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DVD Format War Already Over?
An anonymous reader writes "'Nobody likes false starts' - claims the assertive and risky article "10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed" published by Audioholics which outlines their take on why the new Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will attain nothing more than niche status in a marketplace that is brimming with hyperbole. Even though the two formats have technically just hit the streets, the 'Ten reasons' article takes a walk down memory lane and outline why the new DVD tech has a lot to overcome."
About the only compelling thing in these new formats for me is data storage and back up, and I'm still not sure that they will be more cost effective than cheap raids or even external HDs.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Another reason that HD-DVD might fail is that the general public doesn't realize that there's a difference between "DVD player" and "HD-DVD player." The medium of content delivery didn't make a visual change such as the change from vinyl to CD, from 8-track to cassette, or even when comparing VHS and Beta.
There's a simple rule to follow:
Is this all that much better to Joe Sixpack than what he had before?
Cassettes were better than LP's. Not in fidelity. But in portability, durability, and most importantly - the cost of a 'decent' player - Cassettes were hands down better.
CD's were better than Cassettes. They sound GREAT. You can skip tracks just like you could on an LP. They are supposed to last forever! (unlike those cassettes that by now you know simply don't)..
SACD... Does anyone have an SACD player? No! (Except niche enthusiasts). Because, to Joe Sixpack, it's simply not worth the money for an immeasurable (to his ears) difference in quality.
Same goes for video. DVD was a great upgrade from VHS. It combined the cheap player aspects of VHS with the hi-def of Laserdisc. Suddenly, everyone could have a GREAT copy of their favorite movie (as long as it wasn't starwars - a whole other topic entirely), for the output cost of about $50 for a cheap player. What part of Hi-def DVD is going to be any different than SACD or DVDAudio? Anyone?
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
If people have the physical disc, then they would be able to copy or watch/listen to the content almost as many times as they want. That is something the XXAA doesn't want. They would make more money from on demand rather than someone actually owning the disc. Eventually, everything will be in a Pay-Per-Use format. The way to prevent it, stay away from the XXAA.
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Most people now have at least heard of HDTV; there have been plenty of adverts for high-def digital cable and satellite services here in the UK, especially in the run-up to the World Cup (which can be viewed in HD with the required equipment).
I'm also pretty sure that people buying larger TVs today are buying HDTVs. The big thing about it is the 'Wow' factor of these sets. With a good HD source, the massive screens are pretty amazing. Now, people bought enough DVDs of old VHS tapes for a huge back catalog of old (and oftentimes, shite) films to be released on DVD. What is to say it won't happen again?
Personally, I believe it is far to early to tell what will happen. But, no matter what Audioholics says, High definition IS the future and it WILL take over eventually.
I thought that the article was fairly concise, and accurately described 10 reasons why the format wars have already failed.
But they forgot another one - most Americans don't have, and don't want to buy, an HDTV set that would even need either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, nor do most consumers see any reason to pay twice as much for the same product they can use today.
Is this true in a few years? Perhaps not. But it's true today.
Which leads us to the conclusion that both Sony and our other player decided to fight this battle early, after what happened to them when Beta and VHS fought - the stakes are so high they're trying to front-end the decision, but both sides ended up trying to steal a march on their competition, resulting in two formats way too early for consumers to be interested in either.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What the author of this fairly dry article has failed to mention, is that congress and the FCC are mandating a change to HDTV. While it may be pushed back once more before it actually happens, even grandma with her 15 year old picture tube is going to need a HDTV to SDTV converter. More tech savvy consumers (the ones using DVD and not VHS, oh wait everyone!) will end up with an HDTV in the next 10 years, given the 5 year lifespan of recent TVs. As the price of the HD-DVD and BluRay drops, consumers will purchase them instead of DVD players, since they are backwards compatible.
The change won't be as well pronounced as VHS to DVD, since VHSes couldn't be played on a DVD box. However, HD-DVD / BluRay will not be a DVD-Audio. With DVD-Audio, congress didn't mandate we all switch from stereo to 5.1 systems. Had they, my feeling is you would have seen a slow but steady uptake, as I am sure you will with the HD formats. Further more a CD sounds pretty damn good right now, but there is a lot to be longed for in the interlaced crud that comes off of DVDs, the air, and cable.
I'm guessing the launch of HD media will be similar to that of DVD... It was very slow to get off the ground, people were reluctant to uprade until prices came down and releases were abundant enough. Eventually it will become more widespread (after the PS3, after computer companies start installing them on basic computers, after HDTV is more widespread) I'm guessing it will be a good 2 years before this starts happening give or take... Arguing that it will stay a niche is naive, unless you expect some higher capacity/better media to emerge, which doesn't seem to be the case.
the market place is totaly confusing, not to techheads like us, but to the general public.
Thats whats going to kill these formats.
You have HD dvd players (upscaling) that dont play HD-dvd's, Tv's are HD ready, HD compatable, what HD, 720p, 1080i/p? Component, DVi, HDMI, HDCP, region codes or not... Can I play my CD in my HD-DVD, my blu ray in my car..?
Your avererage consumer, ne average sales guy doesnt know the answers, it its new expensive and confusing it wont sell.
Geez. It's not launching a whole new format. It's an evolution to an existing one. DVD and HD can happily co-exist. DVD will be phased out over the next 10 years just like VHS and pretty soon we'll all be buying HD movies simply because its the only thing out there. Anyone who doesn't want to buy them can keep using DVD but it will be like using a VHS now.
Get a fucking grip people.
Ah you left out one:
- more robust forms of DRM
In my mind, this is the real motivation behind the HD-DVD / BD camps -- they aren't trying to sell consumers on HD quality, they're trying to convince Hollywood to adopt the format based on how well you can lock it down. Then, just kill of DVD's. Why entice consumers when you can *force* them, right?
Of course this scheme will fail -- you can't convince Hollywood to embrace a new technology (for any reason) because they are scared of change and hate risks. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into new technology.
The format wars - hey, nice going guys - will ensure that sales get off to a slow start. But 2-3 years down the road, there will be action and science fiction movies with special effects that will knock people's socks off. And when that happens, many will want to own a copy, and they'll buy if the price of these players is right. It's a matter of when, not if.
Great. I can see the zipper on the back of Darth Vader's uniform, or the edges of Spock's ears. Big flipping deal. DV-Audio died for the same reason quadrophonic music died: who listens to music in that chair set up just so? Outside of audiophiles, no one.
This is technology without a need or a demand.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
*hisssss* *pop* *hisssss* *crackle* *pop* *hisss*
Reduced dynamic range
Wears out
Huge
Sounds terrible.
Yeah, I can see how you like vinyl better.
Wrong, and this is why this whole article is useless. Remember the first time you used a modem, how you thought "this is how all information should be transmitted", and when you tried to go out and tell everybody about it, their response was basically "leave me alone kid, I'm reading the newspaper here"? 10 years later, and people are starting to realize that "OMFG, newspapers might become obsolete!!!!?" Pleople like their technology at least 5 years behind of its time.
I'm not really defending the new formats (and I won't buy into them until they sell me a drive that can play both formats for = $100), but a bunch of guys saying "we don't need some new fancy format, we're fine with good old DVDs" sounds familiar.. Lets talk again in 5 years.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
The markets? They did a bang-up job choosing which quadraphonic record format would win, which AM stereo would win, DAT or DCC. SACD or DVD Audio. Unless one side is clearly the Beta, the markets can never make up their minds. They will buy neither to avoid getting stuck with what may be the next Beta. Drives that do DVD-R and DVD+R were the thing that kept DVD burners from being DOA, not the markets. Drives that do both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray won't be allowed unless current licensing agreements change.
How ya like dat?
"If the recording industry had presented a plan to phase out CDs and the "format war" had been avoided (simply by the industry picking one format over the other) we would all be using DVD-Audio players and illegal downloadable music would be mostly confined to analogue rips or older music"
This is so full of it.
If they had pushed out CD's to replace them with DVD-A standard then the DVD-A DRM would have been cracked..
As it is now most people dont use it so there has not been a huge impetus to crack it.. yet it has already been effectively circumvented through that windvd crack.
this guy is a starry eyed idiot if he actually believes that drek he spews.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
They will buy neither to avoid getting stuck with what may be the next Beta.
I don't quite follow this. Beta got trounced by VHS largely because the consumers found the image quality acceptable, given the longer recording times. It's the consumers that made Beta, well, Beta.
If consumers don't find that the new formats offer enough, compared to what they have, then they both will become the next Beta.
That's the alpha and omega of it. (sorry, sorry everybody.)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Who made the VCR a success?
The porn industry!
I understand porn is a big percentage of DVD sales too.
While I agree with most of the points of the article I would like to hear
what the big producers in the porn industry have to say.
When the price hits $100 I'll buy one for my computer for backup.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There are some big problems with Blu-Ray. Getting the compression right is hard. I was watching a Blu-Ray demo at the Sony Style store at the Metreon in San Francisco. Now this is Sony gear in a Sony retail store set up by Sony employees playing a Sony demo disk in an environment intended to show the technology at its best. And I'm seeing blocky areas of bright light jumping in the background in a concert video. It looks like the compression algorithm has trouble with camera rotation.
Some of the content looks great; some looks terrible. It's painfully clear that you can't just dump the content into the compressor and expect good results; it's going to become another labor-intensive step in post production, at least for a while.
I have to say that if your pressed, honest to goodness purchased CDs are only lasting a couple of years, you need to look at the environment you are living in, because it must be extreamly harsh. I have only seen a couple of pressed CDs fail that have not been massively abused.
I also wouldn't count too heavily on tapes as being "proven archive media". Have you ever heard of people having to "bake the tapes"? That is because a lot of tapes that are only a couple of decades old have started to seriously degrade. Also, you can't just throw tapes into a non-climate controlled environment any more than you can a CD. About the only area that a tape has greater reliablity than a CD is when they are tossed in a pile on a desk without being put in a case. And that is only because the tapes have a built in case.
I am an avid home theater fanatic with a massive front projection screen and a high-end audio system to go with it. (Here's a bad picture of the system. For scale, each one of the front black speaker is 6 feet tall.)
For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.
I'll go through the points quickly...
1. Nobody likes false starts
I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.
This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.
2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players
Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.
Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.
3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te
It already exists. It's called "the internet".
I remember reading this somewhere, and I totally agree with it. By the time this is settled it will be like the battle between Floppy cameras and Smart Media cameras: both lost and were obsolete.
There are those rumors about a Netflix set-top box, or that they will finally integrate into TiVo. That's what is going to happen. It's clear as a bell. After all, once the pipes get big enough, why should I bother to pay $20 to buy a disc I'll watch once or twice when I can pay $2 to watch it each time I want, when I want. That's what PPV is, but instead of having 100 movies to choose from, I'll have Netflix's whole inventory. ANY movie. Like those old Quest commercials: "We have every move ever made in every format in every langauge starting any time" (or something like that).
The only DVDs I watch I get from Netflix because I don't like buying them. Why should I pay $20 for a movie I'll watch once, or $50+ for a single season of a TV show? If Netflix released a set top box (or makes my TiVo do it) so that whatever is in my queue is automatically downloaded on to the drive during the night or whatever, I'll be happy. Watch what I want, when I want. And because hard drive space is cheap (DVDs are only 9 gigs tops, uncompressed) they can pre-load more than the 3 movies that I would currently be allowed to watch (based on the plan I pay for).
Let the early adopters and studios sort it out. My way is more convenient. It's cheaper (you can P2P the popular movies between boxes) and there is no distribution. My way has no postage, no delivery, no "I'll go to the store and buy the movie tomorrow". No broken discs, no scratched discs, no lost discs.
When there is a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war, I hope they enjoy it. They'll have a year TOPS before the average consumer passes them by for set top boxes and the iTheater store. The only chance they have is with high-def content, and bandwidth and the ability download films 24/7 will nix that advantage pretty soon.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
That is perhaps a crude model of the situation before the Beta and in which the Beta itself was treated, however now the provided general experience of purchasing and then finding the Beta useless very quickly has altered the situation. It has encouraged precisely the current situation, that of general hedging by not buying anything until one has dominance over the other.
I don't quite follow this. Beta got trounced by VHS largely because the consumers found the image quality acceptable, given the longer recording times. It's the consumers that made Beta, well, Beta.
In the case of VHS vs Beta, consumers didn't have a reasonable other choice. If they wanted to videotape Star Trek episodes, they had to pick one or the other. So the decision wasn't whether to buy, it was what to buy. And VHS killed Beta because of the extended recording times.
However, there's already a choice that's a clear market winner - DVD. Players are cheap, (I can now get a DVD with stereo audio and DVI for $30) media is cheap (movies cost ~ $10-$20) and it's widely supported.
So the choice consumers make is not "Which HD-DVD to buy?" but rather "DVD or one of them expensive, risky HD thingies". If they go DVD, they get all their movies and titles, decent video/sound quality, and don't pay too much. If they go HD-whatever, they get marginally better video, no noticable difference in sound, and a limited, high-priced movie selection.
Which would YOU buy? I don't know about you, but I'm in NO HURRY to adopt HD-DVD - I might end up buying an LCD TV in about a year to replace my aging 19" CRT...
On a side note, I've gotten to where I just don't like DVDs anymore. I have 5 kids and a busy career. When we rent DVDs, we end up paying late fees a good percentage of the time. When we buy them, they often get scratched or lost. I don't have time to be a "DVD cop". But a Dish Network Pay-Per-View is easily recorded on the DVR and played over and over, with no media to lose, no trips to the local video store, and no stupid envelopes to mail back. (a la NetFlix)
When we want a movie, we buy it on PPV. The selection still isn't fantastic yet, but it's just so much less hassle! IPTV is definitely where I'm going to go, as soon as it's available for my DVR!
My vote for the next media format: IPTV on-demand, with a DVR or iTunes. The real question is simply: does Apple have the gonads to actually penetrate the living room, or are they content to just be a cool fad?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
A regular DVD upconverted to 1080i or 720p on an HDTV looks really good to me, and it doesn't cost as much as you think since these special DVD players have come down in price. Plus you get to keep your DVD collection.
Chris
Just wanted to clear this up. The deadline that you're referring to for OTA TV transmissions isn't for them to convert to HDTV, but just to convert from analog broadcasts to digital ones. They are allocated a part of the digital spectrum, but can either broadcast one HDTV channel, or I believe 4 or more standard definition digital channels, which appears to be the route most smaller broadcasters are taking (hey, 4x the commercials!).
All that would be required would be a new receiver box. I've heard that they are even considering subsidizing these receivers for everyone, since the sooner they can complete this conversion, the sooner they can auction off the current analog TV spectrum for billions upon billions of dollars.
11. There's crap-all to watch. Who really give's a hairy hoot if you can see "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" in 1080i, 480p, or 1b (1 bit). Hell, if forced to watch in one of these formats, give me the blinking white dot anytime.
12. It'll be obsolete technololgy. By the times the tech companies are done bickering over the best format, and there's buy-in from the major studios, and a significant number of titles have been published, and the desired price-point has been reached, and HDTV has made a significant in-road into consumer's houses, the "next big thing" will be available.
HDV (Holographic Versatile Disc) offers nearly 4TB of storage on a single disc. It's currently beyond the price-point of any sane consumer, but could easily hit a rational consumer price before Blu-Ray or HD-DVD seriously take off.
If I go to the store, I see lots of CRTs, and about as many LCDs. I can go to Target and buy a 32" SDTV CRT with component inputs for around $330. I can buy a 30" SDTV LCD for $800. More than twice the price for a smaller screen with the same resolution and worse color. I'm up to around $900 for higher than 480p. That sucks.
Most people don't want to spend four digits amounts for a TV set. They go to the store, they see a $300 TV that's the size they want, and they buy it. Maybe they really want a LCD for some reason, so they buy the $450 20" LCD. Most people see the prices as 2x - 3x more than a CRT, and say forget it.
Extremely few people are willing to spend the $1800+ to have a 1080p TV. That's just an absurd price to pay for television. It's especially absurd when you realize that $1800 buys you the low end.
Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.
Here is a page from May of this year: http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5108443-1.html
The basic sentiment from that page, and most others, is that LCD is getting cheap because it's the worst on tech on the market. My own experience confirms this, even. CRT looks better and is cheaper. DLP looks almost as good as CRT, and is comparably priced and sized to LCD.
Basically, people *don't* care about HDTV, and the early adopters *did* get screwed. All of that HD tech the big money spenders bought won't work right because it lacks the industry DRM infections. They industry then went and confused the hell out of the market with all different versions of HDMI, confusing terminology left and right, and different vendors abusing what *had* been established terms.
As others have mentioned, while the stills looks wonderful, it ends up not mattering when it goes FMV. You might remember a few years ago, ATI was tauting that they could do motion blur on their GPU. Having very highly detailed images that have discrete steps doesn't look right. People wanted to blur their high resolution renders when things were moving around, because it looks more correct to the eye.
In those comparisons, you notice that the up close visuals of people are nearly identical, but the backgrounds, where people aren't really looking, look much sharper. This could very likely be an artifact of the video compression on the DVD vs. the newer compression on the HD stream. The color space is noticably better on the HD version too, but that could be for the same reason.
First off, the pipes won't be big enough for HDTV in reasonable download time for well-over a decade. Just calculate how many days it would take to download a 50GB movie on your connection.
The consider you'll need to buy a second line, or upgrade your speed, since your connection will be effective unavailable as you are downloading each movie, for DAYS at a time. Internet access isn't free.
Then consider how much money it's going to cost companies to pay for their own pipes to let you download 50GBs from them, and try to figure out how that will turn into a $2/movie business model.
How is maxing out your connection (which you pay for) for several days more convenient than NOT wasting your connection, and getting the disc in 1-2 days as Netflix currently does?
Bullshit. Bandwidth is massively expensive. There is too much variety in movies to expect several people to have them available when someone else wants to watch. ISPs will rake Netflix over tho coals for having their customers uploading 50GB files. Far too many users are behind firewalls and NAT routers for this to work. Nobody is going to max-out their upstream, all day, every day, making their connections useless. Asyncronous connections mean you need 10+ people who have the movie, and are willing to share, for every 1 person that wants to download it. Nobody is going to want to pay for Netflix, pay again with all their downstream bandwidth, pay again with all their upstream bandwidth, wait several days, etc. It's complete nonsense, until bandwidth is orders of magnitude cheaper, everyone has connections that is orders of magnitude faster, etc.
Bandwidth is FAR more expensive than postage, and you'll have pretty much all the same delivery problems.
Yes, and far worse than now.
In other words: Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. And, Bullshit.
What strange, magical, mystical world do you live in?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
First off, the pipes won't be big enough for HDTV in reasonable download time for well-over a decade. Just calculate how many days it would take to download a 50GB movie on your connection.
In my comment above yours, I did the math for 20GB, although HD-DVDs coming in between about 22-25GB. Unless my math is wrong, a 6Mbps Comcast cable connection could download a movie in about 6 hours, which means about 4 hours of waiting if it's a 2 hour-long film. That's 10 hours of waiting over my 3Mbps AT&T DSL.
Additionally, since the majority of HDTVs only have pixels to actually display 720p, the file size for those users can be only 11-12GB, meaning just one hour of buffering/waiting for the 6Mbps connection.
The consider you'll need to buy a second line, or upgrade your speed, since your connection will be effective unavailable as you are downloading each movie, for DAYS at a time. Internet access isn't free.
But how much bandwidth does the average user use while surfing? Next to nothing. The box downloading the movie just needs to find out the maximum available bandwidth and then scale back a bit so there's 128kbps available, or if it plays nice, have it adjust as needed. Even if the average user has P2P-using children, that could be limited to 50kBps.
Then just like Netflix has users select movies they want to watch soon, this box should come with a 300 or 500GB hard drive that downloads movies before the users get around to watching them.
Then consider how much money it's going to cost companies to pay for their own pipes to let you download 50GBs from them, and try to figure out how that will turn into a $2/movie business model.
So how much is the market rate for large customers for 12GB or 24GB? I agree that $2 isn't going to happen. My video rental store charges $3.50. How about that?
Have they stopped selling VHS?
Once a format is out there, it is hard to let it go, and if consumers don't buy HD-DVD or BR-DVD, then stopping selling DVD's means stopping your sales. DVD was the fastest growth media format ever, faster then Tape, CD, VHS. With DVD Players costing as little as $39, they are about to saturate EVERY home that has a television set or two. Stopping DVD sales won't prompt someone to replace their $39 DVD player with one for $999 that plays only half of the movie releases out there, especially when most of the "new" releases are poorly dubbed older movies nobody cares about.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Look, I have a 5.1 Surround sound, butt shaker enabled, pop-corn machine, Blacked out windows, 7 foot projection display, stadium seating, 300 square foot movie theater in my house. This is just not a "Media Room."
I don't think there is anyone who cares LESS about HDDVD/Blueray.
I can't tell much of a difference between Progressive Scan and HDDVD as demonstrated in the store (except the usual here is a CRT bubble with a DVD playing, and a $9,000 HD Plasma with a HD-DVD playing, see how much better?)...
I have a 2000 lumen 1024x576/1024x768 projector (yeah I know it is not 1080p, but it is still higher quality than I need) and HD HBO/Starz/Network channels with an HD-DVR (which is the only DVR my cable company offers otherwise I would have a much better Standard Resolution Tivo), so I have seen a lot of movies that way and I just could care less about the barely perceptable differences between these and DVDs, and I am definatly not an average consumer.
Hell I have a decent VCR (most VCRs are crap) and it is connected in with SVideo, and I can tell you that some of the old VHS tapes don't look that different from DVDs.
I guess I am just not "in" to quality that can only be measured by reading the specs on the box.