War Is Over (If You Want It)

Good, I say. This is what I've wanted since the beginning. Blu-Ray is higher capacity. Always has been. BR has 50 gigs. HDDVD only has 30. HDDVD said it wouldn't matter. Bullshit.

There are demonstrations of DVD vs HD. If you went to Sears in November, you got to see a comparison showing the difference between an SD and HD transfer of A Knight's Tale and Kingdom of Heaven. The difference is tremendous. I've actually stopped buying DVDs. I want a Blu-Ray rom drive, and I want it bad. (I don't want a player. I want a rom drive.) I'll be holding off on quite a few titles until I have a Blu-Ray player. And they have some beauties: Paprika, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner the Final Cut, etc. (Ghost in the Shell is especially important, as it has been distributed on DVD by Manga, a company that prides itself on not knowing what the fuck it's doing when it comes to pressing DVDs.) Ah yes, there's an important thing. DVDs can be manufactured by complete idiots. They can be made from shoddy VHS tapes or worse. If someone made a Blu-Ray disc from a VHS tape, they'd be crying for blood! Think of it, gentlemen! No more shitty transfers, no more interlacing!

And people have high-definition computer monitors. Sure, a lot of them don't quite make it to 1080 tall, but hell, they're all past 768 now. Bringen-sie mir Fegelein!

Das erste Mal dass ich ihn gesehen habe, konnte ich nur in dem eigentlichen Clip konzentrieren (ich habe den brillanten Untergang nur einmal beobachtet). Glücklich dass ich den Clip wieder gesehen habe: er ist sehr lustig.

But, to get back on topic, I agree with what you imply, Jim, that this “war” is taken way out of context especially considering the fact that the very nature of digital distribution would eventually have to preclude plastic discs. It’s simple business sense: cut out the middle-man. If studios can transmit their products digitally, and if consumers have the equipment to receive and store them digitally, then why would anyone even bother with discs? Why go out for a burger when you can have steak at home?

I haven't played the whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray game yet because: 1) I'm a students, so it's too expensive for me to upgrade, and 2) for the price, I don't think the upgrade is worth it.

There is a huge difference in clarity between a VHS in good condition (which still isn't terrible) and a DVD. The change isn't as significant from DVD to HD because it's still digital: it's not as if it's switching from digital to some completely different format.

Like you said, Jim, the whole HD thing really isn't any different from the battle over CDs and CD-ROMs and DVDs. Unless standard DVDs starting falling out by way of Laserdisc (discs and players stop being produced), only then will I think seriously about re-buying my collection on HD.

Even though I'm a technology nut, I've been waiting on the sidelines for the Blu-Ray/HD DVD situation to shake out as well. My LCD TV upstairs can handle 1080p content, but it's only a 26inch widescreen (bedroom), so it would be a long time before I upgrade the DVD player in that room to something beyond an up-convert. The TV in the living room is an old (is 1997 old?) Sony 27inch Tube TV, that I will upgrade when it dies, since I'm looking to replace it with a 42 inch LCD (1080p is a little expensive at that size still). So the only setup in my house that I could possibly care about the HD wars would be the home theater in the basement. Down there I've got a DLP projector onto a 100 inch screen and a nice Infiniti sound system. The hard part there is I've only got component video cables running from the cabinet to the projector (time constraints when finishing the basement) and I'd have to re-run a long and expensive HDMI cable for the projector to get the best picture quality, and I'm not going to re-configure my cabinet and video setup until I'm certain of the format. HD DVD was going to be my preffered format until CES simply because the prices have come down so much on those ($150 for HDDVD, $400 for Blu-ray just from Best Buy, and $800 for a combo player). Since I'm about ready to become a father, I just don't have the budget for those toys anymore. The studios have got to realize people are not going to switch formats every 5 years, no matter what, it's a simple catch-22...

Unfortunately, YouTube has already removed the clip. Can anyone post an alternative source for viewing? Or provide a synopsis?

JE: Jack, I re-posted it and it's working now.

As a Blu-ray (PlayStation 3) owner, that video puts a grin on my face, but I do realize (and fear) that my little bundle of technology may be obsolete before too long.

If not for my video game reviewing duties, I wouldn't even own a Blu-ray player, so I'm an ambivalent so-called early adopter. On the one hand, I'm pleased that the Blu-ray format has such a large slice of the hi-def market. On the other hand, I bought just a year ago an Oppo up-converting DVD player and never considered high def technology until work required it. If it works, it's obsolete, as McLuhan said.

Still, even my untrained eyes and ears can see and hear a difference between an upcoverted DVD and a high def disc. To see 2001 in high definition is to be converted. So I'm buying Blu-ray titles I don't already own, but treading cautiously.

I'm confused about the concern you raise that we'll still be using discs in the future. Is this a worry about the burden put on the environment by such transit?

At the moment, there is no good way to get the same quality viewing experience through a download. Xbox Live rentals do not look or sound as good as a disc, nor do they have any extras, and they cost $6 to rent. That's steep. Apple and Microsoft can't seem to find a way to get content off a computer and onto a television unless the DVD is stored on the hard drive illegally (stripped of its copyright), but even then the quality suffers. Even the just announced AppleTV is unsatisfactory.

And I think there's something to be said for physical ownership. I like my collections of books and CDs and movies. I like loaning and borrowing from friends and the library. I still read a printed paper even though the New York Times is free on the web.

I think it is true that people do not have an incentive to upgrade at the moment (don't have an HDTV, think DVD quality is just fine, are confused about the dueling formats), but that as time goes on the desire to get the most out of their hardware as they acquire it (HDTV and surround sound) may eventually persuade folks to join the Allied forces, er, Blu-ray camp, provided technological advancements don't stage another Battle of Midway.

You bring up a good point, except I think you're overestimating the ability to deliver true HD content on-demand without putting it on a physical piece of plastic. The bandwidth for delivering a 1080p film that you order with your remote isn't there yet, so Blu-ray will probably be a viable format for several years, at least. It does seem that it will likely never get beyond serving as an early adopter luxury, though, as opposed to a true format for the masses (like DVD has finally become, and VHS was before it), if for no other reason than the snail's-pace adoption of HDTV in general.

The site I write for has seen an absolute explosion in traffic over the past two weeks ever since Warner's defection to Blu-Ray "ended" the war. Our message boards are full of dozens of endless threads which consist of Blu-Ray fanboys making fun of HD fanboys, with the HD camp gamely shouting "It's not over yet."

It's depressing. We haven't a post on our message boards discussing an actual movie (y'know, the stuff you watch on your groovy cool Blu-Ray or HD players) in quite a while.

The majority of the early adapters to either format are not movie-lovers or even the "public", but tech junkies. They are not a particularly great predictor of things to come.

I agree with Jim that the most likely scenario is that both Blu and HD turn out to be losers in a fairly short period of time. Whether that's true or not, the real winner today and for the foreseeable future is still SD. Those plain ol' vanilla DVDs are still the dominant choice for the consumer, and that will not change any time soon.

Thanks for the tipster credit, Jim. I think you nailed the salient point here: Any plastic-disc medium that's currently in use is going to be nothing more than a stop-gap measure until full-HD delivery on-demand (by way of downloads, subscrfiption services, etc.) becomes the norm...and that's going to happen a lot sooner than most people think. All disc media are doomed. Anyone remember ZIP drives? Ancient history. They were useful for a while, then vanished as CD burning came along. The all-digital, non-physical delivery systems now being implemented (e.g Netflix's recent announcement of an upcoming download service, eventually replacing their red-envelope snail-mail system) will rapidly take hold and render discs obsolete. DVDs of all kinds will linger for a long time in the mass market as pawn-shop fodder (and also as the only format for rarities and out-of-the-mainstream titles, until they, too, are absorbed into the anytime/anywhere delivery systems), but I for one will be delighted when a huge movie collection no longer takes up an entire wall of shelf-space in my house -- or any space at all, for that matter. (To "sam": I, too, love sharing movies with friends, but HOW I do that is not a big issue. I'll be just as happy when I can call a friend and say "You've gotta see this movie -- its download ID number is 12657" or something like that.) I'm already watching a lot of movies recorded on a DishNetwork DVR, and the 1080p quality is absolutely spectacular (with no loss of quality between real-time viewing and the DVR recordings). Allowing for bandwidth issues still being worked out (as mentioned in another comment), I think the next phase -- downloads on demand, or direct delivey via satellite, etc. -- is going to arrive quite rapidly. Blu-Ray discs have a promising future as coasters on your coffee table. I do wonder about one thing: What is the Criterion Collection of the future, and how will they be delivered? And what about the great, critically valuable printed materials they include with their titles? Will they become downloadable also, and will there be an option to print them out in glossy booklet format? Just speculating here...who knows what the reality will be in a decade or so.

I think on-demand is going to take much longer than you think, Jeff. The % of people interested in downloading their movies from the internet is tiny even compared to the number of people interested in buying HD or bluRay players. That'll change, but it'll take a long time.

I, for one, am not looking forward to it. I like to have something physical, something tangible, something with weight and dimension that is called "a movie" in my possession, whether it's in cans, on tape or on DVD. Maybe it's the collector in me. But I don't want a world in which all art simply exists as downloadable packets.

Then again, people bitched about the printing press ruining the personal touch of hand-copied books, so I guess I'm just a Luddite. But I'll be happily buying any of those pawn shop DVDs at bargain prices!

Jeff,

"I for one will be delighted when a huge movie collection no longer takes up an entire wall of shelf-space in my house -- or any space at all, for that matter"

You are obviously not passionate about film. Watching movies must be merely an idle distraction for you, something you don't consider to have much importance at all.

I love having an entire wall of shelf-space in my house being taken over by my library of DVDs. It is a point of pride, like someone who sets up an area where they stack all of their collected trophies from various triumphs from their past.

Would you also like all of the wall-space taken over by your music collection to be converted into a bunch of anonymous looking files identified solely by number on your computer or television? Should all your treasured books be filed away to be read like a downloadable Adobe document? How about we take all your family photos and graduation and vacation pictures and load them all into a big network of computer files for you to access whenever you feel like looking at them? Who needs frames? Who needs cover artwork? Who needs CD booklets and forewords and author's notes? This is all needless fandangle. You don't want to clutter your precious desire for vacant space so you can install more important things like a jacuzzi, maybe, or a basketball court, or a second garage.

Harry Lime,

I am not sure how one can judge one's passion for film based on one's preferable means of storage. I have, what many might describe, an unhealthy, almost wanton infatuation with Caravaggio, and the Baroque School. Yet, based on your logic, it would be impossible for me to prove that since I only have one smallish reproduction of The Denial of St Peter in my flat.

Besides, is passion quantifiable?

Oh, not like that, you perverts.

Unfortunately, YouTube has already removed the clip. Can anyone post an alternative source for viewing? Or provide a synopsis?

If only you had given a synopsis instead of reposting it would have been so much more enjoyable.

I have no money so none of this is an issue for me. As for judging passion by storage space I don't think you can judge someone's passion by how they have something but by what they have. If someone has 200 DVDs taking up wallspace and another guy has 10,000 movie titles digitally stored and watches four a day I'm going to say guy #2 has more passion for the movies.

On the other, despite Harry's rabid lather over this, I also appreciate owning a disc and having all those things that go with it. I still (still!) miss pulling an lp out of its sleeve when I want to listen to music. And the cover art and liner notes were designed for that particular size jacket cover so they don't look as good on the smaller cd variety. And some even opened up to reveal more. I remember how cool Axis Bold as Love looked when you opened it up and the front cover revealed itself to be only the top half of a full length piece of psychedelic art. So yes, I can see Harry's point, I just wouldn't take it as far as saying you don't have passion about movies if you want them digitally stored. I would say you don't have a collector's passion, that tactile love of the vessel itself not just what it contains, and that's a different thing altogether.

Harry Lime: That was a pretty dumb thing to say.

Jeff: Zip drives weren't just phased out by burnable CDs; they (and, more and more, burnable CDs) are being phased out by simple USB flash drives. They're small, portable, reusable, and as a consequence much cheaper. To say all physical media are going out the window is maybe calling the game a bit early... digital saturation in this country (nevermind other, poorer countries) isn't anywhere near what most tech-heads seem to think it is. Us online-all-the-time types are the minority.

Interesting turns this thread is taking...anyway, RE: the issue of digital vs. physical, there's another aspect that nobody's mentioned yet. Not to come off sounding like a Luddite, but I'm not yet 100% comfortable with the idea of my entire movie collection existing only on a hard drive somewhere, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I've lost computer-related content too many times (either due to human errors or digital gremlins) to want to imagine a media library without physical backups.

I know it's probably a concern that's roughly half-irrational (I'd like to think that there'll be loss-prevention systems of some kind when we reach the disc-less future). But if this next phase of entertainment does indeed arrive "a lot sooner than most people think," then I have a feeling it's gonna be a while longer before Average Joe is okay with trusting his cash-fueled collection to some little red light inside the media cabinet.

Harry Lime (do we get zither music with that?),

You are stuck in the analog paradigm. I gather you prefer it there. To each his (and her) own, I guess.

Before you question my passion for film, there are some facts you need to be aware of: I majored in film history, theory and criticism in college. I've been a professional film critic for nearly 25 years. From 1992 to 1998 I was assistant editor (with Jim Emerson as our equally film-passionate senior editor) of Microsoft's Cinemania CD-ROM and website, and later was the original DVD editor at Amazon.com, which gave me almost unlimited access to free DVDs. I continue to review films and DVDs in a professional capacity, so I find it disturbingly irrational that you would equate my embrace of convenient, downloadable movie delivery with a lack of passion for movies. Ali Arikan makes a perfectly valid point. And when the time comes that HD downloads are commonplace, I will still have a large collection of DVDs taking up at least one large wall of shelf space, with many more carefully organized in conveniently accessible storage boxes). With regard to ease of access to my collection and welcoming the advent of direct-delivery systems, there's another relevant detail you need to be aware of: I am also a quadriplegic, and I do not have complete use of my hands. From my wheelchair it is difficult to reach the top shelf of my DVD racks. For this and other reasons I will obviously welcome the convenience of downloads and other direct-delivery systems, and I'm sure a lot of other disabled people will benefit from that convenience. Regarding family photos, books, etc., I already have my family photos scanned and saved as high-res digital files that can be readily shared with members of my extended family who DON'T own the originals (which I will continue to cherish -- including the ones in picture frames). I'll keep all my books, photos, and other printed media when I want to, and I'll continue to use digital media for the sake of convenience. For you to interpret my original comment as an indication that I am "obviously not passionate about film" is utterly bizarre. You're making a leap of illogic that's almost depressing in the scope of its ignorance. Either that or you're attempting a very lame joke. - js

Harry, Jonathan: I, too, miss LPs -- the larger artwork, the liner notes, the labels, the shiny black vinyl, the grooves (but not the scratches, ticks, pops, warps and surface noise).

The idea of being able to "own" a movie on a disc or cassette is relatively new (since for many years a movie was something you couldn't take with you; you could only rent a seat for a communal experience/performance).

So, I too like being able to have a physical media library (even though I don't have enough space for all my CDs and DVDs -- and books, many of which are still in boxes in my basement).

But for "rentals"? I'd much prefer the convenience of TiVoing something off of cable, or using a PPV service like On Demand (which also offers some titles in HD).

Jeff: I've told Jim this before, but now you're here so I'll tell you too. Cinemania is one of the MAJOR reasons for my cinephilia; I spent hours and hours and hours on that thing in my mid-adolescence, and it equipped me to use my free rentals wisely when I worked at Hollywood Video senior year.

So, thanks.

"The idea of being able to "own" a movie on a disc or cassette is relatively new (since for many years a movie was something you couldn't take with you; you could only rent a seat for a communal experience/performance)."

That's something I'm always forgetting, even though I find it really interesting on a sort of sociological level.

Anybody know of any good articles, books, etc. about the changes that home video brought to film criticism? Or, maybe I should rephrase: I know what the changes were, I'm just interested in the results of those changes, for better and worse. Like losing the "communal experience," gaining the ability to manipulate movies (muting, slow-mo), and so on. HOW and WHY these changes affected the way we create (and react to) films.

(Also, thanks for reposting the video, Jim.)

I'm not exactly looking forward to the downloadable future, but then again I have still never downoloaded a song off the net. I want my big carrying case of CDs that's been in my car for nearly five years now!

From a purely selfish POV, I would find it depressing to have "everything" (or, at least "a whole lot of stuff") instantly available to me at the mere tap of a keyboard. It takes away the fun in hunting down the obscure, in spending days/weeks/months/years searching for that one elusive film you're desperate to have.

But that is selfish, because I'm sure filmmakers would want their films available to as wide an audience as possible. And I want that to... except for that selfish part of me that wants to feel "special" for owning bootleg copies of all of Godard's video work or a copy of the feature film from the 70s which stars Jonathan Rosenbaum as lead actor, but which isn't even listed in IMBD.

Ken,

You don't know how great it is to hear that Cinemania sparked your interest. Rarely a day goes by that I don't fire up the final edition (Cinemania '97) and enjoy the benefits of that still-useful disc. (YES! A STILL-USEFUL DISC! I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING!) That was a hell of a ride -- in some ways maybe the best gig Jim or I will ever have in terms of being in the vortex of the multimedia boom (although I think Jim's current gig is better in its own way, and certainly less nerve-wracking). Anyway, I'm psyched by your comment. Helping to create Cinemania with a lot of cool, smart people was a thrill, and if it encouraged anyone's (ahem) cinemania, well, we did our job. Thank YOU.

Oops, I forgot something: I wanted to say I'm not entirely at odds with Harry Lime's affection for the holdable object -- not at all. The centerpiece of my collection is every single title (including out-of-print titles and remastered resissues) in the Criterion Collection. I'm not mentioning this to boast (I got 'em for free, so I take no credit) but to indicate that I cherish those DVDs as a very important part of my life, and I love holding them in my hands and savoring the effort that went into their manufacture -- just as you'd savor an expensive first edition. But I can envision a day when everything that all of us miss -- like large-size graphics, lyric sheets, essays, elaborate liner notes, artwork and photos -- will look absolutely fantastic on our widescreen HDTVs. When that happens I won't mind the absence of LP sleeves and the like -- at least not until I need a convenient square of cardboard to separate stems and seeds from the nuggets of gold...

A summary would not give this clip justice. Here's a new link:

http://www.glumbert.com/media/hddvd

I don't begrudge anyone's desire to have the actual physical artifact of something; to this day I still prefer to go hunting for CDs the old-fashioned way. My objection has more to do with Lime's apparent lack of self-awareness; he seems to be perpetuating the same line that would have seen his parents or grandparents condemning his preferred formats in favor of their own.

It took my CD collection getting stolen -- as well as having to sell off most of my DVDs at one point -- to become a lot less attached to the concept of ownership. Those discs and cover art are cultural touchstones, but they're also just things.

Two points:

- I don't think physical media is going to die. I'm pretty sure flash drives (or anything similar that comes our way in the future) will stay a part of it for a while. However, I doubt discs will. Yes, we still like having a wall full of CD's or DVD's or even LP's and we want to keep it, but really, that's because it's what we've done for a while now and what we enjoy. We evolve with the world, though, and that feeling might change. As someone mentioned, who had such a wall 25 years ago? And even if it doesn't change for us, hardly anyone growing up right now will have that same feeling. It's almost a feeling of nostalgia. And it's those kids that will be catered to in X years or so.

- There's a difference in having film or music available on your computer, and books or photographs. Film comes from your screen, and music comes from your speakers (or headphones), whether it was stored on disc or harddrive. With books and photographs however, there IS a difference. A screen is a light source, paper is not. It is different for the eye to read on the computer, and it certainly is different to watch color on a screen. So the argument isn't entirely the same for these media, and if not forever, I think they'll last much longer.