DVD Forum Approves HD-DVD Standard

An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. said Friday that the DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and movie studios, has approved the two Japanese companies' standard for next-generation DVDs. It has always annoyed me that DVDs are not the same top resolutions as High Definition TV. Maybe this will fix it." Well, better get to work rebuying your entire video collection, again.

Someone will still complain

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have to buy my entire movie collection again". Yeah sure, if you always want the best quality available.

But why would that make your current collection "look like crap"? It's the same DVDs you've been watching (or rather, collecting) since the beginning.

Re:That'd be terrible!

[gl4ss]

well that does hardly matter since vhs already killed the movie producers...

err...

Actual Spec Anywhere?

[benwaggoner]

It's nice we have the announcement, but this is Slashdot!

Have ANY technical details of the new standard been published anywhere yet? I can't find any public resources I can link to.

Re:Re-buying

[Shaklee39]

Soooo what is your point? You think all video media should be able to make itself better when a new standard comes out? You will still be able to watch the old dvds as clear as they were when you bought them, however, now when you buy any new movies you can grab ones with higher resolution.

Re:Just re-process the video

[druiid]

Umm, we're not talking about rescaling 480i input. Almost no new DVD movies, if any, are not progressive video at this point. Usually only first-gen movies are interlaced. As far as quality.. no, you're not adding detail, but when you change the resolution of a video-game you're not really changing the LoD either, but in general it makes the game look better. The filters ffdshow uses are quite impressive as far as video processing, so I believe, from what I've seen, that it comes damn close to HD quality.

what happened to EVD?

[wep]

there was a chinese made standard for hdtv capable dvd's like last week.. i guess these japanese companies just got the patents done faster? but evd was made to get away from stupid licenses and fees... oh well

Or we could get lots of cheap used DVD's

[tie_guy_matt]

I don't know about you, but IMO standard NTSC is fine for most hollywood movies on most small screen TVs. Maybe if I had a 300 foot monster TV I would want more resolution (Mmmm 300 foot TV! pixels the size of your head!) So I am perfectly happy with my current DVD selection. So when everyone else sells back their standard DVD collection in order to make way for the super duper high res DVD, I will be busy buying up all of their old standard DVDs for a fraction of the cost they paid for them.

Re:Re-buying

[AKnightCowboy]

Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: The Super-Hyper Fighting Edition: Directors Cut: XTREME Really Wide Screen High Definition Rerelease ULTRA-EX2

Then you need to buy the entire remastered original Trilogy in the keepsake collectors box set. Several months later they'll release the entire remastered Star Wars episodes I-VI so you'll need to buy it again. Can't keep up with all these releases. How about just releasing a movie once with all the stuff you want to put in it including commentary without coming back 6 months later and re-releasing a completely new version with new commentary? Damn money whores.

What Irks Me about the DVDs

[Atmchicago]

Maybe others have commented on this, but my prime dislike of DVDs stems from the regional settings on different dvds. I can't buy a DVD in France or Japan and have it work here.

In a time when our economy is becoming ever more global, we are full of market segmentation anyway. If these new DVDs don't get rid of the regional settings it will cost the American consumer a lot.

Storage Amount

[ArkiMage]

15GB per side... Simply not enough IMO.

Re:Movie rentals

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you rent DVDs they are often scratched by inconsiderate people that watched before you. Will you use a Disc Doctor before you watch a movie?

Re:Re-buying

[shirai]

Sorry, but just because Blu-Ray is not inherently compatible with the current DVD format DOES NOT MEAN that DVD compatibility will not be offered in Blu-Ray players.

CD is NOT compatibile with DVD (wavelengths, format, etc.) and yet we see practically every DVD player capable of playing CDs.

I assume we're talking LOTR?

[siskbc]

Is anyone thinking that it would just be cheaper to go to block buster every time you want to watch a moive, instead of buying DVDs? This way you won't have to buy the extended version, the super extended version and the director's ultra extended version as each comes out. As if that wasn't enough, they obsolete each format within seven or so years? Bah. I'm going back to renting!

Well, this I think goes into the "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" category. Early on, probably everyone got bit on this. I know tons of people who owned the non-extended version of LOTR:FOTR. Not me, simply because I procrastinated so much on buying it that they announced the extended edition before I got around to buying the non-extended.

That said, I know few people who actually bought the non-extended version of LOTR:TTT. Everyone I know who really, really couldn't wait to see it again *rented* the non-extended version, then bought the extended when it came out.

By this point, no one should be getting burned on the "infinite editions" crap. If it's a movie likely to have interesting Collector's Edition features, or if it's a series likely to come out in boxed set, for God's sake, wait to buy it, or at worst rent it once in the meantime.

Re:Overkill?

[Tiny Wolf v3]

Not entirely true. If you have an incredibly large screen it will be very easily noticable, but most people will still have relatively small TVs where the difference is extremely subtle, even if the resolution is much higher.
I'm not saying there's no difference, or that there's no market for it, but since the difference is so subtle for most people, it will be a luxury item that not many will buy for a long time. Just think about how long VHS remained the standard for home movies, even though beta was available with much higher quality. It's also interesting that very few people have TVs that can show the full quality of DVD as it is.

Exactly!

[filmsmith]

And with all these special effects companies and computer generated films, no one watches Citizen Kane anymore!

*scoff*

fs

Re:Re-buying

[Barbarian]

They can make an adapter cartridge that you put the DVD into before placing it in the player. Remember the CD recorder drives that had these cartridges once?

Re:Re-buying

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wished they had put those cases on DVD's to begin with, like 3.25 floppys or MiniDiscs. Every other movie i rent at blockbuster is scratched, and restarts at some point in the middle or something stupid like that.
You can take care of your own dvd's, but cases like that would have helped the rental situation.