Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Media Formats.

Over the years there have been many formats for music, movies, and games. Every few years a new format comes out, and people begin to get things they already have have copies of, but in the new format. This has happened with vinyl records giving way to cassette, and later cassette to compact disk. Today we see people do this with Blu-ray copies of moves to replace DVD copies.

While DVDs replaced VHS, they offered more than just the movie. A DVD gave you many special feature, with deleted scenes, commentary tracks, and so forth, things a VHS could never offer. Blu-ray is now replacing DVD, but other than a better resolution doesn't give much more. While a Blu-ray is great for a new movie shot in high definition, what is gained for an old movie? Does "The Godfather" get better with resolution, doubtful, or does a Saturday Night Live movie get any less shitty with resolution, also doubtful.

When the CD replaced cassette the CD offered better sound, and was in someways more durable. That is how a format change should happen, there should be a clear advantage for switching over.  Today we seem to embrace change for the sake of change. A better resolution image is great, but is it really enough reason to buy something you had on DVD?

12 comments:

  1. Its always interesting to see what wins out too isn't it? With the Beta vs. VHS. HD vs. Blue-Ray.

    Sometimes the best "technical" product doesn't always win out.

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  2. Meh... I get all my music and movies for free. :D

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  3. Blu-Ray is better, but I agree it's not the same gap between VHS and DVD

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  4. For graphics whores yes, yes it is.

    For the rest of us? Nope.

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  5. Blu-Ray is getting pretty cheap now, so its worth the switch if you have a good TV!

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  6. After DVD, I refuse to keep re-purchasing my movie collection... thankfully it's looking like it will be a lot of downloaded hard drive media in the future.

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  7. blu-ray do not have the qualitative "jump" necessary to remove dvd, cd had with vhs and dvd had with both.

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  8. This blog post is great. I've been reading your blog posts regularly and I think they're great! Keep up the excellent work! Followed!

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  9. I''m not in the whole blu-ray stuff, DVD for me
    nice post, following :)

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  10. HD, blue ray is the beta of the new generation, HD is the VHS

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  11. I've never agreed with you more mate, I like a blu-ray as much as the next guy but I won't be restocking my collection anytime soon. In fact, I often purchase even new films on dvd.. resolution just isn't vital to me.

    I said the same and mp3s and DVDs though.

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  12. I think we're done with media formats as things will be moving toward streaming.

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