You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted much about the whole Blu-Ray or HD DVD phenom going on right now. Why? Mostly because I refuse to be yet another sheep for these bastard money grubbing companies. Let me explain.
I finally got around to getting myself a 42′ Plasma TV. With the amount of movies I watch, I figured I’d treat myself and replace my little 20′ TV. When I have my DVD player hooked up through the comp connectors, the picture is BLOODY BEAUTIFUL. I went and looked at an HD set up…. and yes, it did look a TOUCH better. But this whole thing that HD looks 50x better than a properly set up DVD is just bull. Pure and total bull. Better? Yes. THAT much better? No.
As a side note, I was listening to Patrick Norton the other day on DL.TV. He was talking about an embarrassing incident that happened at a tech show. Sony had a big display showing off “See The Difference Of HD!”, where they had a movie playing on a big screen with an HD disk paying. Well guess what… a reporter snooped around and found that it was just a regular DVD disk playing. Yeah… such a huge difference.
But here’s the big reason I won’t be buying any HD player system. Two competing formats.
I refuse to get caught in the fight between these media giants. I still remember some friends parents who invest a ton of money in Beta… only to have VHS win the day… and all their Beta stuff was now worthless.
I refuse to drop tons of money on one format… only to have the other format prevail. These morons should have found some sort of middle ground to make things easier on us… the consumer. But no… each side had to dig in their heels and play hardball. Now it’s the consumers who will pay. And pay dearly.
Would I like to have an HD player system? Sure… all things being equal it would be nice. But right now, with 2 different formats, the price being totally outrageous, and the fact that my DVDs look just wonderful right now thank you very much… I won’t even consider it.
Get it to one format so I don’t have to worry about wasting my money. Bring the price down to the $200 area. Then… and ONLY then will I think about it.
Your thoughts?
Well, I still watch the odd thing on VHS, although I have a few DVD players too. I was going to buy a Sony LCD screen, but TBH for the enormous cost, I just cannot justify it. It’s still only TV.
I just think ppl spend too much time caring about what are essentially no more than cash-cows for these large technology companies. People bleat on about how much better HD/BR tech is than DVD, how much clearer the image is….HOW GOOD ARE YOUR EYES?! And how long do you think they will stay that good if you spend so much time staring at that screen? It’s only TV, guys…. ;)
I cant even be arsed with 5.1/7.1 whatever the latest gimmick is sound…I want to see the story, not listen to every blade of grass and fly as it passes. Well, not if I have to pay extra for the `benefit`. The only real development I can imagine now will be if we get away from the physical screen altogether and move into the realm of holographics, now that will be a genuine, fundamental step forward, not a piddly incremental change in image quality. We arrived at near perfect image depth and quality with DVD, now lets move on and deal with those horrible plastic 2 dimensional panels we have to stare at from one side only.
I hear Sony with this new Blu-Ray disc have more delays with the planned realease date of the Play Station 3……..
A year behind Microsoft…..thats a lot of ground to catch up..
Gung Ho!!
MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY! MONEY!
Not gonna be worth it. The problem I see arising is that certain production companies will release in a single format (security of Blue Ray) and therefore if you want their movies, you’ll have no choice but to make the investment. Another problem? In a couple years, some other new technology will come out, and make Blue just as useless.
Jokes… think I’ll just put the money towards my dream car.
I’m happy to see that you’re bringing up some technical news and discussions relaed to movies. I hope to see more of it and judging by the response you got, I probably will.
I think storage capacity will be less important as compression technics are getting better. Today you can store a full length movie in mpeg4 on a regular DVD-R.
If you’re unhappy with mpeg4 however, you might want to check out this:
“Euclid Discoveries, a video compression firm, announced that its technology has achieved compression ratios of 15,168 to 1 for certain videos. The technology, called EuclidVision, greatly exceeds the current standard for digital video with a 460 percent improvement over MPEG-4, which implies more than a 600 percent improvement over DVD video format MPEG-2 for certain videos.”
http://www.eucliddiscoveries.com/press_release.php
Don’t get me wrong big capacity discs are fun, and I think they will be good to backup large amounts of data. Like the raw files for that documentary you’re working on.
Bill Gates has this to say about the war “In terms of movies, I often say that this is the last format battle there will ever be, because everything is going to go online – you’re going to download it.”
Just my two cents.
/Joel Gustafsson
I have enough trouble understanding why we still have FOUR writable dvd standards. DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW (I’d accept two – one R and one RW but that’s the maximum.
Why they can’t settle their differences and go either DVD-R & DVD+RW or DVD+R and DVD-RW (so that both parties get a standard) is beyond me.
BluRay and HD will only have a fighting chance if the Media is dual-format (I mean, DVD on one side and Blu/HD on the other).
What won the war for VHS over Beta…..PORN! VHS was far cheaper to reproduce on than Beta. I can see the same thing happening with the HiDef brands. What ever format the US porn industry picks up will be the winner and that all boils down to cost of reproduction.
Please let your listener’s know sony has officially denied that its games will be not be able to be resold or traded this aplies here becuase it will make the ps3 much more wanted as a game machine and a blu-ray player. http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=17283
And just think on nov 17 2 million blu-ray players(ps3) will be in peoples homes and 1 million every month following acording to sony not to mention standalone blu-ray players sold. I think it wouls be hard for toshiba to keep up with that.
The comment on the ps3 games by poster johnlan about how you won’t own them it will be like a computer game, as far as i know thats not true sony hasn’t confirmed anything about that so as far as i know games will be the same as the curent gen ones u can buy sell rent or whatever u want to do.
And on what poster wolf who said about paying more for more space on a disc thats not what u r paying more for its the picture and sound quality and once it becomes mainstream maybe the prices will go down and when u buy a whole season of your fav show it will be able to fit on one blu-ray disc or one hd-dvd disc.
and u DO NOT have to replace your old dvd collection the will play on blu-ray and hd-dvd players.
This is the same arguement that my friend uses, Blu-Ray and PS3. But as Campea mention in a previous podcast. Sony has gone all Commie and buyers of their games will NOT own them, nor will they be able to sell the games they bought.
How many gamers, kids will be all eager for the new system? Buy it and games, games they might not like or tire of. Then take it as they’ve ALWAYS have and have the clerk say no, I can’t buy them from you, it’s illegal. You’re stuck with it. No Ebay sells too. You’re gonna get a lot of pissed of gamers. This will end in a backlash. I doesn’t matter how good the picture and sound is or whether the stations can play HD movies. It’s irrelevant.
As for Ryan Cross’s comment…
“Those who complain about having to “replace their video library again” (not pointing any fingers, but some people say just this) are overreacting. That’s a fact of life if you collect films. The alternative is never to get new technology.”
No. It is. Nobody is asking for this change. Unless you have serious hardware you won’t notice squat. As far as I’m concern DVD didn’t really become crucial until 2000 – 2001. The format popularity-wise is slightly five years old. It’s too soon for too little. When DVD really took the public eye people were converting their VHS collections. Five years later. Done. The boom is over, get over it. Instead of focusing on good transfers and making… GOOD MOVIES. They want us to rebuy everything all over again. Do you understand?
It’s not about as you wrote “The alternative is never to get new technology” it’s about knowing when a real change is needed by the public – NOT by the companies. If they get away with this they can do it again. Eight or seven years down the line a new format to replace Blu-Ray/HD DVD. Do we need it? The answer is no.
The comment by Gene Ariani on HD TVs. Look, if I buy one of those, I want to plug it in and go. I don’t want to spend time fiddling with the thing. While you may be correct that with proper calibration it would shine above the rest. I don’t give a crap about that. Plug and play. Plug and play. If you bought a car, you want to put in gas and go. Not have to open up the hood and figure out if the mixture is right or if the gas is truely reaching to the engine. Any car company that did that would be out of business. Plug and play.
The last issue here is copyright. Both formats are not consumer friendly, highly. I bought it, it’s mine. Period! End of stoy. But as with Sony’s upcoming games, I’m leasing it. This kind of mentally will never get me to jump on their bandwagon. Screw’em! That report about remotely disabling the hi-def players should you tinker with them hasn’t gone away. You don’t even own your machine. No.
See this format war for what it really is. A way to get us to rebuy everything and a way for them to exercise padlock control over how we watch.
It pisses me of that people are happy about this. This is so different, the bells and whistles are a distraction from the real goal. People are turing into sheep.
Another thing is I’m very happy with DVD. I have no Problem with DVD. To me DVD is perfect. Good picture, good sound and DVD’s are selling at a good price most people can afford. We the movie viewers have to pay 500 for a HD-DVD or 800 for a BLUERAY device, also paying 500 for a HD television. All for a better picture and so more memory can be held on a disc. Why do I give a crap of it can hold more memory on a disc? All I want to do is watch a movie. So now it will be DVD(for some while), HD-DVD and BLUERAY all being sold in one store……How fucking confusing will that be?
I agree that to buy a hd-dvd player right now, unless u have the money to spend is not a good idea, since Blu-ray could end up winning and then hd-dvd players will stop being made like beta, when there was vhs and beta formats.
I personaly think if any of the 2 become the new format it will be blu-ray based on ps2 sales they have shipped 100 million of these world wide and if the ps3 comes even close that is a lot of blu-ray players in the world compared to people who have to buy a hd-dvd player just for movies, but then again that is my opinion.
And for the losing your old dvd collection, far as i know the both will play your old dvd and upcovert them to 720p and 1080p so thats not even a issue.
I don’t know this for sure but i thought i read that there r 2 sides of hd-dvd discs so they will play in your normal players, and for blu-ray i read it can play on your normal player also but doesn’t need to be on 2 sides.
And as for the quality of picture i have never seen it myself but i hear it is really good compared to dvd’s, and for all who said it’s not have they watch the movies on a 1080p t.v using a blu-ray player or a hd-dvd play cuz thats were the big difference is supose to be, and i’m not saying all thats is going to be cheap but in time the price will go down,
btw it is becoming law soon that everything is to be brodcast in hd so most people will have a hd t.v, i think there is also a box u will be able to buy for your normal t.v though so u don’t need a hd t.v the pic won’t be must better but will allow u to watch.
I heard that 20 century fox won’t be releasnig they’re discs on the HD-DVD format, only on BLU-RAY is this true? In all fairness I don’t think anyone will be in a rush to buy HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. The only good thing I can say about HD-DVD is that you can play DVD’s on it.
I am most likely buying a PS3 for the gaming capacity Blu Ray is going to rule.
You can put so much more on a single Blu-Ray disc than an HD disc it just makes sense to me to think about blue ray as the winner if only for the large storage for games.
The PS3 WILL play regular DVDs and older ps2 games.
As long as they dont fuck up the ability for you to buy one game and then resell it if you dont like it for another title I think all will be well.
My thoughts on the whole next-gen DVD situation:
* Before investing in any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray stuff, make sure you have a good widescreen HD TV. Even standard DVDs look much better on this. (Though watching a VHS on one of these TVs is painful, as you can really see how poor the quality is.)
* The format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is really going to hurt next-gen DVDs. The step up from DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray is already a much harder sell than VHS to DVD, because the advancement in technology is less signifcant. Going from tape to DVD was huge. DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray CAN be huge, but only to those with good (i.e. fairly expensive) TVs.
Think of how hard it was to get some “average joes” to upgrade from VHS to DVD. Are these people really willing to upgrade to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray when they can’t really understand the difference? Especially with two competing and confusing formats.
* Those who complain about having to “replace their video library again” (not pointing any fingers, but some people say just this) are overreacting. That’s a fact of life if you collect films. The alternative is never to get new technology. The good news is that (many) DVDs still look pretty good and will play on any HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player (unlike VHS tapes).
* Online film distribution could well be an emerging market, but don’t fool yourself. The majority of people will not start downloading films rather than buying DVDs of them. Not everyone has broadband and broadband overall is still pretty slow in North America compared to many European countries and South Korea. You still cannot download films like you can songs and that lack of immediacy will be a source of annoyance to many potential customers.
Plus, movie companies are still fooling themselves by trying to have more and more annoying DRMs on videos (ignoring the fact that these will always be broken; you simply cannot perfectly encrypt a video file if people are to be able to play it). As long as you can download an (illegal) copy of a film for free that’s _better_ quality and more transferable than a DRMed downloadable copy you pay for, many people will be turned off from paying for the legal copy. You also see companies like Disney trying to charge the same for a file as a physical DVD.
Ten years down the line I could see the Internet as the primary home video market, but it’s going to stay fairly small for the time being, I think.
Well, that’s how I see it anyway. It’s too bad too, since I was looking forward to the next level of DVDs…
– Ryan Cross
P.S. About the regular DVD rather than Blu-Ray story: I heard about this too. One point that can be made is that regular DVDs are quite capable of playing HD content. Generally they need to be encoded differently than they normally are (meaning many players cannot play them). The main problem is that regular DVDs have much less space than HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, meaning that signifcantly less HD content can be fit on them.
One area where HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will only be beneficial is for computer users though. Imagine how convenient it will be for making backups to have a 30 gig disc.
Check out http://www.clixflix.com for watching more movies if you are in mumbai
Anyone this will be the last format war ever. Cuase next it will be all digital
I agree totally John. I don’t have the Oppo player but I do have the LG7832 Upconverting player and it takes SD-DVD and puts it out at 1080i to my projector. I know its not true HD but it will do nicely until true HD-DVD comes down to current SD-DVD prices.
Little 20′ TV? The biggest TV I have is a 13′.
I got a HDTV Pioneer Plasma and Kiss DP600 HD network player setup and I have many demos and movies in HD and standard and ive compared.
now can truely say Yes its way better and No as some (most HD material is not encoded right).
it all depends on what the content your viewing is encoded too i.e Superbit dvds 9.7 mbs
ive seen many movies best quality ones are the 1080i .TS files (20 mbs) and WMV HD, now i got matrix reloaded on dvd and have a downloaded 1080i .TS file and there is alot of difference, even when i standing like a feet away from the screen its amazing.
the 720p signals i dont thing there much difference in from the dvds.
o.k. bluray and HD DVD have a much higher bit rate nearly 25-30mbs meaning much more quality HD material.
Please note: most old movies where not shot using a hdtv camera just converted to Hi Def.
i got this video clip on my computer is shot with HD camera called Pal vs HDTV 720p side by side of the same video. and the HDTV looks more 3D and much more detail.
Last word: wait and see for yourself.
hey john,
I heard that Blu-Ray is supposed to support up to 50 gb of data, while HD-DVD only supports 15. Then, isn’t it obvious that Blu-Ray would be much better than HD? and, i’m sure with a Blu-Ray disc you’ll notice a huge difference from the ordinary dvd.
John, go to http://www.oppodigital.com/ and order an Oppo OPDV971H DVD Player.
My super girlfriend got me one of these for my birthday in March and HOLY SHIT! This player will UPSCALE your standard DVDs to HD quality. Sure, it’s not “true HD” but at a fraction of the cost of a HD/Blu-Ray Player (only $199) this is a FANTASTIC investment. It is probably the best present I have ever gotten. The picture quality is phenominal, plus there’s no need to replace your existing DVD collection.
Not only that, but Oppo release NEW DOWNLOADABLE FIRMWARE periodically for FREE, so your player is always in tip-top condition. Get one Campea, you will not regret it!
Just a couple of comments:
1) HD DVD and Blu Ray players will both play regular DVD’s, the new discs (HD DVD and Blu Ray) will not play in regular DVD players, you need an HD DVD player for HD DVD and Blu Ray player for Blu Ray discs.
2) There are combo players (both HD DVD and Blu Ray in one machine) on the way from Samsung and LG, so I don’t know who said Sony was forbidding combo units.
This baffles me. I’ve been following this raging war for a while now because I’m nearly ready to update the entertainment system and, nearly from the beginning, I decided that I’m going to let the war rage on until there’s winner. I can see where Blue-Ray has the advantage because of the use of these disks in the PS3 but at the same time, all the negative talk of the PS# (game licensing, cost of system etc.) I think is going to hurt the Blue-Ray disk’s ability to push ahead (this reminds me of Sony’s other failed crapshoot – the MiniDisc Player…) and since they’re pretty much the only one’s pushing Blue-Ray, I think they’re going to have a tough time selling it.
HD-DVD seems, to me at least, to be a more widely accepted format. Looking at the list of HD-DVD releases vs. Blue-Ray disc releases from the Studios, the HD-DVD list is a fair bit longer. My guess is that HD-DVD is going to win out but I’m also going to wait to see the outcome before investing any money in either of these.
John, you remember that massive movie library I used to have? Yeah, all VHS. Over 300 titles by the time I gave up and started collecting DVD instead.
Now I have close to 200 titles on DVD and growing. Am I going to make the step up to pick a side in a format war? No.
Im going to play it like Lucas and wait until about 10 years after the format has proven itself before I upgrade. As it is, if its not at least reverse compatible with DVD then I STILL wont buy it.
FutureShop has an HD-DVD vignette up, and I dont see the big deal.
I agree completely, and have said I will not buy either until there is some kind of combo drive able to play both formats. But, from what I’ve heard, thats not going to happen. Sony has made deals with drive makers absolutely forbidding them to make combo drives.
Have you watched anything on HDNet or HBO HD? The picture is so much clearer than a regular DVD. I agree the competing formats hurts the consumer and I refuse to buy either but I just want to point out that the difference between HD and DVD is significant.
PS- Don’t buy into the plasma hype. They’re overrated and sold on sex appeal– a fading techology in the face of DLP and big strides in LCD. Take it back, John! Take it baaaaaaaack!
I’d have to disagree about consumers losing here– no one will lose if they don’t buy the product. The folks who will by (are buying) are the early adopters/technophiles who know the risks but want the “wow” right now. Time will sift out the winner (if there is one)and we can all safely make the move at that point– Another year or two at least. I think most people are wise to the game and sitting it out until the dust settles from this hard-headed ego battle.
In the mean time, DVD transfers get better and better (Chronicles of Riddick still blows me away on clarity). Viewing quality ultimately depends on that: While excellent DVD transfers are slightly less clear than HD, moderate to poor transfers look like crap on anything over 50″. As was posted- I think that’s where you’re not seeing a difference, John. For example, on a 20″ TV, a DVD will look razor sharp. On a 60″ HDTV, the quality noticeably deteriorates because of the larger viewing size.
Either way, I welcome HD movies (despite a 200+ DVD collection that will invariably be replaced), but it’s way too early to jump on either bandwagon right now.
As to the earlier comment– by Jason: you can play your old DVD collection with the new technology, but your DVD player can’t play the new technology.
I won’t change to anything new. I waited until my VHS broke and then waited until DVD players were under $100. I will stick with my DVD player until the new stuff is under $100. And for the price of those plasma or flat TV’s. I will stick with something less fancy and less costly. I love movies, but not that much.
Donna A.
So then what… Everyone goes out and buys this new media… so 8 years down the road you have to go out and by the newest and latest medis again. How can someone not be satisfied with DVD quality? What is wrong with people? No matter how much better it will be… there will ALWAYS be ways to make it even better… so the companies can make even MORE money.
AND… look at the mistake the Sony made recently. Those movies released for the PSP are bombing. Who would buy that crap?? Those kind of portable entertainment system change every couple of years. Video games I can see buying, replay value and what not. But how many times will you really watch this movie. I have games I play 3-4 times a week, so I’ll fork over the cash. I’m not going to buy a movie for the PSP that I might watch once every 2 months or even less.
so people, be satisfied with DVD. The companies are playing us for fools. THE ONLY ADVANTAGE… is that in the future if these medias catch on… DVD will be dirt cheap :) :)
We’ve seen this sort of thing before – look at laserdiscs and minidisks. Both were superior technologically to the dominating format of the time but both failed because the public just didn’t embrace them.
I’m pretty sure that these new formats will remain ‚Äòniche formats‚Äô; achieving popularity amongst technophiles but not catching on with the general public.
42″ plasmas doesn’t even do HD for real. So no wonder you can’t see the difference John. Just dig up the pictures of the difference between lotr in HD and dvd. Those pictures aren’t even in 1080p and yet the difference is striking. But yea if you have a plasma that dooesn’t have more then a resolution of 1024*768 you won’t see much difference. And about the incident, nothing about it being a dvdr instead of a blueray disc says that it wasn’t a HD clip that was playing. But yes I won’t do the jump to HD, but not becouse the difference isn’t there but becouse there isn’t much out there that can acctually handle the 1080p output. I’m eagerly awaiting the SED displays and i’ll probably jump onboard then.
Here I thought John was launching a tirade against DRM when I read the title. Too bad because that’s the real problem with both formats. My DVDs have all started moving to my 1 TB server using MythTV as the frontend to my DVD library. With HD-DVD and/or Bluray, I have no chance of pulling off the same thing in the near future. Strange that we can rip our CDs to iTunes, but the MPAA can prevent us from doing the same with movies. I’ll stick with DVD for broken DRM, not for quality.
gene: DVI/HDMI doesn’t necessarily make anything better. Some sets limit their resolution on DVI connections, and others have bugs on their HDMI connection. Most tests I’ve seen show that at the same resolution, there’s very little visible difference between component and dvi/hdmi. The real difference is likely the DVD player scaling to the higher resolution instead of the TV. In that case, though, it depends on the quality of the scaler in your TV whether or not there’s really an improvement.
You just know that the studios are going to put beter features than their dvd titles just to get the consumer to think ‘hey the HD-DVD version of The Fugitive has more stuff than the basic dvd does!’
John;
If you can not see a major difference then there is something wrong with the setup.
I do not know what HD setup you looked at but I have personally have touched at witness Sony blu-ray player in Sony Building in Tokyo attached to Bravia LCD and I can attest that picture is phenomenally better than a DVD.
Have you ever seen a program in INHD1 or INHD2. If not take a look to see what a difference between DVD resolution and HD resolution makes.
Most HD setup at stores are a Joke, Most stores do not know or even care how to setup a proper HD, because most customer apparently care about the size rather the pixel pitch, resolution , black levels, etc. and forget about the incompetent of the places like best buy where every display and system is out of Calibration and the staff are completely clueless.
One final note if your New TV has DVI or HDMI input get a DVD player with DVI or HDMI output the difference is very noticeable.
I know you listen to TWIT John, but if you ever feel like getting you media geek on try TWIM (this week in media) http://thisweekinmedia.libsyn.com/
They have some of the same people that feature on TWIt but it’s entirely dedicated to media talk, cameras, formats, IPTV etc all that junk. And I think they are right when they say neither format will win, by Christmas/early next year. iTunes and lots of other services will be available for download off the net distribution to do what you want with it.
There are also not going to be any dual format players due to blu-ray makers having to sign agreements saying they won’t make any HD-DVD related products which sucks.
Like you I will be sitting back and waiting to see if either makes it or if internet/something else comes along sooner to greater mass appeal.
~Sam
too fuckin right – Sky (the top satellite service in the UK) has just launched HD tv, which is 300 quid (about 500 US), plus the ¬£10-¬£30 subscription charge per month… for about 5 channels
I bought a 42″ HD tv, thinking the sky thing would be cool – but for that price!?!?!?
when the HD DVD & blu-ray stuff comes out… i won’t be going anywhere near it – I have a pretty good dvd collection & John you’re right the quality of HD is good, but not totally amazing, not enough to warrant me binning the dvd’s i have only to replace them with the next gen of discs
i’m sooo happy with the quality of dvd on a big plasma screen…
Blu-Ray & HD DVD can go fuck themselves in their stupid asses
There is absolutely no way I am going to dish out a shitload of money to see it then have a 50/50 chance of failure. The market is simply not big enough to have such massive competing force.
Way I see it, it is going to be a LONG TIME before DVDs are replaced, so screw buying HD/Blu-Ray now. If I do buy the PS3 (which I most likely will) I will buy it for the gaming – not the disc format.
I agree. I do not see a big enough differance to shell out hundreds of dollars on two new machines that will never be compatible to play each others dvds. I already have thousands of dollars invested in the current system. Don’t forget they already said that the new hd dvds and blueray movies are going to be jacked up another $10 dollars.
I don’t necessarily mind two different formats as long as I can buy a reasonably priced player that can play both. The current prices for seperate players right now is understandable since it’s a new technology, but I won’t be an adopter of either until can buy a name brand player for at most $200-150.
So wait. I wont be able to play my regular dvd’s in these new machines and these new disc wont play in my old dvd player?
I completely agree…I see no reason to buy either format till they get their act together and come out with one format. Till then, an upconverting all region player will be just fine.
Also …at the current prices for the players, they will not move to many. …with upconverting dvd players under 200… and the vast majority of people will see no reason to upgrade.
I’ve had an HD system for a few years now. I’ve done a comparison between DirectTv HBO-HD and my DVD of the same movies (several times).
I’m sure there is a difference, but I rarely noticed it. Not enough to fork out hundreds of dollars on a transition-technology that BlueRay and HD-DVD will likely be.
The difference between VHS and DVD was amazing. Amazing enough to make me repurchase movies in the new format. The difference between Standard-Def TV and HD is amazing. But, DVD to HD…eh.