A-Team...

I could not agree more. Thsi comes up in every thread about next gen DVD. I'm sure it will be mere minutes before someone says the jump in PQ is not all that big.

You mean, unless people like watching films? How do you think films look when they're projected via film onto a big screen in a theatre?

DJ

Agreed. Sure older films don't look as crystal clear as something that was a summer blockbuster in a theater between 2000 and now, but so what? That doesn't mean they won't transfer over well. The image will be taken from a source and it will be converted into a high definition format... the same way current movies will be made into high definition. I mean, movies are only converted to the resolution they are on DVD now because that was the standard at the time the DVD format was made. There's no problem in converting them into a higher resolution onto a format disc that will support it, on TV's that will also support it.

I think people think this way about old films because really, an older movie doesn't look as good as a newer movie in general because well, technology has made leaps and bounds... and when you watch something that's inferior to the supposed 'perfect' quality DVD's of movies from within recent years on an HDTV they look a little less than as perfect as they did before... that an OLDER film will look much much much worse on HDTV. They don't take into consideration that they'll look just fine when upconverted.

They think about imperfections on some discs that weren't converted too well and how horrible they look on an HDTV, but they don't take into consideration that when you match a HD-DVD's native resolution to be that of the resolution of an HDTV, it'll look fine. I love old films and also wish more people will be educated on such things.

I think this kind of conversation may eventually replace the endless and furstrating 'widescreen vs fullscreen' debates going on currently some years down the road.

Nothing is really guaranteed not go HD. I would think just re-releasing content on one disc instead of 6 will be part of marketing on some. For MGM it will be also that fact that you can buy version now that actually does not skip or lockup as well! I be looking for Stargate SG-1 series that is for sure.

Ok this was what I was looking for.

So I'm going to hold off buying anything that was shot on film.

So that leaves me with stuff shot on video tape.
Like you said it is debatable but the PQ my guess will not be worth the increase in price. Yes I would get to have more content on 1 disc but I can live with that.

Ok so can people start listing TV shows movies, documentaries, anime, etc that was shot on film? How can I find this information out? Any links that have this kind of information that tells you what it was shot on?

Thanks.

With regard to anime, anything new (and pretty much everything made in the past 5 years) is digitally animated. The issue becomes what resolution it was made at - and except for movies, in the vast majority of cases it'll be NTSC resolution. So an HD release would either need to be upconverted, or pretty much completely reanimated. (Someone can correct me if my understanding is wrong here.) I seem to recall reading that Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was made in HD though, and probably some other high budget shows are too.

Anything made with cel animation would be on film, and could benefit properly from HD.

One series that's guaranteed to come out in HD is Evangelion... The recent rerelease was because they did a new, cleaned up transfer from film, at HD resolution. (In Japan at least, it looks like Cardcaptor Sakura is a guaranteed HD release for the same reason.)

Except ultra high definition tv is already in development in Japan, what will you do then?

http://www.hometheaterwatch.com/archives/002795.html

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php?ID=8067

Well, I'm sure he'll worry about it when UHDV becomes the standard, sometime around 2030. Maybe.

Seriously, UHDV is barely on the radar at this point. It's at the roughly same stage HD was in the late '70s, and that might be putting it generously.

Great info thanks!!!!!!!

I'm curious to see how they do TV on HD. With the huge amount of space on these new disks, will we be able to fit an entire season on 1 or 2 disks? If so, do you think that this would lead to decrease in price for the TV shows, or would the price increase due to the quality that you would be getting? I know that you are paying for the content of the disks but it makes sense that if you cut down on the amount of disks and packaging that the cost would decrease, right?

The space increase on Blu-ray and HD DVD is necessary for that higher quality video. The actual running time you can store on an HD disc is not going to be that much different than what you can get on DVD now (Blu-ray can theoretically store up to 200GB, but I doubt we'll ever see BD-Video discs larger than 50GB). The only way you could store an entire season's worth of shows on a single HD disc is if those shows are encoded at standard definition rather than HD, which is possible (at least on Blu-ray -- I don't know much about HD DVD) but wouldn't necessarily look much better than standard DVD content.

Being that theres a good chance I'll be dead by then....I doubt I'll give a shit. Even if I'm 75 and alive....doubt I'll care.

As far as waiting to buy films until HD discs arrive...thats silly. I actually commend the OP for having superior paitence and Vegas luck on rollin' the dice. It's too early to call any shots so enjoy film for what it gives now. Much of my dvd library won't be replaced anyway....while many selected titles will be upgraded. It's still a long way off and until then....it's dvds on a well calibrated WSTV and HD films on channels like HDNet Movies. When the war starts and my preferred titles arrive, if ever, then send me a wake-up call.

That's like 95% of TV shows, movies, documentaries, etc. Such a list would be unrealistic.


While I understand your desire to build a movie collection while avoiding HD "double dips", I don't think there's any way to do this. You could start by not buying blockbuster films and focusing on smaller, obscure titles. But then what if the big films take forever (not 1-3 years) to come out in HD... and what if some company like Image or Anchor Bay starts cranking out the obscure films in HD right away.

Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Star Wars... all took many years to hit DVD. King Kong is just finally making an appearance now, 8 years after the launch of the format. If the rollout of HD is slower than DVD (as I suspect it will be), you could be in for a long, long wait for many titles.

There's no way to guess what will be the first titles out of the gate, and which ones may take a decade to hit (if ever). On DVD, it only took 4 years for Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann to be released. Disney has triple-dipped Pretty Woman. But The Magnificent Ambersons and The African Queen *still* haven't been released in Region 1. There's no pattern, so it'll be impossible to guess what you should or shouldn't buy.

This is exactly what has happened with DVD. Take the original Outer Limits for one. On laserdisc, this was $100 for eight episodes, $600 for the 48 ep entire series. On VHS, episodes were $10 each, $480 for the whole series. The DVD season sets are about $55 each, on sale now at DDD for $27.

Also, The Monkees ... when Rhino issued the complete series on VHS some years ago, I remember the list price being about $250. The DVDs have a list price of about $80 per season, so the entire season would be $160 if you paid full retail. They are about $44 each at the DDD sale.

Your already seeing series with limited runs being issued in toto for relatively small sums - street price for Kolchak less than $30 for example. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like Have Gun, Will Travel released as a complete 5 season series down the road for $75 or so if this pattern holds ... on DVD, the individual seasons have been priced at about $50 list each.

Exactly my point.

This original question cannot be answered, a person waiting for the next best thing will never buy anything.

My point was that there is always a better format.

DVD is cheap and plentiful now. IMHO it will be at least 5 years before there is any sizeable HD library.

Indeed. Consider that HDTV market penetration is still pretty low - DVDs already provide more resolution than most consumers can make use of. With DVD players at $50 there is going to be little incentive for most consumers to pay the premium to step up to a new player.

With all the crazy restrictions being built in to the new formats, there are guaranteed to be playback problems if you deviate at all from the tested configurations which is exactly what the early-adopter types tend to do. So, unless HD-BLU titles are priced substantially less than current DVD titles, there just isn't going to be much upgrade action going on. Take a look at the non-success of SACD and DVD-Audio - over-priced titles, over-priced players (until they finally started building them into most DVD players) and consumer unfriendly restrictions (what do you mean I still can't connect my SACD player to my receiver with just one digital cable?)

I say all this as an owner of a near hi-def projector (1360x1024p), two d-theater decks, a Sony-ES SACD player and a couple of DVD-A capable DVD players. DVD is going to be very tough to dislodge - so much so that I don't think it is even worth considering when thinking about today's purchasing decisions.

I agree. Why wait to enjoy something that may never happen. Whenever anyone asks me if they should get a movie or more importantly a TV boxset, or wait for the next version, I say get it and enjoy it. If you are frugal, then most regular releases can be had for little more than the price of a rental. Why wait?