Surreal DVD
Dear Gary: This whole DVD situation is surreal. Never in my life have I seen such media hysteria over ANY audio/video product as this. Even the most calculating of politicians are probably taking notes on this slick orchestrated propaganda campaign: the shameless hype, the total media and marketplace saturation, the instant “disappearance” of a competitive format. I could begin to understand the mania if LaserDisc never existed and the leap was from VHS to DVD. But, DVD is killing off an audio/video format that is mature both in hardware and software, providing first-rate performance to two million LaserDisc owners. LaserDisc would have soldiered on quite nicely until the arrival of HDTV, which, incidentally, will render DVD obsolete, too, as just another NTSC format. LaserDisc had a legitimate status as a high-performance alternative to “blur-vision” VHS. And, I don’t recall any LaserDisc owners crying themselves to sleep because they were getting “only” 420-430 lines of horizontal resolution rather than 480, or had to tolerate a smidgen of dot-crawl or chrominance noise upon close screen scrutiny rather than an occasional digital artifact. DVD exists not from market demand (consumer demand), but as a manufacturer’s “created need” in the purest sense of market psychology. For the majority of audio/video enthusiasts like myself—with mid-level CRT TVs— the difference in video performance between LaserDisc and DVD is trivial at best. Thus, Widescreen Review’s comparative movie reviews of LaserDisc and DVD on widescreen, professionally calibrated, component-capable monitors and projectors are largely irrelevant, academic exercises. Are such academic differences worth killing off LaserDisc? Just so a few high-enders can appreciate an incremental video improvement; an improvement which most of us LaserDisc schmucks will never experience, or NEED to experience—especially with HDTV waiting in the wings? Here’s how I’ll benefit from DVD. The nearby CD World just terminated LaserDisc rentals as DVD forces out its predecessor. So what am I left to rent? Blur-vision VHS. So, for all you DVD owners crying the blues, I don’t want to hear it. And, then there’s the nascent Divx. I can only chuckle at all those “early adopters” wailing at being “betrayed” by the video industry. Gee, guys, are you surprised that those same media moguls who cut two-million LaserDisc owners adrift have now plotted to orphan you? But, I have to say one good thing about Divx: it revealed a dirty little secret about all those 5-inch plastic discs—they have practically NO material value. Whether CD, CD-ROM, or DVD, they are all literally “throwaway” items, of no intrinsic value. But, that reveals another dirty little secret: the obscene profits those little silver discs generate. And, that’s the core reason behind the systematic elimination of all other formats, audio and video. So, the next time you DVD dupes plink down such a “reasonable” $22.99 for a disc, just remember that the manufacturers are planning to make a comfortable profit off essentially the same disc for $5. DVD, Divx? Count me out, thank you. And, when the LaserDisc format is finally killed off by its incremental, transitional successor, I’ll be using DVHS and recording off satellite.
Michael T. Klewin
Editor Gary Reber Comments:
Thank you for your insightful observation. The irresponsibility of the media is much to blame for the zealous attention paid to DVD as a superior format to LaserDisc. The truth is that DVD is a superior format when executed properly. While, as you attested, the picture resolution differential is not dramatically perceivable on the average CRT TV set, when a DVD is mastered in anamorphic widescreen and played back on anamorphic-enabled display devices, the resolution differential is dramatic. And when viewed in the component video format, color fidelity and resolution are outstanding. Clearly, DVD outperforms LaserDisc under such conditions. Of course, a digital LaserDisc fitted with anamorphic and component delivery, would blow away DVD because of its larger data capacity to support higher bit rates, but that is not a course the studios and video player manufacturers want to pursue (at least not now). I am with you in your concern that Laser Disc will be victimized by a pull-out of retailer and thus studio/distributor support. But for the present and near future LaserDisc will continue to offer a far greater selection of widescreen titles than DVD, but not forever. As you mentioned, even DVD will ultimately succumb to high definition delivery formats that are on the horizon. In the meantime for those who want “the best that it can be,” DVD is there for the experience.
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