No Winners in the High-Def DVD War?
Tue Feb 5, 2008 2:02PM EST
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The Economist brings us a sobering look at the high-definition DVD market this week, asking whether HD's got another year of nasty fighting ahead of it, and if Blu-ray's impending victory in the high-def war will even amount to anything, anyway.
Good point on the first front: Nothing's going to happen until the holiday shopping season this year, the story suggests, as electronics sales are almost completely dependent on Christmas shoppers no matter what. HD DVD may sell nothing from now until then and it would still be around to make another go of it at holiday time... and HD DVD's low price is awfully tempting. (The story also notes that, not including the PS3, more HD DVD boxes have actually been sold than standalone Blu-ray players.)
But the bigger issue is that Blu-ray and HD DVD just don't offer enough of a jump over existing technology for many people to care, even if Blu-ray is the "winner." With a good TV and an upscaling DVD player, videos in motion look almost the same whether they're in high-def or from a regular DVD source. Hence: No one cares enough to pony up hundreds of dollars for new equipment for a marginal improvement in quality.
Meanwhile, optical has competition a-plenty from both online distributors and even flash media. The Economist notes that within a couple of years, a 32GB thumbdrive won't cost much more than a retail Blu-ray disc... and you'll be able to reuse the thumbdrive if you don't like the movie. Now that's a tempting idea.
More good points are made in the full piece, including the shocking fact that the human eye can distinguish a resolution of about 500 pixels per inch (in typical TV terms). Considering even high-def TVs today offer just about 55 pixels per inch, there's a whole lot more room for better quality TVs and media formats in store for the patient.
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2 Posted by rogueist on Tue Feb 5, 2008 2:44PM EST Report Abuse
Although the human eye may be able to "see" 500 pixels per inch, there is very little room left for visual aclarity with digital devices. The HD format is the format used for film masters for 90 foot theater screens. The human eye loses the ability to discern any greater "clarity" from the image at 1/4 of that resolution downward - about 22 ft and smaller. I dont remember seeing any 264 inch LCD or Plasma screens for home use... I have been examining the HD images in general anyway recently, after finally breaking down and buying a Full HD TV. Personally I see no difference between "i" and "p" of any screen size. I can see a difference between TRUE 720i/p and TRUE 480i/p images - but there are many 480i/p DVDs that look BETTER than broadcast 720i/p does in many cases! And I truly see ZERO difference between 720i/p and 1080i/p at all. Part of the problem is that the images are only being upscaled to HD and the actual non-graphical portions of the HD broadcast are still SD in origin. The graphics that are HD look ultra sharp and ultra clear. Once in a while a show comes on that is in TRUE HD where the actual broadcast image is HD as well as the graphics. When that happens, the images are definitely better than most DVDs. But that is where the "best" images end. HD DVDs will only help to improve many Widescreen versions of DVD movies - since they are formatted to fit a standard screen, there is a lot of video bandwidth being wasted on the black borders on the top and bottom - so the Widescreen images sometimes look worse than SD broadcast images when viewed on a proper Widescreen TV. But just as Chris pointed out, there really is only a very marginal difference in DVD quality between a good image quality DVD and HD DVD when viewed on a HD TV. It is definitely not worth it to buy a BlueRay player for the price it is. BUT it could be worth the $82 to buy a HD player - epsecially when they give you 5 to 7 DVDs with the player for free...
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3 Posted by m_knopp on Tue Feb 5, 2008 3:54PM EST Report Abuse
The other limiting factors to these sales is the extremely limited selection of titles in either format, the increased cost, and the continued "head in the sand" approach to the way people want to consume their media taken by the media companies. Go to any retail shop and look at the number of DVDs compared to Blu-Ray or HD DVD. It is a complete joke. Virtually no TV series are on either HD format, and even if they were they generally cost nearly twice as much. Not to mention that many of the older TV shows which sell well were not recorded in HD format anyway so is there any benefit? Then the fact that the music companies tried to ignore for so long. People do not consume media like they used to. People do not simply sit on their couch and watch TV. They want to watch a movie on their iPod while commuting to work (hopefully on public transportation). They want to bring it for their kids to watch on trips, without bringing along hundreds of dollars of vulnerable discs. People want a digital format that can go where they want to go with it. And quit frankly, until they give us that format I only see their sales falling. Of course they will blame it all on pirates and payoff our government to interfere more in our rights in the interest of their bottom line and old business model. Media is changing and the dinosaurs of the old regime are having to be drug along kicking and screaming. That is why neither Blu-Ray nor HD DVD will ever be more then a niche. It breaks rule number one of business, which is give your customer what they want.
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4 Posted by larmo33 on Tue Feb 5, 2008 9:18PM EST Report Abuse
Yeah! What M_Knopp said in spades! ;-)
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5 Posted by agustin2489 on Wed Feb 6, 2008 12:05AM EST Report Abuse
Flash drives, eh? That's a very enticing idea actually. What of direct downloads from an online retailer? Oh wait, DRM. Still, the flash drive concept is amazing to think of.
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1 Posted by ryebread45014 on Tue Feb 5, 2008 2:23PM EST Report Abuse
You mention the marginal improvement in HD over upconvert. You are forgetting that if you upconvert a DVD on a 55" 1080P HD screen you will see the difference. Also, video quality is only half the appeal of HD movies. There is also the improved sound quality over Dolby Digital and DTS from DVD's now there is Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital +, and DTS HD master all of which produce audio at a much higher quality. (Xbox 360 HD add on and PS3 blu-ray do not decode these advanced audio formats)