Final thoughts

While Blu-ray fans will have Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean this fall, HD DVD fans have Transformers as their showcase title. This is a movie that puts to rest the idea that upsampled DVD is “almost as good” as HD DVD. With a superb quality AVC encode and a killer soundtrack, I expect Transformers to be the high-def showcase for many retailers.

The video quality on Transformers is reference quality and the significance of this deserves some additional attention, especially in today’s world of HDCP, AACS, and even BD+ on Blu-ray. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray represent the last of the physical formats. Futurists are already predicting that we’ll be retiring our physical media for “on-demand” HD movies in the next couple of years. This sounds great until your network connection goes down, or a studio decides to lock-out the video-on-demand service for a theatrical re-release. With HD DVD and Blu-ray, we have one last chance to own our own copy of the movie, with the freedom to watch it in the privacy of our own home anytime we want.

Unlike DVD, however, HD DVD and Blu-ray offer a near flawless archive of the original master print. Most of today’s movies are made with a 2K digital intermediate, which means that a high quality AVC encoded HD DVD/Blu-ray offers over 90% of the quality available to the Director himself, and therefore a leap in quality over what the typical moviegoer sees in a standard movie theater. Even without lossless audio, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus at 640 kbps offers quality superior to what the typical moviegoer experiences in the theater. When you consider that 1080p front projection is nearly at the limit of human visual perception at THX-standard viewing angles, HD DVD and Blu-ray represent the ultimate home video format. The “Look and Sound of Perfect” and “Beyond High Definition” are marketing slogans that actually have meaning and substance. Unlike the transition from VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to HD DVD/Blu-ray, we’ve reached our destination.