So I caught up on Lost in time to watch the season 3 premiere tonight. I wanted to post about Season 2 earlier today but the day got away from me. This is not the post to discuss Lost though - I'll write that next.
I was looking forward to watching an episode in Lost in HD because one of the things I've been hearing from some of you folks lately is that DVD is "good enough" - that a HD-capable disc format is overkill. I didn't believe it but I wanted to make sure I had a good A/B case to present. Well here you go - I watched the Season 2 finale on DVD on Monday night. Brand-new discs, presumably pretty much state of the art in DVD compression. I watched the season 3 premiere off my DirecTV HDTiVo , pulled in from my rooftop antenna tonight - and some of the "previously on Lost" footage is the exact same shots. I'm here to tell you - y'all are on crack. The color range is better, the lighting detail is better, it's just a better picture. And I don't want to hear what puritan "mainstream America" has in their homes - I have a high end TV because I value quality entertainment, and I can clearly see the bandwidth limitations of DVD. From what I've read Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look even better than broadcast HD television - and I'm excited to see content become available for these higher-bandwidth formats.
Was it as big a jump as from VHS to DVD? No, not quite. Maybe about comparable to going from laserdisc to DVD.
Meh. If you want to cling to your NTSC sets, and your combination filters and your red pushes go right ahead - I'm not even going to argue anymore. It's not like I personally own either a HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player right now - the content isn't available yet. But I've seen better than DVD-quality video - I pretty much watch it every night when new programming is available. And I'm ready for a disc format that provides it, and I don't really much care what some mythical "mainstream" consumer thinks on the matter.
I was looking forward to watching an episode in Lost in HD because one of the things I've been hearing from some of you folks lately is that DVD is "good enough" - that a HD-capable disc format is overkill. I didn't believe it but I wanted to make sure I had a good A/B case to present. Well here you go - I watched the Season 2 finale on DVD on Monday night. Brand-new discs, presumably pretty much state of the art in DVD compression. I watched the season 3 premiere off my DirecTV HDTiVo , pulled in from my rooftop antenna tonight - and some of the "previously on Lost" footage is the exact same shots. I'm here to tell you - y'all are on crack. The color range is better, the lighting detail is better, it's just a better picture. And I don't want to hear what puritan "mainstream America" has in their homes - I have a high end TV because I value quality entertainment, and I can clearly see the bandwidth limitations of DVD. From what I've read Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look even better than broadcast HD television - and I'm excited to see content become available for these higher-bandwidth formats.
Was it as big a jump as from VHS to DVD? No, not quite. Maybe about comparable to going from laserdisc to DVD.
Meh. If you want to cling to your NTSC sets, and your combination filters and your red pushes go right ahead - I'm not even going to argue anymore. It's not like I personally own either a HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player right now - the content isn't available yet. But I've seen better than DVD-quality video - I pretty much watch it every night when new programming is available. And I'm ready for a disc format that provides it, and I don't really much care what some mythical "mainstream" consumer thinks on the matter.
technorati tags:HDTV, Lost, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray
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