"Reserved for DVDs"

[pogo stick]

It's from "The Simpsons". "The Fat And The Furriest" episode (EABF19).

http://pogo-stick.nm.ru/DVDs.jpg

I have four questions:
What have you done with your old tapes or disks or whatever you had before DVDs?
How many DVDs do you have in your collection?
Will you buy it one more time on HD-DVDs?
Are these pieces of plastic easily recyclable without damaging our Mother Nature?

[Mug Funky]

hmm... i've still got all my tapes. never bought many commercial ones, just taped off teev (or occasionally dubbed rental tapes.. young rebel that i was, and having a macrovision-unaware VCR).

it's kinda sad, but even now my mum's got a habit of taping stuff and not watching it, then taping more stuff on a new tape. it's an exponential growth problem, and it's very space consuming (think of the first pile in that picture).

i'm a little concerned about the environmental impact of so so many CDs. go to any student's house and you'll see they form a large part of the junk around the place. data has become so cheap that it isn't really respected anymore. i'm not sure what that means from a socialogical point of view (i'm sure Neil Postman would have a lot of unconstructive things to say about it :)).

computer junk irks me as well. people upgrade every 3 months and just throw the old boxes, monitors, etc to landfill. there's plenty of years left in them, but they're no use to anybody on a junkheap (and monitors especially have some pretty bad things in them). all my previous computer bits have gone to relatives and are still in use (except for my old IBM XT 4.77MHz with 10MB hard disk and twin 5.25" floppy drives - once state of the art).

[fccHandler]

I don't think I've ever thrown away a working videotape or laserdisc. I have about 400 VHS tapes going back to the 1980's, about 25 laserdiscs, and about 110 DVDs. Not surprisingly, there are a couple of movies I have in all three formats. :rolleyes:

I also have about 500 CDs.

Will you buy it one more time on HD-DVDs?
Considering how much junk I own now, I really want to say NO. But there are a tiny handful of favorites that I'm sure I would buy if they became available in HD (the original Star Wars movies, for instance).

[unmei]

You could say i grew up with DVD. When i was a kid we didn't have TV or VCR and about the age of 18 ( :O ) when i first felt the need to buy a movie, i already thought i would never have a tape (VHS) player as DVD started popping up everywhere. Anyway i nowadays have two tapes, both movies that were not available on DVD (at the time i bought them). I still never had a VHS player, i bought the tapes solely to capture them directly to divX/Xvid with a friends machine :)
I won't throw these tapes away even though i cannot play them at my place.
For DVDs i don't see the reason to throw them away ultil they are damaged. VHS -> DVD was not only a better picture quality. It was the end of rewinding and start of random access, no longer "using up the life time" of the medium as you play it, etc etc.
A new disc format will not bring any such little rvolutions, it's only raison d'être will be higher resolution.
Sure we all wan't higher resolution, like we want faster computers, cheaper goods etc. But when i see how the resolution of a DVD is relatively appropriate for a beamer and 4x3m or bigger canvas at my mother's place i always think more than DVD resolution will not bring a whole new world to my humble 17" TFT. I don't say we don't need HDTV and all, it's nice, but it is not the revolution that will make me rebuy my movies in that format.

[RedBeard]

With 500+ movies in my DVD collection I dont think I will be jumping on the HD DVD bandwagon. I just cant justify the expense.

With The increase in capacity being made possible by blue ray and other new technology a smaller more protable format may be in my future IF i can back up my current collection onto it.

[theReal]

I think DVD still has a long way to go, just like audio CD (I don't see people buying audio DVDs with 96kHz/24bit...)

DVD is a format that is about as good as possible for todays tv sets. The disc format is easy to handle, easy to store and millions of people world wide own dvd players. Players are very cheap and more and more people are buying standalone DVD recorders these days.

Most people on this forum would buy HDTV hardware for a lot of money, but other people will stick to their stuff as long as they can - they won't spend thousands for a higher resolution tv set unless they need to.

I don't say new formats won't come - they will, and I'll be happy about it - only DVD will last longer than we (the video-techies) think it will.

btw back to the original question: I won't buy all my movies again, only new ones and maybe some real classics.

[Soulhunter]

Hmm, I still have hundreds of VHS tapes and 3 VCR's (but only 2 are intact) !!!

Less than hundred are bought, the rest are tv recordings of DB, DBZ, Simpsons, Futurama, Married with children, Unhappily ever after etc... Ever planed to capture all this crap, but Im simply way toooo lazy !!! I bought every movie @ DVD I liked... IIRC it started 1999 with this flippers (turn around the DVD @ the mid of the movie). Together with all the games, music/data CD's and all the backups half of my room is clogged !!! And yes, if HD-DVDs arise, I will buy them too... But only coz I consider the quality of 2days DVD as way toooo low (at least for my eyes) !!!

Ahw, I wrote this in block-text style... :scared:


Bye

[Mug Funky]

I don't say we don't need HDTV and all, it's nice

i'll take the extra step and say we don't need it at all. but i'm sure many people want it, and that's the point i guess...

considering the crap DVD transfers we get, i'd be expecting HD-DVDs to be the same crap with more pixels. probably upscales from betacam SP or worse. except the new movies of course, which will likely be in a very similar resolution to what the films were shot in.

there's still a lot out there that hasn't made it to DVD - it's extra hassle for the copyright owners which are usually too large to be able to break-even on niche releases (i'm thinking movies like hairspray which is just the most stupid, funny, kitcsh thing you'll ever see. it's got a young fat Ricky Lake playing the cool girl...).

Soulhunter: i had a box of 100 NTSC Dragonball tapes that i got because Madman were going to throw them out. i gave them to my younger cousin.

[Soulhunter]

IMO its a good idea to keep all this old stuff !!!

Imagine WW3 would start...

I could sit somewhere in a save bunker (with enough food and a generator + fuel) n' watch all my tapes !!!

Bet even before I have seen half of the eps, the war is over...


And supposed that Im the only survivor...

I simply play all my C64, Amiga500, NES, SNES and PSX games till I finally die with a joystick or gamepad in my hands !!!


:D n' Bye

[pogo stick]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
i'll take the extra step and say we don't need it at all. but i'm sure many people want it, and that's the point i guess...
Very good point. I don't know do I need it or not, but I surely WANT IT!
And that could be a problem, I think.
One half of my brain can't wait to see HD stuff :cool:, but the other one is thinking about how much money will be spent for movies I already have. :scared:

[DigitAl56K]

How many existing DVD's will actually be worth buying in HD format though? Some movies just weren't shot with HD in mind, and all that will happen is you'll enlarge the film grain and noise in the picture.

Perhaps someone should start a website rating HD releases in terms of justifying replacing DVDs...

[Doobie]

Laser disks and betamax tapes were never that popular to begin with. That alone makes a comparison between them and DVDs invalid. Mainstream electronics will be backward compatibible with them for many more decades.

[adam]

Originally posted by DigitAl56K
How many existing DVD's will actually be worth buying in HD format though? Some movies just weren't shot with HD in mind, and all that will happen is you'll enlarge the film grain and noise in the picture.

How do you shoot with HD in mind? Am I wrong in assuming that HD is just higher resolution and higher bitrate with the potential for progressive scan output? If that is the case then pretty much all existing masters are perfectly suitable for HD transfers.

The way I see it, all those old masters have a resolution more then 6 times what you wound up with on DVD. HD lets us keep that resolution. I don't think the problem is with the masters at all, unless they are just in bad shape, in which case they are not suitable for any transfer. I think the risk is in studio's doing crap transfers to HD just to jump on the double-dip bandwagon. Then the question is whether an inferior transfer to a superior format is any better then a superior transfer to an inferior format, and I think the answer would be that it depends on the individual release.

I've seen HD broadcasts and they just absolutely blow away even the best DVD transfer I've seen. This is true even for things like sports broadcasts which don't even benefit from the Hollywood post production treatment. As soon as HD is really practical, I will attempt to only buy those and I will go back and just buy re-releases of my favorite movies. HD will take a while to really catch on since most people are content with DVDs, and have been told for so long that DVDs are the ultimate in quality. But for us enthusiasts who know/learn more about the format, it will be like a whole new world.

[DigitAl56K]

All I'm saying is that we've had a few HD sources in the office which were pretty horrible (poor color definition and noisy, soft pictures). This is probably rather uncommon and applicable only to older movies, but some oldies are classics that will be pushed as HD releases.

[theReal]

Some movies just weren't shot with HD in mind, and all that will happen is you'll enlarge the film grain and noise in the picture.35mm film is superior quality even to 2K HD. Maybe 4K HD is close to 35mm film resolution, so EVERY film shot on 35mm is worth being brought to HD...
*edit* sorry, didn't read your answer on this. But anyhow - if the film masters are ok and the scanning process is done well then every 35mm film is a perfect source for HD. Of course there will be bad HD releases as well as there are horrible DVD releases (that look like they're copied from VHS) but in theory 35mm (or higher) film is still the best (or one of the best) media for moving pictures (quality-wise).

P.S. a nice comparison on how good HDTV is: a technician from the SRT (renowned German school for broadcast/television) told us "if HDTV is going to be that good (*like a sample he had seen*) then it will be the first time ever that it will be real fun to make and watch television". That guy has been working as a studio technician for the last 30 years and I absolutely trust his words in respect of broadcast quality.