Introduction and agenda
I’ve always been a film buff, but all the way back to the VHS days, when we could first “own” movies, I felt something was lacking. With VHS it was obvious, the picture was grainy and deteriorated, rather quickly. From there we moved onto Laserdsic (I still own a few). Laserdisc was a marked improvement over VHS but in all actuality, offered very little increase in resolution, but color reproduction was significantly better. Toward the end of medium, Laserdisc introduced us to a digital soundtrack, definitely a step in the right direction. I was always a little miffed at Laserdics seeming lack of acceptance, I suppose it just wasn’t “different enough” from VHS, to make people shell out 350.00 to 500.00 dollars, for a player.
Then the big kahuna of movie mediums came on the scene around 1995 and it really changed the way we watched and collected movies. Finally we could buy or rent movies with a full digital soundtrack and more often than not, a more than acceptable picture. I won’t discount the impact DVD had however, in all fairness, it was still the NTSC standard. I saw friends buy massive amounts of DVD’s, “their collection” as they called it, and I always thought to myself, collection of what? Don’t get me wrong I own 45 of 50 DVD’s myself, but their nothing I went out of my way to own. I just never saw the need to get excited over 480 lines of horizontal resolution.
I suppose I always had this arbitrary goal of a thousand lines of resolution. I don’t know why but it just seemed with HDTV already in the works, if not actually available, why were standard definition DVD’s so en-vogue? HD-DVD as a medium certainly wasn’t an “early out of the gate” technology. It’s time is now, of that there’s no doubt in my mind, but others argue this by saying “DVD is good enough”. I’ve never been of that mindset, and I for one am really excited to be able to really own a movie. That’s the way I look at it, finally we can own a movie with 1000 lines of resolution or more, enough in my mind at least, to truly enjoy the film.
I suppose many of you by now know about the impending format war over the final DVD standard. I say final because at the moment we have two. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs are set to compete for your dollars. I’ll say more about that soon, but suffice to say which format comes out on top is as important as the medium itself. What I intend to do with this site is deliver the news as I see it, and help consumers make an informed choice as to which format to adopt. Am I biased? Of course I am. I’ve already decided which one I prefer, that is I know right now, but that could change. This will be a learning experience for me as well. I look forward to the coming months, as they will be critical in the shaping of this new format, and the potential end result will be better movie viewing for all of us.
Michael.G