Tweet
(Start rant)
The more I hear about HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, one player for each format, burner, etc.. the more disgusted I become.
What we ideally need is one hardware format, be it HD-DVD or BD it really doesn't matter. As long at the disc capacity is high, and the media, players, and burners are relatively cheap.
After that we need authoring programs that will author discs with most ANY video format and resolution you put on them. Be it HD, SD, wmv, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4. We should be able to create menus and link objects to videos. Period, end of story.
This way all of the technical nonsense is "behind the curtain." You just create your menu and link to the video files. Burn disc and distrubute. I'd rather spend my time artistically, not technically solving the same problems over and over again.
I am going to protest this impending format war by not buying any HD content. We're already suffering because if they had agreed on one format a few years ago we'd already have cheap players, burners, and media!!! Now we wait.
The video big shots should learn a lesson from the audio industry. The "technically inferior" CD based on 16bit resolution and 44100 sampling is still around over 20 years after it's introduction. Super Audio CDs and High Def Audio DVDs failed.
And you know what? The format that might trump the CD may be highly compressed formats that actually have worse fidelity than the CD. The bottom line is that the mass public only requires enough quality to "connect" with the artistic presentation. And convenience is key of course (iPod).
I fear that if they fool around too much with HD the public may feel the DVD is "good enough" just as the CD is "good enough." Of course with HD TV's in lots of homes a change will eventually occur but it will probably later, a lot later, rather than sooner.
To this day when I look around Best Buy or Circuit City at the HD demos I still see HD content riddled with macroblocking, pixelization, blotches of bad shading, and in general digital artifacts all over the place. Sure the resolution is higher than DVD but there are so many artifacts who cares? A few years ago you could say it's because they didn't have the equipment connected properly. Today that's usually not the case. I see component or HDMI cables and still bad picture quality. I'm sorry but I expect to see smooth color reproduction on a person's face on a close-up, not a mottled appearance as the compression flicks back and forth to different vector values.
What's my point?
Simple. Don't support this nonsense until there appears to be a standardized format for both recording and playback, and superior HD quality. And we need to be sure copy protection doesn't make creating our own videos (of our own material) problematic.
(End of rant)
- Mark
The more I hear about HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, one player for each format, burner, etc.. the more disgusted I become.
What we ideally need is one hardware format, be it HD-DVD or BD it really doesn't matter. As long at the disc capacity is high, and the media, players, and burners are relatively cheap.
After that we need authoring programs that will author discs with most ANY video format and resolution you put on them. Be it HD, SD, wmv, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4. We should be able to create menus and link objects to videos. Period, end of story.
This way all of the technical nonsense is "behind the curtain." You just create your menu and link to the video files. Burn disc and distrubute. I'd rather spend my time artistically, not technically solving the same problems over and over again.
I am going to protest this impending format war by not buying any HD content. We're already suffering because if they had agreed on one format a few years ago we'd already have cheap players, burners, and media!!! Now we wait.
The video big shots should learn a lesson from the audio industry. The "technically inferior" CD based on 16bit resolution and 44100 sampling is still around over 20 years after it's introduction. Super Audio CDs and High Def Audio DVDs failed.
And you know what? The format that might trump the CD may be highly compressed formats that actually have worse fidelity than the CD. The bottom line is that the mass public only requires enough quality to "connect" with the artistic presentation. And convenience is key of course (iPod).
I fear that if they fool around too much with HD the public may feel the DVD is "good enough" just as the CD is "good enough." Of course with HD TV's in lots of homes a change will eventually occur but it will probably later, a lot later, rather than sooner.
To this day when I look around Best Buy or Circuit City at the HD demos I still see HD content riddled with macroblocking, pixelization, blotches of bad shading, and in general digital artifacts all over the place. Sure the resolution is higher than DVD but there are so many artifacts who cares? A few years ago you could say it's because they didn't have the equipment connected properly. Today that's usually not the case. I see component or HDMI cables and still bad picture quality. I'm sorry but I expect to see smooth color reproduction on a person's face on a close-up, not a mottled appearance as the compression flicks back and forth to different vector values.
What's my point?
Simple. Don't support this nonsense until there appears to be a standardized format for both recording and playback, and superior HD quality. And we need to be sure copy protection doesn't make creating our own videos (of our own material) problematic.
(End of rant)
- Mark
Comment