Re: Are you waiting?

Derek Janssen wrote:
DBBrandell wrote:

With anime now being produced in High Def, the DVD
release represents a significant loss of quality. Won't
titles like Black Lagoon eventually receive the kind of
high quality release that DVD just can't provide? So
why buy the DVDs now instead of waiting for a good
release? Oh, sure, a home video format that's better
than DVD hasn't been established yet, but it can't be
more than 2 years away ... is anyone out there waiting
for the next big thing instead of buying todays DVDs?

As far as quality goes- I don't think most animation would benefit anyway. 99% of shoujo and/or comedy shows aren't drawn "realistically" anyway, and lots of shounen isn't either.
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya ( MoHS? ) is the same way, Do people
need 1080P to see
the strands of hair on Haruhi's head? Animation is a lot more audio than video for my two bits, and higher resolution doesn't especially help.

With widescreen-broadcast saturation existing for so long in Japan (hey, WE'RE the latecomers, remember?) most shows nowadays *are* broadcast in "Hi-Vision" (their trademark) widescreen, just as a convention of being on the air, Haruhi included.
As we're still watching it in upconverted DVD, can't yet say it's any leap of improvement on our widescreen sets, but it sure ain't bad. :)

Anyway, I'm gonna wait. As far as disk media, I don't want to buy a player to replace my DVD unit until I replace my 20 inch tube TV that I just bought last spring; and that player has to cost less than $100 and be backward compatible with DVD. I don't expect those kind of prices for two or three years, at the earliest; and that has the side benefit that I expect the format wars to be over by then.

(Price, no, backwards-compatible, yes.
We can say "One out of two ain't bad", unless you want to be stubborn about it, but it's surprising how many potential player buyers don't know we've already reached the first "Don't need to replace your library" plateau.)

Now, on a related topic- I know HDTV over the air may change all that, esp. depending on when my non-satellite cable company gets me an up to date cable box. They offer Tivo-type boxes only for customers in bigger citys in my region; I tried to get one of those _two_ years ago and they said, "We're really sorry, but you live in too small a town." ( Pop 1500, 40 miles to city. ) If they try to put an HDTV analog converter box on top of my current cable box, I might, maybe, upgrade the whole mess, which includes my homebrew DVR computer. But I would be very unhappy about being forced to do that.

As far as whether you NEED a cable box, that depends on your set:
Every HDTV set already have the ATSC tuner to pick up local digital stations over the air, but most nowadays have the built-in "cable-ready" QAM tuner to plug your cable into the set--

Whether you can get Discovery or Food Channel HD depends on your subscription (and they'll probably stick you with the box for it), but if you've got Fox, ABC or PBS broadcasting HD in your region, the set should pick them up over the basic-channel tier.
(Eg., if you watch analog Channel 5 for NBC, and your local station's set up a channel to broadcast, you'll probably be watching Heroes HD on "Channel 5.1".)

Derek Janssen
ejanss@xxxxxxxxxxx

Very American-centric post :) Those of us outside the US; HD TV's aren't common. At least in the UK (Scotland), none have cable tuners, but most do have Digital TV (over air) receivers - although digital TV reception is seriously hit and miss. Also, there is only one cable network (Virgin Media) in the UK, and they already ruled out expanding the network (no new cable) as it's just too expensive. None of the over-air digital channels currently broadcast in HD, although the BBC are planning it... no definitive word from any of the other channel providers.


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