Video Asylum

Posted by jsm (A) on October 23, 2007 at 12:01:46

In Reply to: RE: In the end, we're all dead. Meanwhile, have some fun! posted by 4season on October 19, 2007 at 20:54:49

I did later buy an S-VHS machine because I wanted the higher resolution to go along with my camcorder, but I never needed it to play any pre-recorded material. I also later got a hi-fi machine, though I never was that impressed with the "hi-fi" on VHS. I had much better ways to get hi-fi. But these were added capabilities. Things can evolve, but be backward compatible. BD appeards to evolving without backward compatability. My first digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 950, only had 2 mp. I now have one with 10 mp. But my 950 still works and takes images as good as they were when it was new. There were firmware updates for it. They were optional though. The camera worked fine without them.

I did not care much for "Lost in Translation." and can't imagine that watching it in HD would make me like it any more. The same goes for "Being John Malkovich." The movies that I would like to own on HD don't exist on HD. Not one of them, at least among the several hundred titles that I looked at the last time. Anime has zero interest for me.

The previous comments really are only applicable to me. But more generally, I have been very extremely impressed by how good upscaled DVDs look as played by my Oppo DVD player on my Panasonic 58-inch plasma set. They can be as good as many of the "HD" programs that come over Dishnetwork, but of course not as good as really good HD progarmming. I just don't feel like I am missing much fun, that the picture qulity that I am seeing on DVDs is depriving me of some real enjoyment. In fact, Dishnetwork has run a number of my favorite movies in HD that I have stored on my hard drive, and these are not available on pre-recorded media. I do look forward to someday having an HD player for rental movies mainly, but I feel no urgency as I did with a CD or DVD player. I was one of the very early subscribers to Netflix, and I do regularly scan their HD titles, but so far I find little of ineterest. But each to his own, of course. I admit to being far from the norm in my view that the number of movies that I really like being made per year seems to have been dropping steadily for many years. I'm down to less than ten, maybe less than five if I'm being really critical.

Joe