HD-DVD, Meet Betamax

I’ve heard a lot of chatter over Toshiba’s planned departure from HD-DVD– “OMFG what now? Is Blu-ray the only one left now? WTF?” Like all new technologies, some styles make it, some don’t. Betamax was obliterated by VHS. Nobody wants to watch movies on delicate, double-sided discs the size of my dad’s original vinyl copy of “Dark Side of the Moon,” so Laserdiscs got chucked. MiniCDs, on the other hand, were too tiny, so they didn’t supplant CDs. Format wars are a big part of emerging technology, and home video players have been most prominent in recent years as quality leapt ahead to bring the visually luscious experience of the theater to our homes.

But I have to wonder: have we reached the maximum threshold of digital quality? There is, no question, an enormous difference between mono and stereo sound. The leap from VHS to DVD was stunning. The first time I watched a movie in 5.1 surround sound I really thought the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were going to eat me, and watching this year’s Super Bowl in High Definition let me see the beads of sweat on Eli Manning’s forehead. But I really feel that, as long as TV and movie entertainment is filmed and played back in the manner it currently is, I will never experience another leap like that again. The human eye can only register so much, and the differences in perception as technology advances will grow ever more slight. That’s not going to make things easy for companies eager to cash in on the hunger for stunning visual quality.

So HD-DVD will go the way of the Betamax, but I really have to wonder if, long term, Blu-ray or digital recordings of a similar standard of quality are pretty much where we’ve capped out. Ordinary DVDs are still drastically outselling Blu-ray, mainly because of price. I liked Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but not enough to pay $40 for a format whose quality nearly outstrips the limits of my visual quality perception and definitely exceeds the performance of my entertainment system (my laptop).

Unless something drastically changes about the way films are made, like a shift to three-dimensional holographic filmmaking, I don’t really see how formats like Blu-ray or anything of higher resolution and quality are really going to take the market by storm the way VHS and DVD did. It’s the law of diminishing returns in a classic application: current video formats are basically at a point where if they get any better, the human eye won’t be able to perceive it, and most people don’t care if the quality is pushed right up to the limit. Do you really care if you see Pride and Prejudice in mind-blowing high definition?

I can answer that for you: No. You don’t. Mr. Darcy looks just fine on VHS. A lot better on DVD, but last time I checked, there aren’t explosions, robots, or rampaging dinosaurs in Derbyshire, so an ordinary DVD is going to cut it just fine. Especially if it’s a 50% difference in price. This is the same reason that I won’t go to the theater to see a romantic comedy. Well, half the reason. Most romcoms give me hives. But of those that don’t, I always wait to see them at home. I’m not paying ten bucks to put up with rude idiots who won’t stop text messaging one another to attempt to see a movie which has no action or special effects that properly benefit from a theater’s audiovisual setup, and can also drown out people who don’t understand how to shut up for two hours.

Blu-ray does offer better quality than DVD, but it’s facing an uphill battle that previous improvements in media quality haven’t had to deal with: a resounding “meh” from consumers when it comes to the difference in quality. If Blu-ray and other hi-def formats can be brought down to the price range consumers have come to accept– $10 to $20 per title– people will buy them. But as long as the difference in quality is so slight that only mind-melting action films benefit from them, DVD is where the majority of films have capped out on quality when it comes to the average couch potato out there.

So happy trails, HD-DVD. We hardly knew ye.