zedz wrote:This has been discussed before (probably about a thousand pages earlier in this very thread), but with the move from Laserdisc to DVD, Criterion lucked into a paradigm shift and went from being the prestige label of a tiny niche market to being the prestige label of an enormous mass market, with the consequent sales and revenue implications of that. A move from the mass market of DVD to the niche market of Blu-Ray now is in no way comparable to the move from the niche market of Laserdisc to the no-less-niche and potentially-mass market of DVD way back when.
This deserves repeating again. DVD hit just at the right time and was able to take the 'niche' audio and videophile market, the hardened film fan, the
casual film fan
and everyone else along with its advance in technology.
Despite the advances of HD I don't think they'll be able to do the same thing again - it is just a more difficult sell. I don't know what the HD television take up is but I suppose you need people to have updated their televisions to really get the full benefit out of the discs, compared to the simpler 'plug and play into existing equipment' situation with DVDs.
HD DVD players are unfortunately coming along during a wave of other changes and so, compared to DVD players having little competition from other technology, people will be making decisions about whether to get a HD television first and especially in Britain what to do about the digital switchover about to affect TV broadcasts - all this other stuff might have an effect on people deciding to hold back on high definition players until they have the other things sorted out. It depends on individual priorities compared to DVD players running almost unopposed from other issues during the first few years they came out.
There is also the technological leap - it is a big one in quality but I get the impression it is not as huge a leap as going from VHS to DVD originally was. So many issues factored into my own wish to go to DVD - the primary ones were the audio and visual upgrade (not needing to travel to Sheffield or Manchester to search out a widescreen VHS of a film, instead being able to pick up the DVD from my local town centre and be assured of it being in the right ratio was a big bonus!) but there were also extra features, the ease of quickly finding any spot in a film, alternate audio tracks and being able to add or remove subtitles at will. While Laserdisc owners were already used to these features and could move to DVD without that seeming a big deal, I wonder whether many people like myself found DVD a huge expansion of what they were used to from videos and might not feel the same urgency to upgrade to HD just for improved sound and picture and for the extra features that are Hi-Def only (I love extra features and that might be a possible reason for my upgrading sooner rather than later, but hearing negative comments on commentaries or extra material from different sources makes me wonder how big of an importance most other people place in the presence of them on a disc and whether the casual fan already finds more than enough material on DVDs).
Similarly I still have a collection of VHS tapes of films - many of them over the years have been released on DVD but even then I never really felt the need to upgrade unless there was a compelling reason to in terms of extra material (Blade Runner being the most recent example of a film I was content to keep just on VHS until the recent box set gave a good enough reason to get it again on DVD). That will be the same thing that happens when I eventually go HD - my VHS and DVDs will not suddenly become redundant (and it is good to know that DVDs will be backwards compatible) but it will affect how many HD discs I do eventually pick up - as with DVD it will be a combination of films I do not have (either new releases or older, but new to me, films) and some films I already have that provide a compelling reason to upgrade. However years of DVDs have raised expectations a lot in terms of what incentives I would need for an upgrade!
To put the issues another way DVDs had a number of very important factors all converging together at the right time for the right price and without any extra push required became essential purchases for everyone, not just film fans and technophiles. HD players have a couple of very important improvements, rather than seeming innovations, and come at a time when people are distracted by other techological issues and at a time when most people have already made their move to DVD and may not be wishing to make a Windows OS-style upgrade so soon. Added to that the complications of a format war reminding people of VHS and Betamax and I'm not surprised that people have held back a bit.
I think from a UK perspective you are not going to see HD players catch on hugely here until the forced digital switchover takes place across the country and people have got through that and maybe have been able to check out HD broadcasts on television. Then there might be an upsurge of people wanting to pick up players (in that sense HD players arrived in Britain at almost exactly the wrong time, a couple of years too soon to capture the awareness of the general public), but I think if anyone is expecting a DVD style mass conversion here within a year or two they will be disappointed - they might not even have gotten that had they been released during a calmer period.
Contrary to how it might sound I am very interested in HD, the picture and sound quality sounds a great improvement (though I don't know how much of an audio improvement could be made to classic films with mostly mono soundtracks that DVD does not already do. Hopefully there won't be a Ruscico-like compelling need felt to remaster films in 6.1 EX surround! I did notice the Tartan Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal presents the Swedish soundtrack in 2.0 which sounds like a bad sign, or at least a sign of Tartan continuing their DVD policy of releasing everything in at least 2.0 stereo!), but I think people also need to be realistic about the current prospects for the format. I think Criterion, Studio Canal and many other producers are doing the right thing in doing HD masters - it seems as if it would allow them to produce the best quality standard DVDs from that source and still be in a state of preparedness for whenever they feel it is economically viable to test the HD disc waters!
