Is is worth buying Disney DVD´s now?

[SofaKing381222]

I would definently buy DVDs! who wants to wait 2-3 years for movies that are available now. If you really like the movie, and really want it, get it now.

[deathie mouse]

If you can't see the difference between 500 lines of resolution and over 1000 lines, then I guess there would be no point for you to upgrade

Sadly HD-DVD seems to be coalescing into a 700 line format and not a 1000 one, and then there wouldn't be that great of a difference, It's just about twice as big as DVD in file size

Even a system with 1000 lines (like 1080i HDTV) (especially since it's interlaced, and from the captures I've seen, it doesn't look much better than 720p) still won't look as good as any 35mm format

which needs like:

Academy 1500 x 2100 pixels
Disney Widescreen 1200 x 2100
Cinemascope 1250 x 3000

(And there's even 70mm quality and IMAX quality after that)

To me current DVD with mpeg2 is about 16mm in quality (specially PAL discs).

When you realize that 70mm quality, twenty times bigger than DVD, fits easily on a Blue-ray DVD with mpeg4 with enough space left for tons of extras, you would hope a next DVD format was AT LEAST 35mm quality not something like "22mm" HD-DVD quality or "28mm" HDTV .

So I'm hesitant to upgrade to what could become "interim" formats

[TheZue]

So I'm hesitant to upgrade to what could become "interim" formats

No matter what new format comes out it's always good to wait to see if it survives. Laser Disc really is the classic, especially in North America. They were for sale only for maybe one or two years.

The only way I can really see the HD DVDs taking off big time is if the players are backwards compatible. I wouldn't buy one unless it was, and I'm sure there are tons of people with large DVD collections that wouldn't bother with it unless they could play their old ones too.

Either way, I'm still stocking up my DVD collection

[castleinthesky]

Could someone please explain to me what HD DVD will be, and how much different it will be from DVD?

[jediliz]

I buy them once in awhile when they are older movies and they are on sale. For example, I got Hercules for $10 when I got two other movies (Father of the Bride & Father of the Bride Part 2) for 3 for $30. There are several Disney dvds on my list of MUST buys when they are released. And they are usually on sale when they are released (At least that first week).

I own two copies of Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and A Bugs Life because I have both a VHS copy and the Pixar 15th anniversary 3 dvd pack set. If the Ultimate Toy Box hadn't gone out of print ( DISNEY! ) I would probably get that, too.

[deathie mouse]

Could someone please explain to me what HD DVD will be, and how much different it will be from DVD?

castleinthesky, just as DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) was a 5" disc that was "bigger" (had higher capacity or "space") than CD (Compact Disc), some form of HD (High Density actually) DVD disc will eventually replace it. CD has 0.650 GB (gigaBytes) of space. DVD has 9 GB of space. Right now theres no HD DVD standart, but there are two main "contenders" for it.

CD as a consumer format is mainly used for music.
DVD is mainly used for video (tho there are Audio only variations like DVD-Audio).
Altho DVD has great storage space, the 9 GBs wasn't enough to store digital video, so a video compression codec called mpeg2 was used to store 2 or more hours of standart definition (SD) video. mpeg2 compresses video about 15 to 30 times to gives us the DVD quality video we have now today. In the US and other NTSC TV standart countries that video is 480 pixels tall by 720 pixels wide in quality. In Europe and other PAL TV standart countries that video is 576 pixels tall by 720 pixels wide. On average we would say this is 500 line video, as the average height is about 500 pixels rounded.

You could use your computer's screen height resolution as a comparision stick


HDTV (High Definition) encompasses a series of higher quality formats that vary in size, but are mainly one of two: the 720 pixel tall by 1280 pixels wide one, or 1080 pixels tall x 1980 pixel wide one. So we could call those about 700 line and 1000 line video. HDTV has also the chracteristic that it was designed from conception as 1.78 wide (16:9) as opposed to the old analog TV standarts that were 1.33 wide ("4:3")

The future HD DVD disc format (or formats), having much higher capacity than current DVD, would easily accomodate this higher resolution video.

The 2 main contenders are AOD (Advanced Optical Disc) which will have a maximum capacity of 32 GB. It has recently been called HD-DVD by its proponents, so most people think it's THE HD DVD, but that remains to be seen. The other one is Blue-Ray DVD (BD-DVD?) which uses a more advanced blue laser so it will have a maximum capacity of 54 GB.

As you can see these higher capacity discs by themselves can store video thats 3.5 to 6 times higher in resolution than current DVD using the current mpeg2 compression. But now there's also "new and improved" mpeg4 compression, which has different "names" or "flavors" depending on its variations and pedigree. Microsoft's version is the one used in WM9, then there's the mpeg4 consorcioum's own H.264/AVC that was ratified by the DVD Forum and is part of Quicktime (as Quicktime is basicaly the same as mpeg4), and the independent 3ivX, DivX5, xviD, etc. Those codecs, being more efficient, can further compress the video up to 3 to 6 times more than current mpeg2 with the same quality results.

At present time AOD has chosen mpeg2, H.264/AVC, and VC-9 as codecs, and Blue-Ray mpeg2 and H.264/AVC

So adding 3 to 6 times more compression to 3.5 to 6 times more capacity, make possible a whopping 10 to 36 times higher resolution HD DVD format, which could accomodate 700 line HDTV, 1000 line HDTV, and BEYOND: 35mm film quality (1200-1500 lines, some much wider than 1.78 wide) and up to 70mm quality (2000 lines) if they wanted to. (You can see some film format quality numbers in my previous post )

When will this happen and how it will happen has yet to be determined. The AOD camp, promising quicker implementation usually talks about the 700 line, lowest quality one the most...


Hope you have a better idea now of what HD DVD might (or might not) be.