Why the heck do they make HD and BlueRay versions of DVDs? To me, their extra cost is not worth the minimal improvement (if any) I would realize on my system. This sounds like just another way to gouge the consumer!
Cheers - Jay
This may get me in trouble with you and Stumpy but here it goes.
I am assuming that both of you have not had the oppurtunity to watch HD TV in your home on a "big" screen TV, I am talking over 40 inches, flat screen and a nice surround system? If not then the rest of this post means that you are happy with what you see and the picture is not all that important to you.
Now, there is a HD-DVD and BluRay disc because there are 2 companies competing for what format will be excepted as the high defintion DVD format. Kind of like VHS and Beta. And with the 2 companies making differnet format DVD's you have some films come out on Blu-Ray and some on HD-DVD or sometimes on both formats. The problem is that you can only watch each on its respective player and most people are not going to buy 2 different players to watch these movies so we are in a holding pattern until they can get this resolved. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, LG has a dual format player out and there will be other manufacturers releasing there own versions later this year. Obviously they are quite expensive and the thing to do is wait.
As for the benefits of the 2 HD formats, think about this. Right now a normal DVD holds roughly 9 gig of data so you have to put 2 DVD's in a movie case because they cannot fit the feature film and all the extra's on 1 disc unless they compress the disc so bad that the movie looks like crap. HD-DVD holds roughly 25 gig of data and Blu-Ray holds 40-50 gigs of data. That's alot of data and there will be many new and exciting things that they can do with this much room on a disc as well as the players that use them.
As a techno kind of guy I know other people don't get into this stuff like I do but to me it is really exciting and a HD program is awesome. I mean, they had 3 Duke movies on HDNet last Sunday and they were simply amazing, like watching the movie for the first time all over again. I have a 50 inch plasma TV and a home theater sound setup and I said this from the time I first started posting on this board, 1 of the biggest reason's that I bought my TV and sound system was because I never got the see John Wayne movies or any of the other classics that I love in the theater. So now I get to enjoy them in my home.
HD is awesome and it is coming wether you want it to or not. I agree, buying all this equipment and stuff gets old and hard on the pocket book. Its just where you put your priorities at. If you guys are happy with the normal DVD, and I am for the most happy with it as well(it will just look even better in HD), then don't worry about it. They will not stop producing the regular DVD's anytime soon so just keep buying those and let the geeks(like me) buy those HD format DVD's(when the players and disc's get cheaper of course).
I didn't mean to offend anybody, I just like to watch my movies and make them the best they can be.
