The Buzz About HD Home Video

If your memories can possibly reach back through the mists of time to an era before DVD, you may be able to recall some dim notion of a home video format called "video tape". Sure, it wasn't digital (back then we didn't really even know what that meant), but it was cheap and common and we were all happy with it for around 15 years. Those who weren't happy with it invested in the horrendously expensive and marginally better "laserdisc", which was doomed essentially from the start by being a big, unwieldy, non-recordable, non-rentable video medium. Some of us still retain these dinosaurs in our collections, myself included, for various sentimental reasons. (Remember, it was the laserdisc that introduced us to the concept of "making of" documentaries on the disc, "audio commentary" tracks and, towards the end, soundtracks presented in digital surround sound.)

At a certain point (between 1997 and 2000), the industry did a big flip and embraced DVD as the standard bearer for home video technology. After flirting with a few other formats (VCD, SVCD, DivX), it was decided that DVD, with its MPEG-2 compression and built-in digital soundtracks, as well as CD-size, was the way to go. All major studios jumped on board, both discs and players came down in price and everyone suddenly thought video tape and laserdisc were fuzzy, blurry relics.

On what did we base this decision? Yes, DVD looked and sounded better, but was the public at large really that unhappy with the choices they had? I doubt it. It had a lot more to do with some simple market factors, such as penetration of the rental market (laserdisc never quite managed to do this), small, familiar size and price. I can imagine that the typical consumer (full disclosure: I don't think I was ever one of those) just thought that if they could get something better, as easily, for the same price, then why not make the jump?

These days, I have yet to encounter anyone other than a high-tech blogger who is truly displeased with the video quality of DVD. Even 73% high-end home-theatre owners, according to a recent poll, are satisfied with DVD as a video delivery medium. So, what's the fuss about HDTV? Clearly most people don't consider the DVD broken. What's the rush to fix it?

Even if there was dissatisfaction with the current format, the industry tearing itself apart over which "high definition" format to adopt, Blu-ray disc or HD-DVD, is only driving consumers further back into their DVD collections. I suspect, based on nothing but some info and some common sense, that neither format will come out on top unless the same factors that drove the eager adoption of DVD occur:

1. The new formats become adopted by the rental market.
2. The players become inexpensive.
3. HDTV's, which are necessary to see any benefit of either new format, become more numerous than "old fashioned" TV's.
4. The industry agrees on a format and promotes it as the logical successor to a format you already know and love. That is, they put an end to this silly "format war".
   

Those who are clamoring for the DVD to be retired had better ask themselves if any of those four conditions has happened, or will happen soon, because until they do, the DVD is here to stay.