How do you know if this is due to the way the disk is coded or a random flaw in the surface that causes a poor read and necessary (but flawed)reconstruction of the data? Do you have 2 or more commercial copies of the same release, and if so, do they exhibit the same phenomena at the same place on all disks and all players?
Less movie? I don’t get that. Compare a VHS tape with just a 90-minute movie and nothing else to a DVD with the same 90-minute movie, plus special features that you can choose whether or not to watch. How is that a bad thing?
At what point do we see diminishing returns though? I think most agree that the difference between VHS and DVD was substantial in most areas. However I question how large of a portion of the population will really appreciate the difference between HD and regular DVD. As much as they’ve dropped, a HD LCD display is still going to set you back $600, too much for your casual movie watcher.
As many have mentioned, I think there’s a better chance the next evolution will have to do with convenience rather than quality improvement. But I think DVDs will be around for a while as HD-DVD and BlueRay will appeal more to enthusiasts.
It’s a classic “network effect” problem. Not enough people own HD DVD/Bluray players to make them the standard and the price and availablity of disks is not such to warrent the purchase of them by anyone other than videophiles. If they start making all-purpose DVD/BlueRay/HD-DVD players that are not much more expensive than DVD players, more people would buy them. Given a choice between HD and DVD, all other variables being equal, HD is superior.
The other thing is that with HD-DVD, you’ve pretty much reached the limit of the technology for storing 1 movie in a portable format. You can’t play the movie in anything better than the 1080p HDTV format so it doesn’t make sense to have a disk that can store much more data.
DVD to HD-DVD is an evolutionary jump. VHS to DVD was a revolutionary one. As was CD to MP3.
In essence, it’s not, but the more extras there are on the disc, the less space there is for the movie itself. “DVD quality” video isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, and the more the movie has to be compressed to fit on the disc, the more the quality of the image is likely to be compromised.
(Of course, I suspect a number of companies can’t be arsed to put in the effort to keep or improve the quality of the image. I’ve seen a few anime DVDs that could stand a run through a smoothing filter, which should help compressability.)
Right. No need to develop a larger-capacity medium. Just like 640K RAM is enough for anyone, and one computer would serve the entire world handily.
Y’know, when I was a boy, only really wealthy people had collections of movies. They were on 16mm film and required elaborate projection equipment for viewing. The sound was crappy and the film got scratched after repeated showings, requiring costly replacement. As I said, only the really wealthy had film collections.
Today I own copies of some of the greatest movies of all time, movies that made a difference in my life and movies that made a difference in general. And all I have to do to enjoy one of those movies is drop a little disc into a machine, push two buttons and watch the movie. Oh, I still pop the popcorn the old-fashioned way, and have it with real butter. The sound is fantastic through my stereo system, the picture is great on my wide-screen TV (no pan’n’scan for me, thank you) and for a couple of hours I can live like a king in my modest little home. I can’t wait for my next flight back to visit my son in N.C. – I’m going to take my laptop and watch “Citizen Kane” and “Zulu” on the way out and “The Quiet Man” and “Network” on the way back.
I don’t care what replaces DVD. I’m enjoying the hell out of what I have and marveling that I even have it.
True, but the DVD spec has a maximum bitrate. If you use the max for the film and still have space left over, why waste the space?
Now, if it’s a long movie, I certainly don’t favor adding extras at the expense of the bitrate, but otherwise, it can’t hurt.