Be Smart: Sit Out HD-Disc War

By Mike McGann
Posted Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Worried about which new high-resolution format to buy? Here’s some simple, well reasoned words of advice: don’t.

Panicked that your brand-new 1080p set is going to waste? More advice: don’t.

Okay, look, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but neither issue is anything to lose sleep over. If you bought a 1080p set, well, God bless you, but there really isn’t a lot of content out there (but, but...you must be sputtering, referring to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc, two HD-DVD formats), so in many cases, the smartest move is to buy a good DVD player with HDMI out and you’ll have access to every movie on DVD — at resolutions nearly as good as you’ll see from these new, high-resolution players.

Yeah, I know — HD has to be better than not HD, and yeah, for the most part it is. DVD is 480p and very, very clean (which is why some people think good old DVD looks as good as most HDTV broadcast, most of which is heavily compressed). The current batch of HD-compatible DVD players (not players that play the new formats) have pretty solid scalers built into them, so they generate a pretty decent 720p picture.

Yes, arguably, one of the new format players will give you a sharper picture outputting 720p. More data is more data — but unless you have a really big TV, 60 inches or bigger, you may never be able to see the difference. The bigger the screen, obviously, the more noticeable that the difference is. If you have a high resolution projector, capable of a true 720p, then yeah, you might want to flip a coin and pick one of the two formats, knowing that in a year or two, you’ll have to buy a new player and it’s possible the discs you buy now might not work on the new, unified format that seems likely before the end of the decade.

But, you might ask, what about 1080p? Well, here’s the problem: what content there is is 1080p/24 frame, which is kind of flickery (movies use a 24-frame system, but actually show each frame twice to reduce flicker) — and in most cases, displays are just rebuilding 1080 interlaced 50 frame or 60 frame by putting the video through de-interlacing (and some times, back and forth). If you have a giant screen, a digital display capable of 1920 by 1080 and a real, high computing horsepower scaler, more power to you. You can create an amazing, movie-like experience. If you have the cash and the set up to do so, go for it.

Most people just want a great-looking picture on a TV. I happen to have both environments in my home — but with only a 720p projector, I still happily scale 480p DVD content on my 102-inch screen. Still, most of the time, now, I watch movies on my Mitsubishi 62-inch DLP, with a Sony HDMI DVD player that upscales DVD to 720p. While my theater certainly has better performance, the smaller system in my family room represents a more typical home theater, costing a total of less than $5,000, including DirectTV, and Onkyo receiver and Monitor Audio speakers.

And sure, were there one HD format — that’s what I would have added to my set up (likely in both home theater systems). But the incremental improvement is not worth potentially being frozen out of your favorite movies (sure, all of the new format players play old-school DVDs, but if you have to play the old discs, why buy a new player?).

Let’s be blunt, there’s no good reason that there are two HD disc formats. None. Both are close in terms of spec and both sides could gotten together in the middle and created one format. Buying either of these format players (Which, by the way, are selling very poorly) is like giving candy to misbehaving kids.

So, with the exception of the specific cases I’ve mentioned, there’s no good reason to waste your money on either Blu Ray or HD-DVD — and if no one buys these players, maybe these knuckle-heads will figure out that format wars just annoy consumers. You’d think the disaster of SACD and DVD-Audio would teach these guys a lesson.