The Rock is going to go ahead and buy and rent DVD's without a second thought. But, since HD-DVD is basically just an "on-paper" thing, sorta like Playstation 2, it is a bummer that certain titles may not be available on DVD.


DVDFile.Com Moderator
MostElectrifying@netscape.net

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The Rock says: If you can't pay someone to do it, it ain't a job worth doing.

[DJRobX]

That seems like feaulty logic on Lucas' part. I would think that the HD-DVD possibility would cause him to release Star Wars Trilogy on DVD *sooner* rather than later. If he releases it now, while DVD is hot, he has a better opportunity to sell the trilogy twice to people -- Finatics will buy it first on DVD, then on HD-DVD when that set comes out.

I think that there is a real danger in HD-DVD and DVT. It's not about backwards compatibility -- it's more about customer confusion. The mere mention of HD-DVD will cause consumers to hold off on buying players. With HDTV coming into the limelight, DVD will be one step behind where it needs to be, leaving DVT to be the only technology in position to truly show off the capabilites of the new sets.

As for DVD being "unwatchable", I certainly don't think that will happen. I have a 50" rear projection HDTV set, and the DVD's that were compressed well really do look fantastic with the HDTV's line doubling logic, even without 16x9 enhancement.

"Watchability" is directly proportional to resolution and screen size. A VHS tape may look fantastic on a 27" television set, but on a large, good quality HD set, the same VHS tape looks like absolute trash. Likewise, it'll take a really large screen with ultra high resolution to make DVD's faults bad enough to the point of unwatchability.

[Daniel Shock]

It seems to me that the format is really the 5 inch optical disk and the HD is really just an enhancement of that format. I agree with the poster who says that its a non issue. If the DVD we have now takes off like it is projected to, then you can bet that manufacturers will want to offer players that play both HD and standard DVD disks. They will sell more players if people don't have to abandon their libraries.



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Daniel Shock

Peter,

Thanks for the additional information on the possible HD-DVD Star Wars release.

I think that it's poor logic to on one hand say that there isn't enough of an installed base to support DVD, and in the same breath say that they are holding off to support a future HD format. A future format that will take years to create an installed base of customers as large as DVD already has.

If you include DVD ROMs there are more than 10 million DVD players out there now, and there will probably be close to 20 million in a year. Which clearly dwarfs the current laserdisc player market that they still support.

I have been harboring a suspicion for some time that what Speilberg and Lucas are waiting for is not HD-DVD, but D-VHS.

Fox has said that they are anticipating D-VHS to eclipse DVD over the next year, which is why they stopped 16:9 support withtheir DVDs.

Maybe S&L have bought into the concept because it will look better, and could potentially be more profitable using the existing tape rental/sales model. And they would be planning to push the new format through with their blockbuster titles next year.

It's just a guess.

Personally, I think that people are tired of tape, and the convenience of DVD is hard to refute.

If it is HD-DVD that they are waiting for, they should still come out with a bare bones 16:9 enhanced Star Wars DVD set. Or we can just give our money to the studios and directors who support their movie loving customers.

-Dean.

DVHS is not a threat to DVD. Actually most studios and major video rental chains have publicly stated that they have no plans to support another video tape format, like DVHS unless the DVHS tape can hold both a analog and a digital version of the same film on one tape ( I dont think this can happen at this time nor would it be cost effective). I remember Sony, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Warner, RCA, Universal and other company reps have stated this in past interviews. The video rental stores reason is the lack of shelf space. Looks like the DVD is here to stay.

Chuck -
Hope so. I think you're right, but I'll be a lot happier once the "recordability" issue is out of the way - in other words, when recordable DVD is available at reasonable prices. Or when Replay-TV style recording starts eating into VHS's market share. I don't care how good it looks, disc-based technology stomps on tape, even DVHS.