Posted by Erik Funkenbusch on 06/18/06 17:55

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 00:12:00 -0400, Derek Janssen wrote:

> You could play the first DVD's on your computer. You could play DVD's
> on your Playstation. You could buy a DVD movie at a computer store,
> hook them up to whatever low-tech item would decipher them that you were
> already using anyway, and whatever you used, you could play them on your
> old TV set. And even *then*, they made you never want to look at your
> VHS tapes again--You wished for a world where "rewinding" had become
> obsolete, and saw the doorway open.
> We didn't buy DVD's because they were "sort of better". If that were
> the reasoning, we'd be watching S-VHS to this day.

Umm.. Playstation DVD's came about long after DVD's had caught on. Most
computers didn't have DVD-ROM's until well after DVD's had caught on for
consumers. But much of the rest I agree with.

There was only one reason I bought a DVD player, and that's because The
Matrix came out on DVD 6 months before it came out on VHS. I think a lot
of other people bought DVD players for the same reason.

They need to find a few titles that people want so desperately on DVD and
make them available only on an HD format. They won't do that, though, for
a lot of reasons. The internet can short circuit any plan like that today.

Also, there will still be the concern about the format wars, which I think
is the single biggest factor. And the price is ridiculous, though I'm sure
that will come down over the next 6 months to a year.

Then, of course, there's the problem that only people who have High Def
TV's will want them, and that's a pretty small percentage today (though
growing), which means reasonable HD TV's (or even EDTV's) need to flood the
market.

> (Basically, the only reason the current industry thinks that any hi-def
> format or any other new post-DVD movie delivery will "catch on" is the
> main reason that they're convinced any *other* new technology will
> "catch on" just for showing up: Blind panic, and terror of the unknown.

No, the industry wants HD-DVD to catch on because they think it will solve
their current crisis with people copying movies. They just won't do what
is necessary to make that happen (create a single standard that can work on
all TV's)

>> Of course the manufacturers won't get it. They'll just think nobody wants
>> high definition movies.
>
> Well...they'll be partly right.

No, people want High Def movies, they just don't want to compromise to get
them.

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