Serves me right for not posting in a while. In his recent post, One Less Toy to Wish For, Alex quoted me as saying something to this effect:
most consumers won’t be that impressed with high definition images–they aren’t dramatically better than current DVD picture and, depending on how exacting you are in detecting the finer points of picture and sound, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
While Alex quoted me correctly, I’d like to clarify what I meant. By “aren’t dramatically better” I meant (or at least I think that I did) that the difference between HD-DVD (or Sony’s Blu-Ray) and “regular” (NTSC) DVD isn’t nearly as great as the difference between “crapvision” — as James Cameron called it — VHS and DVD. That’s not to say that there isn’t a clear visual difference, there is. But — and here’s what “finer points” may refer to — it becomes more pronounced the bigger your set is. For sets under a certain size — 5o inches, perhaps? — I wonder if people will think that it’s worth it.
In any case, it’s moot for me because I’m not diving in until the format war between Warner-Toshiba and Sony is settled. Besides, how many more versions of The Fifth Element can a man be expected to buy?
