I don't think that THIS holiday season will be the mass adoption turning point of HDTV -- not quite. Next year or 2006 at the earliest, maybe. Too many JP6s still controlling things. We'd be much further along in adopting HDTV if studios and directors had insisted that their films be only sold in OAR, but instead we're still catering to lunkheads that insist their 4:3 TVs be FILLED with motion (sort of like a five year old). Unfortunately, once again the money was more important than the art and we now have two versions (Full Screen & Widescreen) of every new film released.

On the original topic: No, I won't be upgrading too quickly. I was an early adopter of DVD and widescreen TVs, so let someone else buy the new stuff and bring the prices down. I am VERY happy with my upconverting to 1080i DVD player on my 65" Mits. No, it's not HD-DVD, but it's fine for now. I also have HDTV through Comcast and have seen the magic on HBO, Showtime and all the networks. At some point you have to look and think "how much better can this get?". I mean, someone earlier mentioned 1080p and theoretically, 1080p should be superior to 1080i, but will the human eye discern the difference? Are there faults in 1080i that anyone thinks will be improved with 1080p? I just can't imagine it....

When people people learn that in the transfer from film to digital, if done correctly, that a HD digital picture at the current resolution still cannot display all of the information that film holds.

Just like when DVDs were first released there were studios that took short cuts and used their low resolution laser disc transfers and the results were less than ideal. The same applies with HD DVD. If studios use a SD master to transfer to HD DVD you will not be impressed. If they use a film master to create a new HD digital master at a higher resolution than our current display technology and convert it down to 1080i you will see an improvement over SD DVD. Most studios have been already doing this for their SD DVD releases so they'll be prepared for this transition. So yes the possibility is there for crap Hd transfers but that's not the limitation of the technology or the age of the film.

Also even though both formats will have an increase in storage space; HD is a16:9 format so don't go looking for dual 16:9 and 4:3 discs. HD DVD players might have the ability to down res the HD signal for display on SDTVs but the source is HD and by definition must be 16:9. For older 1.33:1 ratio films they will be shown in 16:9 with pillar boxing o the sides so they might do this but then 4:3 Tv owners would need to zoom to get rid of the side bars and the top and bottom bars.

Initially:

1. Prices will be high
2. Movie selection will be low
3. There is a format war
4. Quality control is likely to be an issue, as studios figure out how to properly encode things

I don't expect it to be a realistic product for me to be tempted by until at least 2007 (if not later). And, even then, will the format see the title explosion that DVD has over the past few years? Maybe... but maybe not. I ain't stopping my DVD purchases in the meantime, just because I may end up 'upgrading' some titles 5+ years down the road. That's why the good Lord made eBay...

i'm giving up cars because in the future we will have transporter machines so what's the point!

I hope you are right because that's a lot of words to eat.

With all due respect, this is not the same thing as DVD Vs. VHS. When DVD arrived in 1997, videotape had been around for about 20 years. No one was thinking "Dammit, I just got into VHS and now they're supplanting it!" And the practical advantages and quality improvement represented a quantum leap forward even through J6P's eyes. The market was primed and ready for a new format, especially since laserdisc - because of its high cost and certain practical disadvantages - never really took off with the masses. Once the prices for DVD players and discs came down to reasonable levels, the market responded enthusiastically. HD-DVD Vs. DVD is a little different. DVD hasn't had 20 years to permeate with the public. Most people still don't own HDTV's and HD programming is still very limited. Plus a switch-over to HD-DVD doesn't mean your DVD collection is out the window the way it would have been if you jumped on board with the DVD express. HD-DVD will eventually takeover, but it won't happen as rapidly as DVD overtook VHS & Laserdisc. It will be a slower growth medium. Adopting DVD meant only that you needed to buy a player, which by 2000 could be readily had for under $200; going HD also requires the purchase of an expensive HDTV (and maybe several if you want to watch your movies in other rooms in the house). So first you need the majority of Americans to purchase HDTV's. Then you need to make cable and satellite television broadcasting go full HD (at least for all new shows anyway), to get people conditioned to higher viewing resolutions. They start by introducing HD-DVD players, and once the prices come down to reasonable levels, the electronics manufacturers will gradually phase out standard DVD players in favor of HD players that can play both DVD and HD-DVD. Then when the players become ubiquitous enough, they start to phase out DVD discs in favor of HD-DVD's. They might even employ a tactic similar to what the music companies are doing with SACD and make hybrid HD-DVD's that contain both a HD layer and a standard DVD layer so you can actually buy a HD-DVD and still watch it on a standard player at 480p. But this takeover will be years in the making. It's not realistic to think that it will all go down in the next 4-5 years. I'll be happy to eat my words if I'm wrong, but I don't expect that I will be.

Uh-Oh, my post is out-of-order now. I guess I should have just edited it and saved instead of deleting and re-posting it. Especially funny since scott1598's post is only 17 words long!

To my way of thinking, if you're a film lover but you've practically stopped buying DVDs altogether while waiting for the big switch, then you would have to be either watching what new material you want to see either via rental or on cable. Unless it's an HD signal, whatever movie you're watching is going to be inferior to DVD, at least in the case of most new releases. If you're renting movies that you know you want/ like but are waiting years for to be released on an HD disc before you buy......hey, we only live so long. The cost of a rental goes a ways towards owning a movie you love.
I don't wanna sit around for 5 years not getting to enjoy movies I love that are looking pretty damn good in DVD format already. Like others in this thread, I think this is looking like a niche market for years to come until the prices drop, so many titles won't be released on HD for some time to come. 90 percent of the movies I own I won't switch over again, because it's that 10 percent of personal favorites that matter to me the most, and this has been discussed before.....it took me and scads of other people years, and tons of money, to build a film library on VHS. Rebuilding that library from the ground up in DVD format has taken less time but more money. I'm doing it with expectations of not having to make another media switch again for at least 10 years.
DVD, when done with care, looks very, VERY good right now. I'm certainly not going to pine for the next big mystery format to finally get off the ground, THEN become affordable, THEN put out some of my favorite movies in order to enjoy them again, not when I can drive to B&M stores all over town and see those films sitting on the shelves on DVD.
For example, I saw The Omega Man when it was released in 1971 and I was 11 years old, fell in love with it. Over 20 years later I bought it on tape, and it was good enough to watch and enjoy it. Last year it was released on DVD and to my eyes looks wonderful, as good as I recall it looking at the theater 32 years ago, and at a price quite a bit lower than what I paid for it on videotape. Should I have waited yet another 10 years in hopes it makes its way out in HD form? No way, I want to watch that movie tomorrow, not in a decade

No, and I doubt I'll rebuy many movies I have on DVD in the new format.

I don't care much about picture and sound quality, I just like to watch movies.

The main thing DVD offered over VHS for me was instant scene access, special features, no rewinding, and durability.

Isn't that quaint - someone that is more worried about the movie than the resolution.

I agree for the most part - it is sort of the underlying theme of my other post.

Oh, I did an informal survey of several of my friends. Young and old, with money and broke. None of them have HDTV. None of them are in a hurry for HDTV besides me and my brother. None of them gave a rats ass about HDDVD. In fact one of them ejected a VHS tape while I was asking them. She responded - "I don't have Little Women on DVD" when I said "VHS?."

Yeah - these people are going to drive HDDVD because the picture is noticably clearer. My age group is the group targeted too - 18-30 with a few in the forties thrown in for good measure.

The mainstream she is a fickle mistress, we all have to keep that in mind. A friend of mine just went out and spent $2000 on a 26 inch JVC LCD widsecreen TV.......
I asked her if she had bought a DVD player yet. Her answer, of course, was nope. She's watching her 15 year old tapes on this cutting edge piece of equipment that she really has no clue what to do with. Thats likely to be the norm in the near future. Just because HDTV is going to be leaps and bounds better than what we're used to doesn't mean the mainstream is going to snatch it up. I think HDTV will become popular faster than the discs do, because of sports nuts and sitcom fanatics. I may well be wrong but it seems like there is alot of money floating around these forums, money that lots of people just don't have to put towards upgrading every piece of TV equipment they'll need for HD. When the rental market opens up for HD discs alot of things will probably break loose at that point and more titles for less cash will become the norm. Laserdisc was an ownership media; had it ever became something you could walk into Blockbuster and rent, it might have grown in the way DVD ultimately did. HD discs will have to become rental items for the format to flourish and become a juggernaut.

Again, I have to remark how much everyone's reasons for not jumping into HD sound shockingly similar to what was said about DVD in 1997. The main reasons why DVD would never take off, from my memory of the debate back then:

1) I already own a large VHS collection and have no intention of rebuying everything.
2) VHS is a proven technology that we can trust, why jump into the next laserdisc (or what was that Philips video disc format again?)
3) No one except hard-core videophiles can tell the difference between VHS & DVD because most people still own small TVs
4) Consumers are not complaining about VHS quality so why force a new format on us?
5) DVD can't record so can never replace VHS (remember this was back in '97)
6) DVD quality improvement over VHS can't possibly be noticeable on older movies

Honestly, many people back then believed DVD was a format no one was asking for that the studios were trying to force on the public to get them to spend more money on movies. Even back in 1999 when DVDTalk started, the forums were still filled with us crazy early adopters constantly defending DVD against people posting about how it would end up failing like LD. Now I'm afraid we sound like the ones who are busy tearing down a new format because we are so comfortable with the old one. Sound familiar?

First to answer the OP's question. NO

Now for the more interesting parts of this thread.

Will DVD be replaced by one of these newer formats? Yes.

Will I switch over and when? Yes, but I will wait until the format war is over.

Will I upgrade my catalog? Only my favorites at first. Also, all my new purchases will be in the better format (HD-DVD or Blue Ray). The rest of that catalog will stay DVDs unless there are some amazing deals.

Edit to add: Of course the last point assumes availability of the movie in the better format (HD-DVD or Blue Ray).

I concede that I wasn't lurking here at DVDTalk back in '99, but I was working at Tower when DVD's first hit the shelves in '97. Frankly, I don't remember anyone expressing this sentiment at the time. Absolutely everyone I had occassion to discuss DVD with was universally excited and thought it sounded cool. I really can't remember anybody arguing that it would fail or that VHS was better. At most there were people who said "I can't afford it," or "I have to learn more about it first," but that was about it. The general concensus amongst the couple hundred customers I came across seemed to be that DVD was a godsend. If anyone was really arguing that VHS was superior and DVD would fail...well, they must have been very ignorant to say the least. But I still don't think VHS Vs. DVD is analogous to DVD Vs. HD-DVD. HD-DVD is more like VHS Vs. Super VHS.

I'm also reminded of laserphiles intense initial resistence to DVD too. At least in this case though, the new technology is backwards compatible so that should take some of the sting out of the transition.

I dont think I could make myself stop buying DVDs :-). I would never repurchase my whole collection on HD-DVD as I have many movies that Id probably never watch again, but at the same time couldnt make myself get rid of them. Movies like The Star Wars trilogy and Lord of the Rings and Fight Club though, I would definitely repurchase.

I also dont have much faith in how many HD-DVDs will be presented in OAR. With so many movies being shown in 1.78:1 on TV rather than OAR, I feel like the studios will honestly think that this will be acceptable for everyone out there, so having the OAR DVD might be a good idea. Plus, there will be plenty of people willing to buy your used DVDs even after HD is available...the adoption of the format will be slow, so people will still be buying DVDs for a long time.

Like others have said, as relatively cheap as DVDs are, it doesn't make sense for me to hold off buying new titles that I can enjoy now because, at some point in the future (probably several years from now), there will be a new, better format that I will be able to afford.

If the high definition disc format follows the same price drop curve as DVD did, I'd be looking at as long as four years after introduction before I took the plunge anyway (that's how long it took me to be willing to buy a DVD player).

It's something I've thought about lately. When I picked up my copy of Spider-Man 2 on Tuesday (the Superbit), in the back of my mind was a voice telling me I might want to re-purchase the movie eventually. I'm afraid that if I were to get used to 1080i HTDV (our cable company doesn't yet offer HDTV, which is a bit irksome since we have two HDTVs in the house) my DVD collection might seem lacking. It's really only the "big" movies like Spider-Man or LotR that make me pause to consider this, though. I have many foreign and art house movies on regular DVD that may take quite some time to appear on HD-DVD, if they ever do. Many of them were released by smaller companies that may have since lost the rights or simply gone out of business. For that reason, I'm not about to do anything so extreme as eBaying my current collection.

Also, I'm not about to put up with region coding on any new player I purchase. I don't limit myself to buying only what's available in region 1, and my current DVD collection is a mixture of lots of different regions. If I buy an HD-DVD player, it'll have to be region-free and be able to play both NTSC and PAL discs. Otherwise, there's no way it can replace my current player.

Once again, people seem to be forgetting that the difference between HD-DVD and DVD will be very different of scale and type than it was between DVD and VHS.

upgrading from VHS allowed for all the extra features, menus, no rewinding, going straight to your favorite scene, better video and audio, non-degradable format (arguably, at least in comparison to well-worn vhs tapes)...etc etc.

What will HD-DVD provide over DVD? Better Video. It is akin to beta vs. VHS in the end, and will never be the revolution some seem to think. IT will be a niche format for cineasts and audio/videophiles along the lines of Laser Discs.

Maybe so, except...

It won't be very long before the only new TVs available for purchase will be HD-capable. Even today, I cannot fathom why anyone would purchase a TV that isn't. (You can get a 32" HD-tv from Walmart for $650, and an even better price if you know what and where to look.)

HD-TV programming is still scarce, but the premium movie channels, major networks, and "specialty channels" like ESPN, HD-Discovery Theater, HD-Movie Net, etc., are already out there and accessible via digital cable, satellite, and over-the-air broadcast. The federal government has mandated a full switch to HD broadcasting in the near future (and I can't remember the date).

So, alot of you who don't think you'll be experiencing HD anytime soon probably will be surprised to find that you likely will be, and much sooner than you think.

That happened to me a few months ago. My crappy bedroom TV finally kicked the bucket. My wife and I took a look around and discovered that HDTV was ubiquitous and that we could buy a highly rated 53" rear projection for $1300 (and smaller sizes for much, much less). We hooked it up, fell in love with the big screen, but suddenly realized just how crappy standard def TV looked blown up to that size. I called the cable company and for an extra $5/mos. for a new converter box rental plus an extra $15 for the "HD suite" of channels, we had HD-TV.

To put it mildly, we were blown away by what we were seeing. And suddenly DVDs were no longer good enough.

And to think... only three months ago, we were watching movies on a 27" Sony Trinitron, thinking the HD revolution was so far away as to not even be a consideration. To say I was a videophile then would be a laugh. But now, I guess I am!

I have to thank all of you for your replies. you have made some strong arguments over considering to stop buying DVDs. I've noticed that most of you are planning to upgrade a select number of titles from your collection. What titles are you most likely going to upgrade?

Mine:
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Star Wars Trilogy
Indiana Jones Trilogy
Gladiator
Jurassic Park
The Mummy (1999)
Saving Private Ryan
Black Hawk Down
Spider-Man 1 & 2
X2: X-Men United
Hellboy
Ice Age
Finding Nemo
Monster's Inc
The Incredibles (When Available)

What will you do with your old DVDs after you upgrade to HD-DVD?

Coasters?

Seriously, though, there will still be used book/CD stores that will buy your previously viewed DVDs (for a fraction of what you paid for them, but that's better than nothing). Or if you're not concerned about getting money for them, you could always donate them to family members. Most everyone has at least one DVD player now, even if it's only a Playstation.

I wish I could've done that with my laserdiscs. I still have a pretty sizable collection of LDs that I can't really do much with. (I've replaced almost all of them with DVDs at this point). They're not worth selling because they'd likely only fetch a few dollars and they'd be a hassle to ship. No used shops are going to buy them. Hell, I can't even really give them away because I hardly know anyone with a player.

DVD, on the other hand, have become so widely accepted that finding something to do with your old DVDs shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Although I think titles in HD-DVD will be available in OAR (at least while it is more of a niche market), I can definitely see them doing dual releases of 2.35:1 films in letterboxed versions that preserve the OAR and 1.78:1 "full screen" (for a 16:9 screen) versions. It's also possible we could see 16:9 fullscreen releases of 1.33:1 films, although I doubt a classic like Citizen Kane or Casablanca would get released like that.