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Loading ...The case for high definition on the PC
combatus
I think most of us know that there is a battle going on between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Who wins most people don’t really care, and if both formats end up succeeding in some strange and ridiculous 50/50 scenario (come on guys get it together next time with one format please, it can’t be that difficult!) we’ve now got players that can read both formats.
What has interested me however, is the need for HD over standard DVD quality which has been mainstream since the mid 90’s and on the PC since the late 90’s. DVD still looks great considering screen sizes have expanded considerably since the days that 15” and 17” CRT’s were the norm. Clearly on a 17” screen DVD quality video or 720×576 in other words looks great. However, run this video on a 24” or even 20” widescreen like I have and you begin to notice a drop in quality. This for me was highlighted quite markedly when I downloaded the HD Transformers (2007) trailer last summer in 720p (1280×720). The increase in picture quality, even audio quality was clear even on my 20” screen. I would imagine that a 24” screen running a 1080p film (1920×1080) would look fantastic. So for those who watch DVD’s on their PC at the moment and have made the move to medium/large HD compliant TFT’s for high resolution gaming, there are clear benefits for making the rest of your rig HD compliant. Luckily LG have just released a drive that can read and write to Blu-ray and read HD-DVD disks. The LG GGW-H20L is available for less than £200 and seeing as the format war is far from over, it won’t matter what way it swings, you’ll be able to use both formats and have the advantage of being able to record to large Blu-ray recordable disks which are great for backing up large amounts of data.
So despite all the hype, HD is shaping up quite nicely and the benefits can clearly be seen on screens 20 inches or larger. With many modern TFT’s and GPU’s already being HDCP compliant, the addition of a BD/HD-DVD reader for a little over £150 is a fantastic investment which will vastly improve the quality of movies you watch on your PC. So forget about that Western Digital Raptor or 4GB of ram, you’ll get much more benefit from a High Definition optical drive!.
well erm yeah blu-ray has won, after warner bros and paramount have backed it over HD, the rest of the companies are to follow suit soon
drop in price of HD players and that already 
although this means blu ray writers etc will stay higher priced for longer
damn
LG have the right idea on this, burn to Blu-Ray but still read HD so that people with launch edition films haven’t bought coasters.
That’s if anyone cares at the moment, until that drive is under £100 I wouldn’t bite for it, not even if I could back up my half-terabyte drive with 10 blanks. I’ve got 70 flicks on DVD and almost a fifth of them are replacements from either VHS or early DVD releases with less extras. I’m not falling for it again, I watch favourite films more than once at the cinema, and wait for reviews about the extras, it could take me years to finally buy a film for the home.
Picture quality’s not a life or death reason (In how many more shades of green do I want to watch The Matrix films?) for me to pick one format over another unless the movie was shot in HD like either of Michael Mann’s last two films. When I buy a flatscreen TV maybe I’ll agree with everything combatus says.
“(In how many more shades of green do I want to watch The Matrix films?”
That is true but I suppose you have to ask yourself why you bought your first few DVDs in the first place - half was the promise of a far more robust medium, but the other half was probably something to do with increased quality.
There is a definite increase in quality both in audio and video from DVD > HD. You might call it a new experience but for me watching Casino Royal in HD, even on my 20″ TFT was far better than the DVD. Picture was crisper and more vibrant and the sound quality was immense. For this reason I am definitely going to replace my favourite DVD’s (Star trek films, LOTR, The Matrix etc) with HD versions just as I did with VHS.
However as you say, over £100 for an optical drive is a lot and I certainly won’t be doing everything in one go - more like years. All I can say is that despite being very sceptical about how the benefits for going DVD>HD stacked up against VHS>DVD, I think its definitely worth it, especially if you have a 20″+ screen.
[…]If it were truly an Xbox 360 versus PS3 thing, then the 360 would have had an HD-DVD drive built in and the titles would be in the HD-DVD format, not as an add-on.[…]