Microsoft announces external HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360

I know you're joking somewhat, but this HAS been an issue in H-Wood with HD television. Cinematographers and Camera people have had to adjust to the increased detail for close-ups, by adding bluring lenses and other things to smooth out facial features, etc. It really is quite humorous.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

Yep, they've been worried about this for sometime. I believe one example was Cameron Diaz and her major acne scars.

Oh well, guess there'll be stability in being a makeup artist.

 

How fast the new formats will be adopted depends on many factors and a huge one would be when the big movie rental places start renting movies on those new formats and what thet will cost. after all I think most people rent DVDs rather than bying them. When the new format player have gone down in price as well as all new movies can be rent at the same price as DVD then the new formats should start and pick up on the DVD. But for sure Having BR in PS3 is big and give it a huge push but still I think that DVD will be around a long time still...

 

All these H-Wood stars must be trembling in their shoes now ...

 

Isn't the movies already much higher def than TV and DVD if you go see it in the cinemas today?
I think the detail you see in your local movie theatre already is at similar level of that of Blu-ray or HD-DVD, even though it was no digital theatre.
Why would Hollywood react to the higher def only now when high definition approaching the level of definition of theatres is coming to screens at homes?
That "Hollywood Cinematographers and Camera people have had to adjust to the increased detail for close-ups, by adding bluring lenses and other things to smooth out facial features, etc" ... I think it's just an "urban myth", or something let to live because it actually is good PR for HD

 

It's not only about apparent image quality. Imagine how one behaves if he/she has PS3 and a BD version of a movie is only $10 more expensive than DVD. If he/she is a collector, and have never owned its DVD version, I bet a BD version will be the choice in most cases even though he/she is not an HDTV owner.

Even if you feel all the new gain in BD such as better IQ, better navigation and more bonus contents negligible, the choice depends only on whether the cost delta is justifiable or not, unless he/she is a born pirate who gets DVD to rip.

 

Movie visual effects are usually created at 2048*1536, and even though they get film grain and maybe even some blur added in compositing, I'd still say that their quality and detail is quite equal to 1080p HD. That is, when projected onto a screen. I don't know how scanned film material looks on a >40 inch LCD and how it compares to HD there... but I don't think it'd be much different either.


However, I'm sure that TV show crews and actors have to adapt though. Most of the stuff like Enterprise, Lost, Desperate Housewives, 24 etc. in the US is HD by now, right?

 

The concentration on picture-quality seems a bit daft, if you ask me. Keep in mind that there is more than video--and audio--coming up in this next generation.

IMHO, the interactive layer of HD-generation disks may be the real deciding factor in how they get picked up. I'm not expecting much from this first wave of games, but depending on how clever publishers are going to be and what they can offer consumers through it, there may be much more than "I have an HDTV so I need HD movies" involved.

We're entering a real push from the PC end as well on home networking, with heavy emphasis on the living room/entertainment center first. (As makes the most sense, since that's where the consumers' eyes, ears, and most expensive electronics will be. Portables [cell phones especially] will be leaned on as well, of course.) "Mere" DVD's may be seen as dead-end tech sooner rather than later not because of them looking poor in comparison, but simply because of what they don't do. I can't imagine going back to VHS--not for movie-watching nor for television recording--not because of picture quality (TiVo on low quality isn't hot, and many TV's won't let you take supreme advantage of DVD's anyway) but because of the wholesale loss of convenience. Chapter-skipping, instant response, rock-solid pausing, stacking program after program in the same place, offering insanely-fast searching... Who the hell cares about picture quality? Broadband and 56k both deliver the same quality .jpg's on the browser page...

IMHO, the adoption of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will not be as much what they look like as they will be about what they are made to do over the next few years. The computer age is all about "info-tainment" now as well as "entertainment," and the moment consumers can hit a button and order a good-looking movie they just saw on preview (direct from Amazon, price-check it on Froogle, add it to their Netflix queue...), hit a button to be told every major actor in a scene and pull down their bios, get important email notices while they're in the middle of a film, browse a list of "movie friends" to see what they've all recently been watching to find inspiration...

DVD's won't be standing still during this transition either, but I have a feeling I know where the emphasis will lie. DVD's in general will be enhanced by the media center computing effort, but the HD generation players are aimed at a different future for themselves. It all depends on when that starts being realized through the publishers, and just how hard and smart they're marketed for public awareness.

 

Welcome to my world, although I am only at >600 DVDs, Universal DVDA/SACD player of which I bought a total of 6 discs, I do own a D-VHS, but for the most part there are very few D-VHS movies that look OMG, substantially better than DVDs.

I for one don't see HD optical anything outselling DVDs in the 5-yeare life span of either the PS3 or XBOX 360.

 

Who really would use all those functions while watching the movie.
I personally would be very annoyed if I was watching a movie and my partner would bring some info of actors on the screen, no matter if the movie was still running on the background, it would interrupt the experience completely and ruin the film for me.
Nor would I like to get a notification of any incoming e-mail in the middle of a movie.
Just give me the movie with possibly selectable subtitles and audio tracks, with a visibly higher quality than DVD and I'll be much happier than if they give me just extra fuinctions that are fun for a while but I would seldom use after the novelty wears off.

 

That might annoy YOU, but I don't think you're in very large company there. Or are you saying you've never been watching a movie and had anyone ask a question ("who's playing that character there? I recognize them from SOMETHING, I'm sure of it!"), pause it to answer the phone/cell/text-message (and what is email but another extensions of that? Keep in mind there's a reason I said "important email notices," as we're in a very immediate-response culture anymore. Obviously no one wants to be interrupted by spam. But if a player ties in easily and lets you get important notices, it's no different than stopping to look at your cell phone after you've been beeped. If it can also overlay the text so you can read it simply, it actually becomes LESS annoying than other sources because you don't have to get up or interrupt yourself as long to at least know what the content is and decide if you need to interrupt yourself further), or ever go online to check IMDB, online reviews, or anything else that comes to mind.

Personally, I get really into movies as well, but I run into these kinds of situations ALL THE TIME and sometimes like to settle my own curiosities as well. The net has changed the way we devour media intrinsically.

You can certainly argue with who you're with about DOING such things, but that's still peanuts to what they COULD do and what people WOULD like. If nothing else, just imagine what the interactive layer and an RSS feed of IMDB right now could do with the end credits--which no one cares about interrupting--alone. Let alone what people will start coming up with when they start really applying themselves.

The Internet was in its infancy when DVD launched, and just think about how prevalent it is in most ANYONE'S life right now. Think about cell phones now versus what they were in 1997. It doesn't take much imagination to think that even just the way we "watch movies" in the future will bear a similar resemblance. "Going online" and "calling people" used to be uncomplicated things, too.

 

From today's Poll on IMDB.com

Would you replace your DVD of a title if a High Definition (HD) DVD version came out?

(48.5%) No, I don't see the need
(25.3%) No, I'm gonna wait 'til they decide on the format to use (25.3%)
(11.1%) Yes, if the price was right
(8.8%) Yes, if there were more special features
(6.3%) Yes, if the picture was better


This is perhaps a better representation of the general consumers attitude's than a poll on a tech/game centric site. And not surprisingly, picture quality is very low on the list.

 

True, but that's customer attitudes about only one end of the market. Now it needs to be braced up with polls that track what price they'd be willing to spend on a HD player, how much for the media, whether they'd buy HD movies if they had an HD player "anyway," whether they would continue to buy new movies on DVD if they had an HD player...

 

Many times there are even on DVDs information of the cast and stuff, worst case senario you will have google the actor in question to see what other films he/she has done.

The difficulty here isn't so much space as for every frame have some kind of a tag who is in it at the moment and if we get very advanced maybe make that frame klickable so you can click on the character in question and get the info but wouldn't that require quite a lot of work?

And the question is if a movie mayde by one studio would like to have a filmography of every actor showing movies mostly maybe done by other studios, why would they want to do that...

 

That's it, I [/i]pause the movie to answer my cell, go read IMPORTANT email every once a while during the movie, or lookup some info on actors (as if it couldn't wait until the end of movie). I do that on DVD, go to my PC on the other room, or answer the cell on the coffee table, don't see some of those functions being interwowen to the device playing the movie making my life that much easier or fascinating...
In fact, my PC already can do those if I choose to use it as a HTPC, when I watch a movie on my PC, I though never find myself stopping the movie and googling for some actor even if that question popped in my mind, that is very trivial info anyway and soon brushed off my mind from bothering.

What about going for a pee in the middle of a LOTR EE, will the new tech make that experience more satisfying it is now?

True, I only speak for myself.
The advanced interactivity of the new formats is not for me during the movie, but outside the time I watch the feature they will mean a lot more.
It's after the movie, that I will check the extras and actor infor etc. using the disc interface.

 

Is this poll taken people's opinion who have seen the differences between SD and HD running on a HD set they might want to purcahse in the future.

If not, then its pretty useless using this poll.

 

About tagging the movie frames, for actor info and for example product info.
For actors it might work, but for products (for example checking the maker of an actor's shirt, and then shopping for a similar) it could get tiring.
Only the products that have agreed on sponsoring said movie, would be clickable, so while the main actor's shirt would have the tag, some other side actor's shirt that would be more to your taste might not have one. Soon the whole movie viewing experience would turn into a clickfest you trying to get info on things there are no tags for, and instead getting info on things you really didn't want.
It would not be watching a movie anymore, it would be virtual shopping in the movie world. Or virtual celebrity spotting.
I can only imagine the content of the movies suffering in the long run if the Hollywood etc. put too much effort on product placement and "interactivity" instead of story telling and traditional things that are good in movies.

 

If 25% of the people in the US have an HD set at this point, I think its probably safe to assume that most people know someone with a HDTV and have seen it. So you'd think they would have an idea of the quality offered.

I personally don't know how I'd answer the poll, because some titles I would consider replacing if the price was right, but I am most certainly going to be waiting.

 

What have people seen, when there are very little HD content available to the general public?

If people actually see a SD/ED (DVD) vs HD (BluRay/HD-DVD) movie running on a HDTV, they'll know the difference. Only a fool would think other wise.

BTW, Here's a Pioneer BluRay vs DVD pic I found at AVSF a few days ago.

Looks pretty clear to me that HD content>>>SD/ED content on a HDTV.

 

BTOA, I would only make a judgement in a shop if I were you, besides the picture is not taken centrally which accounts for the colour problem on the DVD screen.