| | HD/Blu-RayAugust 16th, 2006 |
It’s funny, the industry seems so sanguine about the whole high-def DVD format war. This article here, for example, says,
But all sides agree: as high-definition TVs become more popular, consumers will want HD content that will make the investment worthwhile. As screen sizes increase, so does the need for better resolution.
The problem is, I don’t know anyone who wants the new DVD format. HD content, sure — on broadcast channels. But DVDs are already pretty nice.
DVDs offer clear advantages to me over VHS tapes beyond the visuals. You can skip anywhere in them. They have extras. They don’t get eaten up by an old VCR. They don’t get demagnetized by accident. They are smaller to store (and I am one of those idiots who keeps the cases!). CDs offered mostly the same advantages over tapes.
HD DVD formats don’t offer any of these things. Instead, what they offer is only the more detailed picture. But in practice, my component signal out of a DVD is already plenty; I have a nice big widescreen TV, and it’s gonna have to be a hell of a visual upgrade to persuade me.
As it is, the added space isn’t much of an attraction; I haven’t listened to the commentary tracks (three of them!) on most of my DVDs. I get bored watching 8 hours of featurettes.
At GDC, Phil Harrison was touting the advantages of BluRay from a game developer’s point of view as being “more space for assets!” and “now you can launch all international SKUs on one disc!” Frankly, neither of those sound like a big draw to me; assets are the big cost that’s hurting game development as it is, and being able to slip some international releases was always a trick for having some slack in your schedule.
I definitely appreciate my HD channels on digital cable. I prefer watching shows there than on other channels, although when Veronica Mars airs, it doesn’t matter that I don’t get it in HD. So it’s not like I don’t “get” HD; I do and I like it a lot. But DVDs look good enough to me, especially given the outlay already. I imagine there are some of you out there who are lusting after the new HD DVD formats… anyone want to tell me why?

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[...] Comments [...]
[...] Now, this excursion did have a point. Change happens, and usually faster than we quite know. We’re discussing some elements of that change in the thread on HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray, for example, and one thing that is clear is that not only is the tech changing faster than we quite know what to do with it, it’s also (as the science fiction has it) a poorly distributed future. But technical change is is many ways the easy one. Pop culture — and in this I include games as well as movies, music, books, and TV — is far more ephemeral, far more self-referential and demanding to follow, far faster in pace. [...]