May 5, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā” “Yeah, sure ā you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
As long as Disney remains exclusively Blu Ray (which they are), Blu Ray has the upper hand in content. Disney DVDs account for nearly 40% of the sell-through market.
Interesting stuff. Since I still have a regular TV, I have never cared much about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD…
But I have supsected that both of these formats were the equivilant of the Laser Disc – in that they are much better, but will probably be replaced by something that gives us more of a leap from DVDs than these do…though I’m clearly no experet.
I can say that Sony’s believe in Blu-Ray led them to believe that the PS3 would sell big despite it’s high cost because people would like that it plays Blu-Ray, the same way a lot of people bought the PS2 because it also played DVDs…
But right now Sony Playstation is in big trouble, as sales of the PS3 have been way below expectations…
I for one am over buying DVDs, because I am convinced (though without any evidence) that in 5 years you will be able to get any movie over broadband download at anytime, and that our DVD (or Blue Ray) collections will become totally obsolete, just like the 1500 CDs I’ve ripped to my hard drive that now gather dust in my closet…
But then again, I am not an early adopter….
Though it does seem time to get an HD TV.
Paramount’s decision to go only HD-DVD was probably helped by the $150m. sweetener they received from Microsoft, who, if you believe the guys on various AV forums, are funding this whole format war to scupper Blu-Ray and physical storage media in general and move people to their HD download via XBox live etc. There is no way that HD-DVD can beat Blu-Ray as a format in it’s own right (Warner has just released 300 in both formats, the Blu-Ray has outsold the HD-DVD edition by over 2 to 1, a gap reflected in overall software sales across the formats), but it CAN work as a loss leader to wreck Blu-Ray’s chances of replacing DVD as the mainstream movie-delivery medium of choice. And that may have prompted ‘Team HD’ as you call it to have taken this desperate measure to buy Paramount’s aquiescence. And it may work – i predict chaos this fall as people shop for high-definition movies in two different formats. Do you want Shrek OR The Simpsons? Die Hard OR Bourne? Transformers OR Pirates of the Caribbean? Result – quagmire. So many of course will stick with their DVD’s and leave the whole High-def disc mess alone, which of course is exactly what those who want rid of physical storage media want. Oh, and Dave, i wouldn’t sweat getting a PS3. The 60g model has had it’s price slashed by $100, there’s a new software patch that allows it to upscale DVDs to 1080p, and you can get a decent remote for around the price of a lunch and a Coke. And it is better than many of the standalone players for Blu-Ray too.
I think most people are perfectly happy for the time being to play standard def DVDs on their HDTVs.
why does this “journalist” Finke keep being permitted to run articles based on message board postings that are taken down. She doesn’t even link to Bay’s statement because IT DOESN’T EXIST. You’d think the LA Weekly would enforce journalistic ethics for this loon but no…..
This whole format war is disgusting and unnecessary. Stick with an XBOX 360 and a TiVo and just watch HD movies without any disc. While Amazon isn’t offered HD movie rentals yet – give them some time. If not them then Apple shouldn’t be far behind. Discs are so retro. š
Are you aware of the Brouhaha over Michael Bay’s comment on his message board?
Some would say that it’s hypocritical since Pearl Harbor was released exclusively on Blu-ray via Disney and Bad Boys I/II are in the pipeline for release in the future via Sony. However, I agree with his statement about Paramount previously been progressive about their attitude in releasing Blu-ray and HD DVD movies, without any exclusivity agreement for 18 months at $150 million.
It’s one thing to be exclusive to a specific format. It’s another to be format neutral and in his words, “deny” the other side when less than 48 hours ago you were excepting pre orders on titles like Blades of Glory, Next, the Jack Ryan franchise, Face/Off, Top Gun and in November or December Transformers.
If I only had my PS3 as a Blu-ray player (a great one I might add), and not a first gen HD DVD player in addition to it, I wouldn’t say that Universal is denying me by not releasing movies on Blu-ray. The word is too strong to use when describing something that was never there for the taking.
The Michael Bay posting existed but has been since moved or deleted. It was real and she didn’t make it up.
I’ve had a small (26″ Sony) HDTV for a while now. It’s only 720p, but great picture with good upscaling for regular DVDs. You wouldn’t think Blu-Ray would make much difference on a screen that small, but I did buy a Playstation 3 and watched a few Blu-ray movies on it, notably Kingdom of Heaven director’s cut.
I was quite suprised how great the picture quality is, even on my TV. Wonderfully smooth picture overall, and no motion artifacts I could see. Just right. This could only be better on a bigger TV. Audio quality was also much better (dynamic range, etc.) I also was able to load Ubuntu Linux on the PS3 and surf the web on it using Firefox (which is somewhat compromised by the relatively low resolution of even an HDTV screen). There are abundant instructions online about how to do this, and Sony supports it on the PS3.
So that was an eye opener, but for the same reasons you (David) state, I realized that the format quarrel is not over yet, and not being into games I decided to return the PS3 to Circuit City.
Nevertheless, if the damn format gets straightened out, hi def DVD is going to be swell.
Oh, and by the way, if the Microsoft-backed HD DVD format wins, you can count me out. Sony may not be the brightest corporation in the world, but compared to the typical Microsoft product (Zune anyone? Vista?) they’re freaking Michelangelo.
Uhh…I got a wii last week. It’s pretty cool but man does my right bicep ache. Bruce Campbell does some hillarious narration for the Spiderman 3 wii game.
NickF (hmmmm)
It is not a question of IF it was real.
It’s like you post on the Nick F Blog that you hate tuna fish on Monday.
On Tuesday someone gives you some damn fine tuna.]
You change your mind and take down your comments.
Then on Wednesday a loon masquerading as a journalist writes an article in the Fisherman’s Times decrying your position on tuna.
She does no research, has no ethics and just does whatever she wants which is NOT journalism.
So Paramount read Michael the riot act and made him eat some crow and told (forced) him to take down his message. Ok then.
Btw, I’ll happy to finally see that “From Hell” is back on Fox’s Blu-ray schedule. That thing has been delayed since last December.
Format war aside, DP, I’m delighted to hear you’re a fellow Amazon Prime devotee.
I am sure NOBODY forced Michael to do anything.
Consider this: Does Bay get a cut of the DVD sales for Transformers? If so, maybe he’s entitled to a cut of that $150 million. Paramount’s decision to take the money rather than release on both formats will certainly affect Bay’s payments.
I do think it is reasonable to point out Bay’s blog statement.
I do not think it is reasonable to pretend what a court would call an excited utterance is or ever was the final word… especially when the change to the Bay blog was made before the initial comment was posted about on Nikki’s blog.
I do think Nick F seems a reasonable fellow and was just bringing up a part of the overall discussion today.
I do not think that Nick F considered who “forced” the issue to be discussed in other blogs in the first place and why, but mostly sees Bay backing off of the kind of overstrong comment that people make on blogs, assuming that only their base of bloggers would ever care to read it.
But that’s just me.
HD-DVD loses the moment Star Wars comes out on Blu-Ray. It’s going to happen. Star Wars is the killer ap that will kill that entire freakin format. I’d rather Sir Howard have some power over the future of the DVD format, then a company in Seattle that think out of their asses more times than not. HD-DVD will fail. That Toshiba player will damn near bankrupt Toshiba, if they continue to keep it at that price. So HD-DVD may have bought Paramount and Universal (ran by idiots right now), but it’s not going to get FOX or Star Wars. Once Star Wars comes out… game over… HD-DVD.
P.S. The amount of money in hi-def DVD right now is so marginal that it isn’t changing anyone’s bottom line. This is why I personally think that Paramount taking the money and running will mean little to their long term health, even if Blu-Ray still kills HD.
And how long is this exclusivity deal… and what are the outs… and how long before they flop to producing both if certain levels aren’t reached in the next year or two?
You can be sure that Paramount is being paid significantly more than their total projected hi-def dvd revenues over the term of this deal. That’s why a studio makes this deal.
And Wrecktum makes a GREAT point. And of course, Disney’s relationship with Pixar makes any support of a Microsoft product quite unlikely.
And this for/from Don
“I think most people are perfectly happy for the time being to play standard def DVDs on their HDTVs.”
In my experience Wrecktum, all playing upscaled DVD’s on a HDTV does is ruthlessly expose every single flaw and limitation of standard definition DVD, via reams of fuzz and blocky, pixellated images. Many people airily dismiss Blu-ray and HD movies by saying ‘do we really need to see movie stars’ zits?’ and such like. But it’s the closest you’ll get to approximating the director’s vision and the theatrical experience, far more so than DVD. You get to see 3-D style depth of field. You get to appreciate the textures and color palette of the cinematography. You get to see the expressions of actors in medium-shot and so on. Whatever people think of Michael Bay’s hissy fit, at heart he only wants the best version of his movie to be made available to the widest available demographic, and many other directors are apparently (according to some other forums) extremely narked at Paramount’s about-face. Ridley Scott, for example, has very publicly championed Blu-Ray, and i can’t imagine he’d be too thrilled about Gladiator, say, ONLY being made available in high-def on a lower-selling format.
The NY Times said Paramount’s exclusivity was 18 months. Not really a long time, if you think about it.
I agree, Dr Wally, there really is no comparison. HD is obviously superior. That said, my point still stands. I think most people would be willing to settle with their regular DVDs instead of diving headfirst into a format war.
I thought the porn industry was going to determine this one, just like they did with VHS/Beta.
Regarding your opening comment on DirecTV/Tivo. The fact that DirecTV dumped Tivo is the one thing holding me back from going HD on their satellite service. I have one of their older Standard Def boxes with the Tivo interface and I really don’t want to give that up.
I wish they WOULD buy Tivo…
Vic
Porn didn’t determine Beta vs VHS, J-Mc.
Closed systems have always lost to open systems in modern technology. Mac vs the PC. Beta vs the VHS.
The difference here is that everyone thinks they learned the lesson from those events. So they are holding software hostage. But it’s the hardware that almost always makes the case.
Whoever gets to $150 first and can deliver a decent array of films will take the next big step. And then, if the other system catches up in hardware price point within a year, we’ll have a real clusterfuck. But then, the dual player for $200 will happen and it really will become a quality fight. But it probably won’t ever get to that.
And for my 2 cents, I think that this a middle format, but that if the price comes down and can be both an hd player and a traditional DVD player, people will buy them as replacements or upgrades without too much thought. So there could be some decent market saturation without hi-def DVD ever becoming a major format, soon to be replaced by electronic delivery to all formats.
Ugh, don’t base anything on what Disney does. After all, they backed Divx over DVD back when DVDs first came out… remember? Yes folks, the standard DVD format we all love was winner it its own little format war in the late 90s… I don’t see any mention of that in any of these stories.
Electronic delivery would work in damn near every other industrialized country besides the US, Heat. Everyone else — especially in Asia and parts of Europe — have speeds that the US has not even come close to touching. The US may not even get close to having internet that moves that fast in the next 10 to 20 years. So please point out to me how electronic delivery will ever get a foot-hold in a country, that’s in the 30s in term of internet speed.
You also have a tendency to ignore that tangible feeling purchasing something has compared to downloading. Yes; I have a crapload of Itunes, but I would prefer to buy the CD, if they are the same price because I actually OWN one in a way that’s more tangible than a download. We are a culture — and have been for years — that cherish holding something in our hands as much as whatever we gain from reading, listening, or watching that media we hold in our hands.
You seem to believe that a culture that believes in collections of music, books, movies, and damn near everything else, are ready to have HDD containing everything we LITERALLY hold dear. This is where I see you getting ahead of yourself in terms of electronic delivery. Our culture — as a whole — will have to change their concepts of ownership and conceptual notions of tangibility to do what you believe they will do in a few years.
Sure; it will happen. Do not get me wrong. I just do not see it happening by 2017. Unless we all have speeds as fast as a Swedish grandma currently has by then.
All I know IO is that I needed to have a fax machine to do business 10 years ago… cable networks had one channel apiece, I couldn’t get local channels on satellite because there “wasn’t enough room,” and 300 minutes on my cell was the same price as 1200 minutes today. (All rough approximations.)
My 58-year-old sister was using three VCRs five years ago. She now relies on DVR service delivered by her cable system.
I love bookstores. But everytime I buy in a store from a non-chain bookseller, I know it is costing me 30%-50%. And from a chain, often 20% or more. I buy at Book Soup because I want them to remain in business. I buy at Aeomeba because I want them to remain in business. I buy books in airports because it is convenient and a little random.
But if I am spending over $100 on books at a time, with rare exception, I am on Amazon Prime, paying no tax and an annual fee for all my 2-day shipping, plus discounts. (One book I saw in Myrtle Beach for $45 turned out to be $9 on Amazon.)
I believe that movies and theater and concerts and restaurants will continue to thrive for social reasons. And books and even newspapers are literally media that have different consistencies and therefore different values. But people want to see movies at home when they want to see movies at home. And whatever delivery system (including DVD) allows for speed, flexibility, variety, and price is one people will happily adopt.
Just out of curiosity, Mr. Poland, how did you get an all-zone DVD player? Is it even ‘legal’ in the US?
so, let’s hit this note by note
the Michael Bay thing.
the internet sucks, because people/websites will post wild or innacurate comments and stories and then when they have a second thought they just yank them like they dont exist and only post a retraction when someone has caught them doing it.
it drives me fucking crazy. post something dumb, put it out to the world, and then just erase it like it doesn’t exist rather than deal with the fact that you posted something idiotic. the internet is one big pencil document that people just erase.
#2. The Blu Ray/HD DVD debate
there’s a lot of smack being talked for two formats that account for 1 percent of the DVD market.
1 percent.
Take out the PS3 from the Blu Ray figures, and Blu Ray is looking anemic.
Oh, and whoever said the PS3 is in trouble hasnt seen the latest numbers. since the price drop, the sales have increased exponentially.
they are projecting the PS3 to be on par month for month with the 360. Some are even predicting it will pass it.
Why would a person need 3 VCRs? At the same time?
The bigger argument I remember when this whole ridiculous format war began was price vs. content. HD-DVD is cheaper for the studios, because it doesn’t require a major authoring and replication facility overhaul, keeping the cost to manufacture them down. Of course, the Blu-Ray facility adaptation has already happened, though it would need to further expand if the other two hold-out studios joined in (and similar to both CD and DVD growth, once the market/demand opens wider). Blu-Ray was championed because it can store vastly greater amounts of content (up to 5 times if I am remembering correctly) than HD-DVD, thus most computer manufacturers supported it for content delivery beyond movies. As far as I can tell, HD-DVD hasn’t caught with that one up yet. If the decision makers could have gotten off their asses and actually made a decision on this three years ago, we would be looking at Hi-Def DVD becoming a stepping-stone technology, not arriving as one.
The Divx/DVD argument isn’t being called up because neither HD format self-destructs after a 30, 60 or 90 day window. Divx technology was based solely on greed and stupidity, and all concerned got appropriately bitten in the ass when it finally died.
it seems like such a waste.
HD Video Download boxes are already in development and should hit the market in 3-5 years. once they figure out how to sell downloadable and ownable content to the masses, the discs will go bye bye anyway.
How much are they going to sink into a format war that will, at best maybe get to 15-20% of the market before being completely and utterly obsolete?
I bought a blu ray player about two weeks ago…and I LOVE IT!! The picture clarity is astounding and the sound is excellent. Lionsgate is the reason I chose blu ray over HD DVD. I am a horror movie freak and with Lionsgate only supporting blu ray the choice was made (Hostel 2 in blu ray–oh yeah!). I bought Dreamgirls in blu ray (I already own it in reg DVD) and the difference is mind blowing. This fight doesnt really concern me as it will be a few years before their is a true victory and by that time, if HD DVD wins, I’ll just buy a HD. I will be upset if Friday the 13th starts coming out in HD.
A friend came over the other day to watch Vacancy in blu ray…I was showing off my new toy. I was going on about the clarity and his response…”why do you need to have it so clear?”. My only response was “cause I can”.
95% of the people I run into and inform them that I bought a blu ray player have no idea what Im talking about!!
What’s a VCR?
“What’s a VCR?”
someone get me a sock full of quarters.
Sorry my low-brow joke wasn’t mature enough for this forum. I’ll never do it again, pal.
“Just out of curiosity, Mr. Poland, how did you get an all-zone DVD player? Is it even ‘legal’ in the US?”
The DVD player I bought for $25 at Wal-Mart has the ability to turn off the region code thing and allows me to play DVDs from any region (it even has PAL conversion).
if you read my post as anything other than a jokey reply to your joke, then you haven’t been here long enough.
it would take a lot more to warrant a beating with a sock full of quarters. unless you’re jeff wells.
Jeff; I had two going a few years ago. Again, the developments are happening, but you still ignore the CENTRAL QUESTION. If we are going to be an on-demand (let’s be honest right now… ON-DEMAND SUCK. There’s not enough content and most of the content available sucks. Do not even get me started on the whole “IT REQUIRES THE CABLE OPERATORS” to push a button bullshit) society. We have to have a society with phones and internet connections that WARRANT such a move. Again; we are way down in terms of INTERNET SPEEDS. We may have the hardware and software coming, but we do not have the SPEED. THE SPEED is what matters in terms of HD DELIVERABLE CONTENT.
“The DVD player I bought for $25 at Wal-Mart has the ability to turn off the region code thing and allows me to play DVDs from any region (it even has PAL conversion).”
If Wal-Mart is selling all-zone DVD players, then what’s the point of having zones at all when you could just get one of these for so cheap? Thailand is Zone 3 and since I bought some DVDs from my college years, I had to bring back my US DVD player, which was hell to set up (with the different voltage, cycle …) back home. Now I have two DVD players.
Perhaps that answers why a person needs multiple DVD players.
I don’t see downloads being as good as what we see on actual disks, especially in HD. At least not anytime soon. iTunes movie downloads look like crap. Their file sizes are roughly 1.2 GB. Well, a regular DVD holds 8.5 GB on a dual-layer disk. Not that the 8.5 represents the entire movie, but in terms of file size and compression, you can’t compare the quality between the two.
Now we have HD disks that currently hold 25 GB per side (for Blu-Ray). Explain to me how a downloadable HD movie is going to be comparable to the resolution capable in that?
Furthermore, the reason music downloads took off was because it altered the model. People no longer needed to buy entire CDs for only one or two songs they liked. That doesn’t translate to movie downloads.
I think the HD disks will ultimately do fine. One of the major reasons the studios like them is the extra room for special features. You don’t get that with downloads. No commentary or extra scenes or featurettes.
Good points mutinyco. Could you imagine how big the PIPE would have to be to download Blu-ray content in a reasonable amount of time? Right now; it might take a day or 2 to download 1080i content as good as BLU-RAY or even HD-DVD (without any sort of damaging to the overall image compression). Again: It all comes down to the speed. Speed that will take a lot longer to reach in the US, then all the technological achievements coming our way over the next decade.
What you two said. HD downloads will never (for a very long time at least) equal the quality of a HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc.
I currently have Blu-ray and will probably be buying into HD-DVD this fall, and regular DVD’s pretty much suck in comparison, even when taking into account the mythical DVD “upscaling” which does not in any way, shape or form even approach the quality of true 1080p content.
Granted, I have a 1080p projector, but for me the jump from DVD to HD is AT LEAST as great as the jump from VHS to DVD was back in
Even if the format war gets resolved, I have a feeling we’re looking at a laserdisc situation, where the purists say that HD (or Blu-Ray) is better, but it remains questionable whether the rest of consumers buy into it.
The scenario of consumers buying these players as replacements for their current ones in a really long and slow roll-out (like HDTV is taking) seems the most realistic.
The problem with your LaserDisc analogy, is that HD (HD-DVD + Blu-Ray) is already bigger than LaserDisc ever was, less than two years in.
While I agree that it’s doubtful that HD will ever be as big as DVD (or at least for a long time), I believe that it will be a mainstream format nonetheless. This will happen when:
a) A large enough percentage of households have HDTV’s. By the end of next year, the majority of homes will have HDTV’s I’m guessing.
b) Players drop below 200$. This will probably happen around christmas, and certainly next year.
c) The public gets educated on the difference between SD and HD. Disney is going on a big mall tour to educate the public on Blu-Ray, and it’s promotions like this that will (slowly) make a big difference. Most people today prefer widescreen, but that only happened after a lot of promoting it over the average Joe Six-Pack who complained about the “black bars cutting off the picture”.
Mutiny, you’re right in general, but I think your numbers are just a bit off. DVD content has a less efficient compression scheme than, say, iTunes downloads, which use the h.264 codec.
If I’m not mistaken, h.264-compressed content at 1080p uses about 70MB per minute of video. At that rate a two-hour movie would be about 8 GB.
That’s still way too large to download for anyone but the techies, of course. On the whole I agree with you– physical media isn’t going anywhere for a long while.
While I wasn’t trying to say that sales would be the same as HD vs. Laserdisc (though with both, we’re still talking in the neighborhood of 1% of total sales), I think it’ll remain niche for a long time (the way HDTV has taken forever to take off) and even longer if the format war continues.
I mean we’re still not at full saturation for HDTV (despite all the people on blogs like this who seem to think otherwise). Anecdotally, more than half the people I know still do not have an HDTV of any kind, and those that do often still have a stadard def tv in their house, too. People aren’t just buying HDTVs, they’re waiting for their old tvs to die before replacing them.
I believe the same will be true of the new HDDVD players (whatever format), even if they do drop to $200. And even once people have them in their houses, I have a feeling we’re looking at a long time before people start rebuying an entire movie collection because it came out in a new format.
What will finally push it will be when the players are in the house and people have gotten used to buying new DVDs in the HDDVD format, and they want them all to be HDDVD. But I think that’s still 5-10 years away.
The thing about compression is that it’s compression, no matter how efficient it is. The more the compression the lesser the quality. While h.264 is fine, it’s certainly no match for say 10-bit uncompressed. However, you could never download that.
If you put content onto a 25 GB disk, to maintain the highest picture quality you want that file size to be as large as possible. That’s the beauty of the new disks. A downloaded feature even at 8 GB is still not going to compare to a feature on one of those disks.
Anyhow.
Not that it makes a huge amount of difference, but HD sales are actually 2.5% of sales this year (http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Industry_Trends/Disc_Sales/Disc_Sales:_Hard_Numbers_in_for_First_Half_of_2007/862) not 1%.
And yes, people probably won’t be buying up their old library again in HD, at least at first. However, people will want the new releases which comprise the bulk of the sales at any one time anyway. Key catalog titles though, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Godfather series in HD are going to push the scales towards HD adoption in my opinion.
To play devil’s advocate, Star Wars came out on laserdisc but still didn’t do anything for that format. ;>
But it doesn’t really sound like we’re in much disagreement other than the timeline (assuming they end the format war).
Actually, I’d argue that Star Wars probably did quite a bit for laser disks. Most people are oblivious to the fact that laser disks were originally introduced around the same time as VHS and Betamax. The picture quality was understood to be much better, but the disks were the size of LPs and you had to (at the time) manually switch sides — so it was a hassle. But by the early ’90s (I think my family got a player in ’91), with players automatically switching sides, featuring tons of extras and displaying in theatrical aspect ratios, there was no reason not to make that switch. There was a big boom at that point. It was still niche, but every store carried the disks. I was an avid laser disk collector from ’91 till 2000 when I got a dual laser/DVD player, then lasers were discontinued.
For a moment, forget about market penetration, prices, politics, catalogs, etc. As movie lovers, when you turn off the lights and compare Blue-Ray and HD, side by side – which one curls your toes? Or which one curls your toes more?
meant blu-ray of course
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD side by side, look to my eyes completely identical.
Guys like Dan Ramer over at dvdfile claim that movies authored specially for blu-ray look better than HD-DVD because of less compression. Take that with any grain of salt you want to.
I still haven’t seen any evidence of it so far personally, and would actually claim that King Kong on HD-DVD is the best transfer I’ve seen of any movie EVER. But whether blu-ray or HD-DVD, I can’t stress enough how WONDERFUL it is to watch movies in HD. On a fairly large screen, say 40