The Bubble has BURST (DVD Forum)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	DVD Forum
Date:	05/04/02 (387 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better picture

Disadvantages: Cost more

DVDs are pretty cool. Much better than VHS as a format, that's for sure, but I can't help but think we've gone a bit crazy for this new fangled technology.

Sure, DVDs offer a better picture quality and a whole lot of other stuff, but are they good enough to warrant a £150 player, and then £20 a DVD, as opposed to £10 (or often less) for the VHS copy of the film. Are they really worth it? Or are they just a hot new technology that we all go for as fast as we can? The DVD players we buy at the moment don't even record, which means we need our normal VHS video anyway.

DVDs are undeniably good technology, at least they were a few years ago. They are basically CDs which can hold more information, and one use they are put to is to hold films. The combination of their large size and the MPEG compression they use mean they can hold high quality video and sound, much better than your standard TV picture, and VHS tapes. Being digital the quality won't degrade over time (although does a DVD really last forever?) like VHS tapes do, so they sound rather good really. All it takes is a modest PC (approx. 300Mhz CPU) to decode the video held on DVD, or a dedicated DVD player. So a new movie format is born, and seems to be good for everyone. Quality is good for the viewer, and for the film companies, they get to control what is released where (the region thing, I'll explain later) and also stop piracy (they thought).

As it turns out DVD does give the high quality videos we all wanted, but it can be copied using nothing more than your home PC, and then if you want to be really flashy recompressed using DIVx (a better compression) and reduced to CD size, with around 80% of the quality of the DVD on a CD 1/5 the size. First round to the hackers. The second security measure, region coding, was designed to keep DVDs in their correct part of the world. So you couldn't watch American DVDs in the UK. Why, I'm not really sure, it
could be to do with exports, or the fact movies are released much earlier in some places. But it isn't a problem, there are workarounds for the majority of DVD players, and even some multi-region players that will play discs from anywhere. So I guess that's round 2 to the hackers as well.

While the systems set up to stop DVD piracy and stuff like that may have failed, people do like the word 'quality'. It's a buzz word or something. As long as your product is better quality, people will buy it. Regardless of the fact that they're gonna watch it on the same 21" TV with two tiny speakers as they watch movies. DVDs may look and sound great, but they look and sound really great only with some really great technology. Like Dolby surround sound, and a massive wide screen fancy TV.

Anyway, before I get in to a rant on DVDs, there is one area that they haven't taken off all that much. The PC software side of things. DVD drives for your PC are common place now, but I really don't think they were made to watch DVDs on your home PC. No, they were made so your computer good read DVD's that contained software too. Just like normal CDs can hold audio and data, so DVDs can hold video and data (and audio too if you want to waste some money on the new DVD audio thing). DVDs may now be commonly known as Digital Video Discs, but their original name was Digital Versatile Discs. They were supposed to be the new PC software format, with their increased capacity and all. While the odd game or Linux release now comes on DVD, there is also a CD version, the DVD software market doesn't seem to be going anywhere near as fast as the video market. Oh, and of course you can now get re-writable DVD drives. For £200, then about £10 a shot for the discs. Reminds of writable CDs in the early days, but look at Cd-RW drives now, they're commonplace! DVD-RAM drives are definitely the future, I just wouldn't buy one yet!

An
yway, rolling back to DVD movies, which is what I meant to talk about. I do like DVDs, and I'd rather watch one than watch a VHS movie. It's like the difference between audio tapes and CDs, everything sounds and looks better, and you have instant access to tracks (or in the case of DVDs, scenes). And of course, the infamous DVD extras.

Extras seem to be something they bolt on to a DVD. At first they make you go wow. I really wanted the Fight Club DVD because it had a whole extra DVD (yes, a few gigabytes worth) of extras. And the only time I ever looked at it? When I reviewed the thing on Dooyoo. Extras seemed good when DVDs were new fangled things, and I do watch the odd documentary the odd time. But watch the whole movie with the director talking over it? Some 2-bit band playing some music that's in the film for two minutes. Oh, and how about some cheap biographies of the people in the film. They're useless. I don't read them, and I bet 95% of you don't read them. Yet they seem to be the reason why they charge £20 for a DVD and £10 for a video.

Y'see, at the moment DVDs just don't seem economical. Most DVDs are £20, some cheapy ones are £10. All videos are about £10, cheapy ones just a few pounds. I don't use the extras, so why go for the DVD? The extra picture quality. Personally I'd rather buy two VHS 'lesser quality' movies than one all shining all singing DVD that may look a little better. Personal opinion perhaps, or perhaps I'm not a perfectionist. I don't care, they're practically giving videos away these days, and I'm more than happy to take them.

DVDs are certainly the technology for the future, especially when recordable DVDs become cheap enough for the masses. But for now I see no point in rushing in, I'm going to enjoy the cheap twilight years of VHS!

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