I’d just like to add for Aeschines, that you probably have a shitty DVD player.
I know, because I have one too.
One would think they are all the same. And, really, the working parts are. The laser eye reader and the guts of inside the box are the same from one player to another. (So my techie friend tells me).
However, the reward for getting a nice DVD player instead of a cheap one are the controls. My DVD player jumps forward or rewinds in very uncontrolled spats. 30 seconds flash by with the slightest touch.
The DVD players of my friends have superb control. You can effortlessly flip back a few seconds to catch a line of dialogue that you missed.
Methinks your problems with DVD players as a format are partly the fault of the fact that you simply have a poor quality one.
May main beef with DVD is not really the format but rather poorly encoded discs. This happens when a DVD producer tries to cram as much “extras” as possible on a disc by reducing the bitrate that the movie is encoded, especially when the movie is longer than 2 hours. You can see the artifacting in the backgrounds and it’s annoying. Maybe its just me.
From the link in the OP, there was another article about a new proposed DVD format with more interactivity and HD capabilities. Hopefully they are planning to improve the compression algorithm by dumping MPEG-2 and going with MPEG-4 or better. Of course, this will require new hardware for everybody. :dubious:
On a 27" or smaller screen hooked up via composite video what you say is true.
On a large screen TV, hooked up via component video, with full surround sound. . .well the idea that a VCR can come close is just ludicrous. On an HDTV set, with progressive scan output, you haven’t seen anything like it, even in a Theater.
Actually, it is. Because if what I expected of DVD was an improvement over VHS/LD, I got exactly what I wanted and more. They are not the ideal system? Well, surprise, surprise, who’d’ve thought?
So no, I’m not disappointed.
Regarding some OP points:
That would be because they developed different formats for how their actual TV displays scanned, when they first set up the stations and developed the hardware in the 1950s-60s. The US and its immediate neighbors and dependents, plus Japan, used NTSC, the rest of the world used variations on PAL or SECAM.
This is a complaint against the manufacturer of your deck, not against the DVD format. Though I could indict virtually every electronics manufacturer in the planet over this one (I’ve seen perfectly intelligent, tech-aware people stymied when called upon to pick up a wireless phone that’s not their own, staring at it asking out loud, WHAT THE *&^% DO I PRESS TO TALK?!?)
As mentioned before, when you generously donate to me a broadband connection, including actually laying out the line up to my house, I’ll take you up gladly on the offer.
Things I do agree are half-arsed and annoying about the way the recording houses handle the format:
In addition to the big advantages of DVD the small things also need to be mentioned:
The ability to turn subtitles on if a particular line isn’t clear and then turn them off.
The little timer you can turn on and off is also very useful in telling you how much of a movie is left and also allowing you to examine to the structure of the film easily; eg. how long a particular scene is and where it is within the film.
Whenever I watch VHS I find myself missing these little things as well as the big features like audio-commentaries.
Overall DVD may not be perfect but it is a huge improvement over anything else seen before. It may not be a big technical improvment over LD but the practical advantages in terms of cost, availability of titles and online rental options are huge.
Not having to deal with the hassle of rewinding and searching through a tape to find what I want is enough for me to sing the praises of DVD. But, like others in this thread, I recognize that DVD was a giant step in the evolution of home entertainment, and improves upon its predecessors in virtually every respect.
Could it be better in some ways? Sure. Am I disappointed? Nope.
Most of my gripes (regional encoding, non-skippable startup screens) are ones imposed by the industry, rather than the medium. And these troubles (or ones like them) will likely follow through onto the next big thing as well.
Just echoing this. DVD was a huge improvement over what was available at the time of its release, in terms of features and convenience. I can’t be disappointed by a product that significantly improves what is currently available.
Nobody has mentioned one huge, fascinating advantage that DVD has over any other method of bringing a film into a home: that the DVD can store so much data that simply including the movie is not sufficient.
So various extras have to be added–trailers, “The Making of” documentaries, director’s and actor’s commentaries, etc. This gets to the point where a movie might require a separate disc for all of its extras.
In other words, DVDs have the potential to be “Film School in a Box”. You can’t get that from any other media, laserdisc included.
Oh, and regarding Cheesesteak’s post about the future: it might be here quicker than you think. By June, the Bravo D3 HD DVD player will be on the market, able to play DVDs encoded with the Windows Media Video 9 codec. WMV9 is a far more efficient encoding/compression mechanism, allowing more data to be stored on a DVD, which means higher resolutions–in the HDTV range. www.vinc.com
Now if they would only release Star Wars in this new format . . .
One of the problems I have noticed when replacing favorite movies from VHS to DVD is picture and sound differences. Some DVD movies play the music so loud you can’t hear the dialog on others it is the reverse. The picture can be very dark at times making it difficult to see details. Also as others have said movie previews and titles that go on for many minutes that you can’t skip over.
There is a difference between Region Free players and true multizone – which may be automatic switching or manual.
I’m not sure what is available local to you, but the player I have now is a Mustek 560 – the newer version of which the 56L sells locally for about NZ$110 (US$75) – and I have had no problems playing any of my Zone 1, 2 and 4 discs (mix of Pal and NTSC) or any of the RCE discs designed not to work on region free players.
The Mustek automatically switches zones but there is also access to a menu to manually switch to make the player a “true” Zone 1 or whatever if that is necessary. I’m sure that other multizone players would offer similar features.
I’m not sure I buy in to the cheap player equals problems argument. The player I had before this was a Phillips that (adjusting for falling prices in technology over time) was worth 3-4 times as much as the Mustek and was much less reliable for playing discs – not multizone problems – sometimes it would just decide not to play a certain disc that would work fine on other players.
Well, it seems that a lot of what I thought was problematic has been here confirmed by others.
Now, do you mean to tell me there are certain DVDs where every time you watch the movie you’ll have to watch 5-year-old previews for crap films you have no intention of seeing? That’s unconscionable.
Have you even been reading the responses at all? The vast majority of those who have responded are not disappointed in DVD as a medium, and consider it a great improvement over what came before.
Yes, but that’s a marketing choice, not a limitation of the medium itself. Yell at the film companies who package the films that way… or praise the ones who don’t.
I find DVD’s superior to VHS in every respect: quality, durability and size.
This is a DIGITAL format. The next major format change will probably be in the form of a data-chip. You’ll be able to download DVD’s onto it for preservation until the data-chip is made obsolete. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Now that digital formats are here, we are limited only by software. Or to restate it, we are no longer limited BECAUSE of software. Each new format that comes out will be able to read the older formats because it is digital, transferable, and software enabled.
The limiting threshold will soon become medium size. The ultra small chips that the newer camaera’s have are too small to handle in a hostile environment. A slight breeze outdoors and you’ve lost 500 mb of information. I predict a standard size will evolve that is easy to handle. Instead of future design changes you will see ever increasing storage capacity in the same medium, with only the software changing. You already see this today with DVD players that play music CDs, photo CD’s, mpegs and every other format that is digital. All of which can be recorded onto a DVD.
DVDs aren’t perfect, but the competition is already dead. I can’t find an exact figure (there was one on IMDb a few weeks or months ago), but the vast majority of movie rentals are DVDs now because the format is clearly superior.
Let me put this a different way: does anybody miss audio cassettes?
Dunno about you, but if that happens, I just hit the “Menu” button and skip all the ads. Too bad I can’t skip the FBI/Interpol “Don’t pirate this movie” glurge.
Well said. Another variation would be “DVDs aren’t perfect, but they’re still far better than the alternatives available.”
Strictly speaking, the DVD video standard defines the data format - resolution, compression algorithm, frame rate, etc. It doesn’t support HDTV resolution right now.
Although I’d bet that there will be a new standard based on the same (or compatible) recording media, but using more advanced compression methods to allow higher resolution. (EVD is close. I don’t think it’s backward compatible with DVD but I don’t see why the players shouldn’t be.)
That’s what Valenti would have you believe. Now come on. Think about it.
To get one of those packets you have to be a voting member of the Academy. So you’re Jodie Foster or Robert Altman or some editor or scene designer. Those are the people the films are distributed to. So that they can be sure everyone who is voting has at least had the chance to see a nominated film.
Now tell me that Jodie Foster is involved in DVD piracy! And Robert Altman has a side job distributing illegal versions of Gosford Park!
This is nothing more than publicity by the MPAA to tout their Digital Privacy Act Rules. The end result was that they won’t send out DVDs but they’ll still send out VHS tapes. So if you’re really going to pirate you just have to start with a tape! That would really be a hinderance to a film editor who wanted to make income on piracy.
But, even suppose that were true, it only supports the opposition to the original poster, who said DVD was disappointing.
As to people with sound problems. Hey, spend a couple hundred on an A/V Receiver. Even television will sound better.
Screener tapes go much farther than that. I have a friend who gets Academy screener tapes from when he was a film critic. The lists are much longer than you would think, and not everyone who is on them is necessarily in the business of making movies.