DVD Players - Buy Now or Wait for the Violet Laser Models?

PateraSilk asks: "I've been resisting the DVD pull for a while but VHS is becoming more and more obselete. So, I'm thinking about joining the hordes, but I have two problems with the DVD format: compression artifacts and low-level pixel dithering, which annoy me no end. Maybe I've just seen crappy DVDs, but this leads me to my question: should I go ahead and purchase a DVD player regardless of my qualms or wait for a violet/blue laser standard to emerge? My hope is that a larger storage capacity would lead to a less lossy compression format, but, then again, I could be waiting in vain. Plus, I don't want to embrace a technology only to have it be replaced within a couple of years." Remember, Sony's violet-laser player has already hit the market, so hopefully it won't be long before other manufacturers follow suit. How long will it be before competition in this market drives down prices to reasonable levels?

Comments

Let me get this straight

[Naikrovek]

Ok, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly... You are currently using VHS, and the picture quality bothers you, but DVD artifacts bother you MORE? Did I read that right? DVD artifacts and pixelation bother you so much you won't leave VHS?

I'm not going to type anymore about this, that is just sbsurd.

DVD players are so cheap...

[dotgod]

There are many decent DVD players avaliable for $100. Why not just get a cheap one for the time being then decide on buying a more expensive one when the new standards come out.

Unbelievable

[TheSnakeMan]

Just go buy one, you cheap son of a bitch. They're $50.

This is the worst Ask Slashdot ever.

Don' Wait

[p7]

My advice, Don't wait. The current DVD standard is widespread at this point. The industry is not going to drop DVD any time soon and you will probably find few movies done specifically done for higher capacity drives. Any transition will be very slow, especially since most people will be perfectly happy with a standard DVD.

Get off it and get one

[gmhowell]

First, I have about 300 or more DVDs. Only seen artifacts on a handful. And only on a crappy, Apex DVD player. And even then, only in lack of handling dark scenes well.

Second, you can get the aforementioned, crappy Apex for $40, a reasonable name brand model for $110 and really nice stuff for a bit more. Expect the higher end jobs to be just about as relevant as SVHS players/recorders.

If you are really seeing artifacts on DVDs frequently, then how can you stand tapes? If you buy them, they are much more bulky, no random access, etc. If you rent them... Lord help you. When I was still renting tapes, if I couldn't get it within a week of release, I passed. It was generally just barely viewable to me. It was unwatchable to my wife, as the captioning information degrades VERY quickly on VHS. This is just one very obvious sign of the lack of durability of VHS tapes.

what??

[Tom7]

its the compression that sucks. Most movies look pretty damn good on a 700MB Divx.

What the fuck?? I have never seen a Divx movie that wasn't either (a) encoded from a camcorder (which looks like shit anyway) or (b) re-encoded from a DVD. If it's reencoded from a DVD, it can't look better than the DVD, because you've already suffered the compression and decompression.

Maybe you're just saying that if we used MPEG-4 to compress DVDs in the first place, we'd be able to use a much higher bitrate and lose the kind of MPEG-2 artifacts that the poster complains about. I'm not sure that's true, since MPEG-4 is strong mainly at lower bitrates and has many of the same image quality problems that MPEG-2 has. But we can't base our opinion on Divx DVD rips!!

Buy a DVD player!

[angle_slam]

I agree with the others. This is a stupid question. Whatever the faults are of the DVD format, it is still many times better than viewing pre-recorded VHS. But I'll be a little more serious with the recommendations.

You can buy a very cheap player for about $50. But why not spend a little more. For just a little more you can buy a decent progressive output DVD player. Check out this DVD Benchmark test which seems to be more thorough than most DVD tests. They recommend several players that retail for only $230 (street price is a lot less).

Other things to look for:

• If you care about audio at all, you may want to get a universal player, one that plays DVD-Audio and SACD discs as well. Before the /. drones comment, I will mention that those formats are copy protected. Two caveats to the copy protection: (1) there isn't a single disc that is exclusive to SACD/DVD-Audio. Each release is also available in CD format; (2) the sound quality improvement is supposed to be substantial.
• You may want to look at how you're connecting the DVD player. Generally speaking, the best connector for most is component video, followed by S-Video, composite video, and finally the dreaded RF-converter box. However, there is now a player on the market that is supposedly even better quality connection, the DVI connection (same as the connector to a computer LCD monitor). The first player to have such an output is the Bravo D1 player, only available on-line. Be careful though. The reviews say that the picture quality is near High Definition quality, but some have had quality control issues with the player. It retails for $200.

Why DVD _S*U*C*K*S_!

[ArmorFiend]

Like the original poster, I have a lot of problems with the DVD format.

DVD sucks because:
1) It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs.
2) Discs usually have mandatory, can't-fast-forward-through-them FBI warnings at the beginning of disks. By jove, when I buy a movie, I want to see a MOVIE, not some goddammed threatening legalese from the MPAA!
3) artifacts. DVD players (or at least the Sony my sister lent me) can't seem to keep the most basic artifacts suppressed. I remember seeing a white-painted wall, and noticing that the paint "crawled" like white noise as action elsewhere in the frame caused a wacky encoding of a simple signal. Call me back when you can film white walls.
4) compatibility issues. One in twelve DVDs I rent doen't work on my player, in which case I have to watch it on a laptop. (Unless THAT also doesn't work.) Yes VHS tapes get eaten, but not at that high a rate. VHS is more reliable.
5) Skipping. Usually have to endure this once or twice per film on rentals. Lame.
6) Frilly menus. Please less ghay animation, more do-what-I-want.

For these reasons I continue to prefer VHS to DVD. Yes, I use trolly language here, and for that I apologise, but I'm bitter everyone else has been so suckered by this crap technology. (And yes I had a Betamax way back when, and Yes, I'm bitter about that losing too).

Re:Why DVD _S*U*C*K*S_!

[Zathrus]

It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs.

You have a shitty VCR then, one which is overly sensitive to macrovision. You also have a fairly shitty DVD player which doesn't allow you to disable macrovision.

We used to route a DVD player through a VCR all the time. Finally switched out the TV in that room so we don't need to anymore. Oh, and funny that... the picture quality improved. Substantially.

artifacts. DVD players (or at least the Sony my sister lent me) can't seem to keep the most basic artifacts suppressed. I remember seeing a white-painted wall, and noticing that the paint "crawled" like white noise as action elsewhere in the frame caused a wacky encoding of a simple signal. Call me back when you can film white walls.

They can film white walls. Your TV is incapable of displaying them. The dot crawl almost never originates from the DVD player, but instead from the incredibly poorly setup TV - odds are the sharpness, contrast, and brightness are completely fucked up and the DVD player is showing you just how poorly the setup is. So sorry. No, you don't need to buy a new TV (although, from the sounds of it, that wouldn't be a bad idea either), but you do need to learn what the hell the controls do and set them up properly (sharp at 0, contrast at 25%, brightness tends to vary). No, you don't see that on VHS. Big surprise. VHS is utter crap.

Another issue is heat... most DVD players are very sensitive to overheating and the decoder starts crapping out at that point. Never put something on top of the DVD player, and leave at least 3-4" for ventillation.

As for the scratches and rental issues... yeah, they can be problems. But it sounds mostly like you have bad players and a poorly setup display.

Of course, you could continue to believe that DVD is crap and VHS is better, but then I suspect you also think that 8 tracks rule and CDs just plain suck. The quality and capability differences are about the same.

It depends upon what bothers you

[ChrisMaple]

I find visible quantization and blockiness to be more irritating than moderately poor high frequency reponse and random noise. Thus I find that I like poor analog quality better than I like poor digital quality. On the other hand, I like good digital quality better than good analog.