[IP] more on STUPID STUPID High-Def Forced To Down-Convert

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim Onosko <onosko@gmail.com>
Date: January 26, 2006 2:00:33 AM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on STUPID STUPID High-Def Forced To Down-Convert
Reply-To: tim@onosko.com

I beg to differ with Mr. Stahlman, as he spouts the party line without
checking his facts.

First, he is correct that the studios want HD, and for the exactly the
"arms race" reasons that he suggests.  Many in the studios believe
that, just as the American viewing public dumped their VHS cassettes
for DVDs, they will abandon DVDs for the HDTV equivalent.

Unfortunately people love their DVDs and value the extraordinary film
libraries the medium has allowed them to built.  And, for now at
least, most consumers don't yet see the value in upgrading to the next
generation systems that are expensive and offer only a handful of film
titles.  More on this in a second.

The form of digital cinema that one finds in a very select (fewer than
1000) number of theaters today, is "2K," not "4K," which is envisioned
but still in development.  The industry spec for 2K digital cinema was
only released last year, and isn't even implemented on a wide scale
yet.  Super high-res 4K digital cinema is NOT anticipated for the
home, and is where H'wood draws the line between the quality of a
theatrical experience and the home cinema.  As for 8K resolution?  A
pipe dream, but hardly a new development straining to break free from
the labs.

The Japanese CE manufacturers want the high-def DVDs so they can right
what it sees as a rip-off by the Chinese, who dropped the bottom out
of DVD prices with their sub-$50 players.  The new high def players
will range from very expensive ($500 for the forthcoming Toshiba) to
staggering ($1800 for Pioneer's new Blu-Ray player).  These are going
to be a very tough sell.

What Hollywood must overcome with the HDTV version of DVD is a
widespread inability, on the part of the audience, to tell the
difference between a regular DVD and a new HD disc on a screen smaller
than five or six feet.  Regular DVDs look phenomenal on new HDTV sets,
and it is going to take some very dramatic marketing to interest any
but the predictable wave of maybe a couple hundred thousand
videophiles, the same crowd that were wedded to the ill-fated
Laserdisc, twenty years ago.

Resistance is futile?  Many will "resist" by simply ignoring the new
discs without a more compelling reason to invest in them.  Oh, and by
the way, there is also little wisdom to the forthcoming format battle
between Blu-Ray and the competing format, HD-DVD.  That alone will
sour most consumers.





On 1/25/06, David Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Newmedia@aol.com
> Date: January 25, 2006 4:02:55 PM EST
> To: dave@farber.net
> Subject: Re: [IP] ] more on STUPID STUPID High-Def Forced To Down-
> Convert
>
> Dave:
>
> > When are people going take the hint that
> > Hollywood does not want HD to be successful?
> Quite the contrary -- the studios are completely betting their future
> on HD . . . completely.  Super HD (4K x 2K) is in the theaters now
> and coming to our homes in a few years.  Ultra HD (8K x 4K) is in the
> labs now.


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