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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Well, it took a while!  We finally tracked down a Toshiba HD-DVD player in a store that also had an HD-DVD demo disk.  The first store where we found the player wasn’t demonstrating it, and when we asked why, they explained that someone had made off with their only HD demo disk!  So, when we finally saw the Toshiba player, an HD-DVD demo disk, and an HDTV all together in the same store and connected to each other, we took a look.

High Definition on DVD is one of those products we SO want to work.  In fact, to us, it really doesn’t matter which format wins, and we suspect both will to some extent.  But we really want that HD picture on a DVD.  But the, we really want an HD picture at all (that’s another story!)  So, with that desire and the promise of HD on DVD, we watched the demo.

The player, an Toshiba HD-A1 ($500 MSRP) had some issues.  Don’t think you’ll just drop in a disk and hit the play button.  This thing has to “boot up”, and takes quite a while to read the disk and decide it’s not an illegal copy.   And, it’s got a fan.  I know it’s important to keep electronics cool, but the noise of a fan is one of the more annoying things found in new equipment.  My DVD recorder has a fan and a hard drive, and the noise of both is enough to make you want to hid the thing in a closet.

The demo disk itself isn’t organized very well, with clips of movies, and other material strung together like watching trailers at a theater. But there is a segment where the glory of HD is presented in split screen, with HD on one side and SD on the other.  Picture elements even cross over the split line, a cruise ship for example, with all the fine detail of its rigging etc., passes from SD on screen right to HD on screen left.

So, what did we see?  I wish I had better news.  I wish I were able to say, “Wow, what a difference!”  “It was like watching a 35mm movie!” Or “What incredible detail! So lifelike, so razor sharp!”  But I can’t say any of those things.  Yes, the picture did contain more detail, but you had to look for it.  Really, zoom in close and look for it.  I stood 4 feet from a 42” plasma screen, and it was noticeable, but not at the level that would make anybody want to run out and spend cash for it.  In fact, on some material, even at 4’, I couldn’t really see which was better, HD or SD! 

What could possibly be wrong?  Perhaps the TV was not showing real HD?  Nope, it was.  Perhaps the player was not connected right? Nope, it was.  Perhaps the lighting in the store was too bright?  Nope, guess not.  Perhaps HD on DVD isn’t all we would hope for?  I sincerely hope not, but so far, there’s not much to prove otherwise. 

Here’s what HD on DVD is up against:  First, to get a real uncompressed HD image on DVD without any other tricks, would take a DVD with many times the storage capacity of anything we know of.  Raw HD uses 1.5Gbps, so to make it usable on a disk, or even transmittable in any form, you have to compress it, and not just a little.  For many years I’ve had issues with the term “compression” as applied to mp3 (and the like) audio, mpeg video, etc.  Compression, to me, is packing.  You don’t loose anything, you just pack it well.  But somehow we now call all of this mpeg, mp3, WMA, WMV stuff “compression”, when what it really should be called is “bit rate reduction”.  Of course, that would be telling the truth!  Reduce the bit rate, you get more “content” in the space you have, and you do it by throwing away less important stuff.  The question is, what do you think is “less important”? 

Before I’m labeled a compression curmudgeon, I do realize that without bit rate reduction, none of this digital video stuff would happen at all.  And some of it can look really good.  I saw an standard definition DVD recently at a post production facility.  It was up-sampled in the DVD player, a nothing-special consumer unit, then sent to a theater quality projector.  What I saw was fantastic.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was NOT watching 35mm film! 

So why didn’t I get that same experience with the HD DVD demo?  I suspect there are several reasons.  One possibility is that in the quest for higher definition in a smaller space, the trade-off between what data is thrown out and what gets staved may have been too hard a choice.  To make it work, a whole lot gets thrown out, or it just won’t fit on a DVD.  Remember, a Blu-Ray disk is only about double the capacity of a standard DVD-9.  It could be that the TV used was not up to the task either, though the SD half of the screen looked about normal for SD.  There might have been set-up issues too.  As the complexity of video systems increases, so increases the chance of set up errors.  Any number of things could have been wrong.

But what remains is this: here was the chance for a major store to “hook” customers on the new HD picture, and for whatever reason, they passed on the opportunity.  But then, I have never seen an in-store demo of HD anything that made me react in any other way than to say “Why isn’t that sharp?”  I have seen good HD material, just not in a retail store.

If anyone asked me today, “Is HD-DVD worth the money and the wait?”  I’d still have to say I don’t know.  I’ve seen it, I watched it, and I still don’t know.  My answer SHOULD have been “Absolutely…go buy it today!”  But sadly, that’s just not true.  Don’t buy today, wait a bit.  I’ll take another look.  Platinum Home Theaters will keep an eagle eye on this technology.  As always, we want the best for our clients.  So my final verdict for this round is….

“Please Stand By”