At the dawn of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray controversy a few years ago, I made two comments (which I think I was the first to state) about HD video:
1) It’s not a consumer friendly format.
2) It’s an overkill for consumers.
Four years later, I still stand by these comments.
Quite simply, when was the last time you emailed one of your HD videos to someone to share?
Probably, never. The files are too big to be shared easily unlike photos and lower-rez videos (640×480, 320×240, etc.) Unless you upload them to a video streaming service like youtube.com or vimeo.com OR upload them to an on-line file storage service OR play the videos on your mobile device, it’s quite difficult to share HD videos. I’m hoping some day a software engineer somewhere in the world develops a super-codec to compress HD videos down to a reasonable size.
Furthermore, many of us yet have Blu-Ray DVD burners to create our own disks and consumers have been slow to adopt Blu-Ray players, so you cannot simply give a Blu-Ray disk to someone and expect him/her to be able to play it.
Nope, HD is a not consumer friendly format and we’ve been over sold on the idea that it is the holy grail… the end-all, be-all of the movie watching experience.
I am a film buff and enjoy watching movies of all kinds and in all formats. Yes, that includes VHS tapes. A good movie is still a good movie… a great movie is still a great movie… and a bad movie is still a bad movie regardless of which format you watch it on.
If Uncle Fred records a home video on HD, it’s still going to look like a home movie. Case closed!
You probably gathered from the tone of this article that I’m quite content with the resolution of standard DVD’s. I have no need to watch Blu-Ray movies, unless they are on sale for a good price or someone gives them to me as gifts. A good up-rezzing DVD player and standard 5.1 surround is all I need.
Remember the SuperBit DVD series? No DVD extras. Only the main feature on the DVD mastered at the highest possible bit-rate? I guess this was the prelude of things to come, a la Blu-Ray. Gattaca (1997), one of my favorite movies of all time, was the first SuperBit movie I saw. In my opinion, a superbly mastered DVD rivals the Blu-Ray experience.
On another sour note, during each migration to a new format — film to VHS — VHS to DVD — DVD to Blu-Ray — some films don’t make the cut and become obsolete. Who decides this? Commercial viability? Supply and demand? This truly saddens me that some movies will be lost for newer generations to discover. Thank goodness for ebay to track down those lost gems still available on VHS and DVD.
If you are still not convinced why HD video and Blu-Ray are overkills, I simply ask you this:
Are you willing to pay $18 for TOP GUN (1987) on Blu-Ray?
Are you kidding me??!!! If Sony foregoes their Blu-Ray licensing fees, then maybe you could make me a fan of the holy grail.
Based on this article, I’ve decided to write a series of posts called TECHNOLOGY: Trends and Ends ™ to address these types of issues. Stay tuned.
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Copyright © 2011 by Rob Dragan
