Why HD is important

Some would argue that the future is video-over-IP, aka “On Demand” content. Why bother with physical media such as DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and HD DVD when you can just have your TV, PC, or gaming console hooked up to the Internet or digital cable network. You can watch whatever you want, when you want. Everyone in Hollywood knows that. In fact, that’s what the WGA Strike is all about.

But the future of Video-on-Demand is not without consequences. With IP video, the consumer never really owns anything. Imagine if there was a theatrical re-release of your favorite movie. Do you think you’d be able to watch it on demand? What happens if your network goes down, or a studio changes its licensing terms? Do you think your video-on-demand supplier is going to sell a copy of your personal information to third parties? How much more is that worth to the third party if they know exactly what kind of movies you’re watching? The gremlins that drove the DIVX vs. DVD debate almost a decade ago are still the core issues to be considered before we move onto the world of video-on-demand.

With DVDs, no one keeps track of what you’re watching. Once you own a copy of the DVD, a studio will never be able to prevent you from enjoying the movie when you want, and of course, you can do what you want with the DVD in the privacy of your home.

HD Media

What HD DVD and Blu-ray offer you is the same thing as DVD. Yes, we can talk about new copy protection and licensing rules (BD+, AACS, etc.) but at the end of the day, the crackers who destroyed DVD’s copy protection will eventually destroy HD media’s copy protection. But let’s take a step back.

Suppose HD DVD and Blu-ray fizzle and video-on-demand actually catches on. What then? At that point, you’ll only have two options: DVD and HD-video-on-demand. The problem is that while “DVD is good enough for some people,” we’ve shown time and time again that the difference between HD DVD/Blu-ray and DVD is enormous. It doesn’t matter how good your scaler is. High definition always trumps standard definition, and we have the screenshots to prove it. What’ll end up happening is that studios will control your ability to watch high definition content, allowing the rest of us to do what we want “lower quality” DVDs. As HDTVs get bigger and cheaper, it’s narrow minded to believe that DVD will always be good enough. For many of us, it’s not enough today!

Let’s take the other extreme. Imagine that Blu-ray and/or HD DVD catches on. With enough traction, high definition media can take on the same popularity that DVDs have today. More and more people are buying HDTVs, and that means they’ll be able to take advantage of the high-definition content. Once “the cat is out of the bag,” studios cannot simply stop manufacturing Blu-ray or HD DVD discs – there is too much money at stake. They can’t renege on their social contract with the public to provide movies in a mainstream medium and force everyone to go to video-on-demand. Most importantly, you have to remember that Blu-ray and HD DVD essentially offer reference studio master quality. The majority of today’s movies are mastered with a 2K intermediate (2048x1080resolution). That means the home video (especially with high-quality MPEG-4 AVC) offers 90% of the image quality that is found in the original image. It’s nearly perfect. On the audio end, PCM, DTS-HD, and Dolby TrueHD all offer bit-perfect reproductions of the digital master, and in a practical sense, 640kbps Dolby Digital (the most common format on both HD DVD and Blu-ray) offers nearly the same quality as the original studio master as well.