(OK, admittedly I've sometimes been an early adopter with cameras too. And, er, Macs. Ah well.)
I still have the Sone DVD player and the 26-inch Sony LCD TV I have used for 2.5 years. And now I also have a Toshiba HD-E1 HD DVD Player and Sony 40-inch 1080p HD TV (KDL40W2000 Bravia) All of these are very good products in their range, especially the big TV. (If you are not aware, many HD TVs can only play the lesser "720p" format. This TV plays the full "1080p" format. The number refers to the vertical resolution.)
Here are comparison screenshots from the regular DVD of King Kong and the HD-DVD. As you can see if you click on them, in still shots the regular DVD picture looks awful in comparison, but as I tell you, it's not because it is a bad player or TV, au contraire. It's only by comparison. (And because a still shot of video always looks worse than the live video. Of course that counts for the HD picture too.) I also wanted to take pictures of the old DVD playing on the new HD system, but sadly it's a region one disk, and the bloody machine is not region-free.
As a note I will say that it's a bit silly to buy HD this year. For one thing the Blue-Ray/HD-DVD war is not over. For another thing, there are very few discs available yet. I had to struggle to find any titles at all I was interested in. But anyway, I suspect that in five years, like happened with VHS vs DVD, I will barely be able to watch regular DVDs anymore.
14 comments:
Ironic, innit, that contrarywise to all the research on the natural angle of view of the human eye 16:9 or worse has been foisted on us because the cinema owners wanted to install wider rows of seats to give them a better return per square foot of floorspace.
If it isn't 75mm film in an IMAX theater, then what's the point?
Seriously though, I have a 32"TV, clean across my living room, by the time I put a widescreen film on it, then I can't see what's going on. I don't think higher resolution would help, unless it was on a bigger screen.
All I'm worried about is the obsolescence of legacy equipment, what will I do when my VCR breaks. How soon before I have the same fear for my DVD player?
It also won't matter a hoot how good my entertainment system is, it's only good the first three weeks after I get my new spectacles, then there'll be scratches on the lenses, or they'll be bent out of shape, or some other disaster befallen them.
Yeah, I did some research, and you basically can't get a TV which has 1080p resolution, under 40 inches.
Alex said...
"what will I do when my VCR breaks."
Actually, we ran into the same problem when ours did. It seems there's still a market for simple, no-frills VCRs (we bought one recently). At the very least, because there are millions of people who can't be bothered with digitizing everything they have on DVD.
Somehow, "totally obsolete" is going out of fashion. ;-)
"you basically can't get a TV which has 1080p resolution, under 40 inches."
They should make technology that can miniaturize pixels!
Pascal called: "They should make technology that can miniaturize pixels!"
The Sony KDL40W2000 is less than 50 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). Most computer monitors today are 96-100 PPI. The iPhone is 160 PPI. There are already computer monitors from several manufacturers with 200 PPI.
How small do you want your pixels, Pascal?
Which monitors are those?
I was actually just thinking about that. I used to really look forward to monitors with 200 PPI, but now I am doubting that my middle-aged eyes can really resolve anything much smaller than 100 PPI. At least for a large monitor I don't think so, because of the distance to it I need to see it all.
I think ViewSonic, Toshiba and IBM, at least, have a 200 PPI display already. They are expensive at the moment but that will soon change, of course.
Apple has been preparing its developers for the change to hi-res displays for two years now. It has been possible to write resolution independent applications on MacOS X since version 10.4.0.
200 PPI is needed mainly for rendering of type. People say the Helvetica on iPhone's 160 PPI screen looks glorious.
You will certainly see a difference in 200 PPI. If this weren't the case you couldn't tell any difference in your current display and laser printouts. I certainly can, and you and I are same age.
Watching movies is different; there you want to see the whole picture at once. XY resolution is less important because the amount of data in the time domain.
Right you are.
I wonder how much of the interface is scalable in Leopard?
(Or tiger, or jaguar, or panther, or whichever the next one is. I think the cat monikers are over-stretched now.)
I'm sure everything in Leopard is scalable (under the hood). Don't forget that it's the same OS X that's running on iPhone, and you can witness all kinds of scaling in there already.
Same applies to many 3rd party apps. Doubling the display resolution is a difficult transition. You can't run some apps in 100 PPI and others in 200 PPI. Of course, OS X will "force" all apps into the new scale, but it will look funny if the application is not aware of this. That's the reason for preparing for the transition two years in advance.
I'm sure there are many people at Cupertino already using OS X with a 200 PPI display. Even if the next generation of displays from Apple turned out to be only 160 PPI or whatever.
TTL said...
"How small do you want your pixels, Pascal?"
You can always be counted on to take my jokes literally, and slip in useful bits while at it. :-)
Not always. Sometimes I actually get it, start laughing and find myself unable to add any useful bits. :-)
Oopsie! I forgot for a second that my humour (or so I call it) is registered as a lethal weapon in a few dozen countries. (Basically, all those that *truly* ban torture.)
Dya see this article? Imagine having the room for such a MONSTER! The docking thing is nutty, as well!
Funny!
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