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Movies Media Television Hardware

DVD Players - Buy Now or Wait for the Violet Laser Models? 211

Posted by Cliff from the playing-the-purchasing-game dept.
PateraSilk asks: "I've been resisting the DVD pull for a while but VHS is becoming more and more obselete. So, I'm thinking about joining the hordes, but I have two problems with the DVD format: compression artifacts and low-level pixel dithering, which annoy me no end. Maybe I've just seen crappy DVDs, but this leads me to my question: should I go ahead and purchase a DVD player regardless of my qualms or wait for a violet/blue laser standard to emerge? My hope is that a larger storage capacity would lead to a less lossy compression format, but, then again, I could be waiting in vain. Plus, I don't want to embrace a technology only to have it be replaced within a couple of years." Remember, Sony's violet-laser player has already hit the market, so hopefully it won't be long before other manufacturers follow suit. How long will it be before competition in this market drives down prices to reasonable levels?
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DVD Players - Buy Now or Wait for the Violet Laser Models? More

DVD Players - Buy Now or Wait for the Violet Laser Models?

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  • Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson.psg@com> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#6464747)
    Ok, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly... You are currently using VHS, and the picture quality bothers you, but DVD artifacts bother you MORE? Did I read that right? DVD artifacts and pixelation bother you so much you won't leave VHS?

    I'm not going to type anymore about this, that is just sbsurd.

    • Ok, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly... You are currently using VHS, and the picture quality bothers you, but DVD artifacts bother you MORE? Did I read that right? DVD artifacts and pixelation bother you so much you won't leave VHS?

      I'm not going to type anymore about this, that is just sbsurd.

      Good point. Is it possible to mod the article -1 Troll? Seriously; I've never heard of a DVD that had a bad picture when compared to VHS. The article *has* to be a troll.

      • Ask slashdot's should all be modded and only the ones with positive mod points should be on the front page. Maybe they could also add a new section called 'Ask slashdot: Legal Advice' that has an automatic first post saying 'don't ask for good leagal advice on slashdot.' I not trying to be a troll, but something just needs to be done about the Ask slashdot questions. They're all either too specific to matter to 99% of people, talk about legal advice, or are questions someone could look up in google. May
        • If you look closely, you will see where the problem originates...it's cliff! If an article is posted by cliff, it should be moderated first. I have been recomending this for a very long time. And your right, almost every single one could be answered in google, or belongs in a newsgroup or something.
      • I've seen some DVDs (specifically, episodes of old BBC shows) that show some pretty bad interlacing. But I'll still take DVD over VHS any day since DVDs look the same every time you play them, while VHS tapes get worse with every viewing.
      • Good point. Is it possible to mod the article -1 Troll? Seriously; I've never heard of a DVD that had a bad picture when compared to VHS.

        Then you didn't see the Highlander: Director's Cut THX Widescreen DVD. I was so psyched when I bought this, and it looks SO FUCKING BAD in some places it's abominable. Find the worst JPEG artifacted pictures you can find, then film them at 24 frames a second onto Super 8 film, run sandpaper over it, then project it onto a dirty bedsheet while videotaping it, then run a

    • Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)

      by PD ( 9577 ) * <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:21PM (#6464878) Homepage Journal
      Just like vinyl sounds better to an audiophile's ears than a CD, videotape just looks better to a videophiles eyes than a DVD. The digital technologies are just cold, and they don't reproduce those high harmonics, which are impossible to see or hear, but nevertheless make a performance sound or look "alive".


      • I'm no acoustics expert, but I know enough to know that in the case of audio, those higher harmonics which the human ear cannot hear still make a difference. So I'm going to take the time to lay down some education:

        Natural harmonics:

        First you have to understand what the hell a harmonic is. When a Violin plays a single "C" note alone, there is actually a subtle chord being made by the instrument which gives a distinctive nature to the sound. At a much reduced volume than the C being played that you main

        • Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)

          by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @06:14PM (#6465958) Homepage
          However, you'd be wrong. Again because of the same types of interference, and also because tones can be modulated by the surfaces they reflect off of (including those in your head), and can affect each other at reflection points, the reproduction of those beyond-hearing harmonics (especially in any multi-speaker reproduction) does alter the human-hearable part of the tone that your brain ends up perceiving.

          Blah blah blah. What you failed to "educate" with your babble is that hi-fi speakers aren't going to reproduce any "beyond-hearing harmonics" so it's completely irrelevant if they exist or not.

          Also if the "interferences" truly created noise in the audible frequency range then they will be recorded in the studio. So the hi-fi equipment will record and reproduce the "interferences" just fine.

          Of course, I did know that you are speaking a load of crap. Yes, harmonics are real. No, your explanation of tone is completely wrong. And this gem of a sentence:

          ... tones can be modulated by the surfaces they reflect off of (including those in your head), and can affect each other at reflection points.

          Takes the cake for Biggest Load of Audiophile Bullshit that I've ever had the displeasure to read. It's a string of buzzwords with no actual meaning. There's a grain of truth in there because audio is altered by reflection off surfaces, but it has nothing to do with "modulation" nor do the waves "affect each other".

          Isn't it amazing how mysticism pervades every facet of our lives. From medicine (natural "healing") to music (audiophiles *puke*). I was particularly appalled at a recent story on the news where a cancer patient refused to take chemotherapy treatment, instead opting for traditional Greek remedies such as boiled tea leaves and bat-shit. When the cancer victim inevitably died after 3 years, the family blamed the hospitals and the government! I'm similarly appalled by audiophiles who enjoy the fruits of labour from actual audio engineers, yet invent these techno-babble BULLSHIT beliefs to surround it. It's mysticism in another form.

          • Could he be trying to say...

            "waves can mix (construct and destruct creating new frequency components) at the surfaces that they reflect off of (including those in your head), creating a new wave off of the surface with the new frequency component..."

            He would be right...but like you said, this isn't the responsibility of the equipment to make all the imperfections. CD's and records are recorded with the audio they heard originally, not with all the reflections and stuff...that's why they use soundproof roo

            • Could he be trying to say... "waves can mix (construct and destruct creating new frequency components) at the surfaces that they reflect off of (including those in your head), creating a new wave off of the surface with the new frequency component..."

              Sure, but he would still be wrong. You can't construct a new frequency component by mixing two waves. Yes, you'll get a new wave, but it's the sum of existing frequency components.

              Maybe what he was trying to say was:

              A resonating surface can modulat


          • I may not have done a good job of explaining, but you've done a good job of tearing me apart on bad grounds. I'm not a babbling audiophile. I don't own any high end stereo equipment. I am a former musician, I do understand the harmonics that instruments create, and what I'm saying does have validity.

            Audio waves do interfere with each other while reflecting off of a surface, as noted more precisely in another response.

            Any yes, there's lots of stereo equipment out there that *will* reproduce sounds that

            • I may not have done a good job of explaining, but you've done a good job of tearing me apart on bad grounds.

              You did a terrible job of explaining.

              Audio waves do interfere with each other while reflecting off of a surface, as noted more precisely in another response.

              No, you've got it wrong again. The vibrating surface is what affects the audio, not the two waves interfering. Even the word "interfere" is wrong because interference already has a meaning in audio and it only affects intensity. Poin

              • PS: I apologise for calling you an audiophile. That was going too far. I didn't mean to be rude or snappy, though I notice how I came across that way. I have a real sore spot for misinformation re: audio because I truly *hate* audiophiles.

                I don't think you understand what an audiophile is--it's simply someone who loves quality sound playback.

                I'm an audiophile. I'm also strongly in favor of double-blind testing for equipment, and I laugh at $100/ft monster cable and green felt-tip pen lines on CDs and si
                • I don't think you understand what an audiophile is--it's simply someone who loves quality sound playback.

                  Too late. For the same reason that "hacker" now means "malicious computer criminal", audiophile now means "stupid idiot with too much money who buys greens pens for their CDs".

      • Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Piquan ( 49943 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @06:22PM (#6466047)

        Just like vinyl sounds better to an audiophile's ears than a CD, videotape just looks better to a videophiles eyes than a DVD.

        Speaking as a videophile, I have to disagree.

        The analog encoding on VHS loses high-frequency information way too fast. (See this comparison [cam.net.uk] for the sillyscope pics. It's comparing SVHS to VHS, but you can see how they all lose HF info.) Signal bleed and stretch kick in a week after you buy the tape. Moire (colors appearing in a black and white pattern) and susceptibility to poor combing (losing edges around 3.5 MHz) is inescapable, because the chroma signal is still overlaid on the intensity signal. (This last sentence applies if you hook up the DVD player with a composite cable, but I'm concentrating on VHS format problems, not connection follies.)

        I know people who prefer laserdisc, which is an analog format, to DVD. It suffers from some of the problems as VHS (such as moire), but it does have a much higher bandwidth than VHS, meaning better resolution-- a sharper picture and clearer detail.

        These laserdisc holdouts are a dwindling breed, though. The DVD revolution has taken hold.

        So videophiles don't prefer VHS. What's PateraSilk's deal? I'm guessing he saw bad examples: poor transfers, possibly, or a bad (or misconfigured) player adding stairsteps when it downconverted a 16:9 tape. (See my other post in this article.) But I can't imagine anybody prefering VHS to DVD in general.

        • I find visible quantization and blockiness to be more irritating than moderately poor high frequency reponse and random noise. Thus I find that I like poor analog quality better than I like poor digital quality. On the other hand, I like good digital quality better than good analog.
        • I'd say he saw a DVD on a Playstation 2 hooked up with coax cables. I saw one the other day like that and almost cried.
          • One of my co-workers came in to work last year and proclaimed that digital cable was no better than regular cable. Everyone who had DC at the time looked at him cockeyed and were like, "WTF?!?!?"

            It turns out he had it hooked up to the tv with the COAX. I told him to go back home and hook it up with the composite cables.

            (I would've told him S-VIDEO BUT THERE ISN'T A F***ING S-VIDEO JACK ON THE DIGITAL CABLE BOXES THAT AT&T DISTRIBUTED IN MY AREA!) WHY??? WHY??? WHY???

            Anyway, he came back the next day
      • I'm still using Eyeballs v1.0, analogue encoding devices acquired in the early 1970's. While they're not quite as good as new, they do tell me that images from DVD are considerably better than images from VHS. Maybe there's out-of-band data that Eyeballs v1.0 are filtering out, or frequencies that are being processed incorrectly?

        Is there a newer version available? Is there a upgrade discount for established Eyeballs v1.0 users?

    • Re:Let me get this straight (Score:4, Informative)

      by phoenix_rizzen ( 256998 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @05:43PM (#6465727)
      It's like comparing digital cable to analog cable. Personally, I find the pixelation and compression artifacts in digital cable to be worse than the odd bit of fuzziness in analog cable.

      Digital formats are nice, but they aren't automatically better than analog formats.

      A good VHS recording, played back on a 6-head VCR, displayed on a nice TV actually does look better than the same recording done on DVD, played on the same TV.

      They need to find a way to get rid of all the damn pixelation and screen re-drawing that goes on in DVD players and digitial cable/satellite.

      • I disagree. I find DVDs to be considerably better picture quality than analog cable or VHS. (Some sample source material: For broadcast comparison, Buffy/Angel and Stargate SG-1 each have hours of material that's easy to compare. For VHS comparison specifics, offhand, I can only think of Stargate and X-Files (the movies), but I switched to DVD so long ago I forget most of what I checked out when I first switched.)

        I do agree that digital cable is overcompressed, causing lots of artifacting.

        A good VHS r

      • The whole purpose of digital cable is to be able to use less bandwidth per channel..and it's cheaper...

        They aren't doing it for you or the picture quality...it's jsut profit.

        and, Direct TV sucks...it looks AWFULL when things start maving fast.
      • t's like comparing digital cable to analog cable. Personally, I find the pixelation and compression artifacts in digital cable to be worse than the odd bit of fuzziness in analog cable.

        Agreed, but the digital sound makes up for it, in my opinion. Analog cable seems to have a constant hiss in the background, and everything is downmixed to stereo. Digital movie channels can broadcast in 5.1 dolby. I don't notice much pixellation in DVD's, but the picture quality of the digital cable here in Toronto (Roge
    • Yes, I agree. How dare you question our masters. You know that unless you buy now, you are aiding the terrorists. And they would never do anything to hurt us.

  • DVD players are so cheap... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dotgod ( 567913 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#6464748)
    There are many decent DVD players avaliable for $100. Why not just get a cheap one for the time being then decide on buying a more expensive one when the new standards come out.

    • $100 (Score:2)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      Is expensive for a DVD player these days.

      You can get a decent one for $60ish nowadays. $100 is where you start finding progressive-scan DVD players.

      If the poster thinks DVD is worse PQ than VHS, he either:

      a) Is using a REALLY shitty DVD player, even shitter than my $60 Rowa, which makes even VCDs look better than your average VHS. (Oddly, while I get horrendous artifacts when playing VCDs on any PC player, I get NO visible artifacts when displaying to an NTSC TV via a composite cable.)

      b) Is comparin

  • Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheSnakeMan ( 59408 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:13PM (#6464781)
    Just go buy one, you cheap son of a bitch. They're $50.

    This is the worst Ask Slashdot ever.

    • I'm with you man.

      This argument is as old as geekdom itself. Ooh, should I buy a now or wait another few months and buy ....?

      It's the nature of the beast. You have to suck it up and just buy or else you procrastinate forever.

      Blame Moore's law or something.....
    • This is the worst Ask Slashdot ever.

      I think this whole Ask Slashdot is a troll.

    • hell, I got one for $100 that would play dvd's, audio CDs and just mp3's burnt onto cd [no shuffle though.... GRR]

      that was 3 years ago though!
    • This is the worst Ask Slashdot ever.
      No it isn't!

      Yes, it is!

      Look, I came here to get some questions answered, and you haven't answered them!

      Yes I have!

      and so on...

  • Buy now (Score:2)

    by booch ( 4157 )
    For $50 for a pretty good low-end model, you really can't go wrong. I bought one last year, and I'm happy with it for now, until I can get a recorder. (I'm going to build a Linux-based TiVo box with DVD recorder.) When I get something better, I'll give it to my parents -- $50 is a good deal for a couple years worth of usage.

    Also, if the Next Big Format uses 12 cm discs, it'll almost definitely play current DVDs. Just like today's DVD players can play CDs and VCDs.

  • Don' Wait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p7 ( 245321 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:16PM (#6464819)
    My advice, Don't wait. The current DVD standard is widespread at this point. The industry is not going to drop DVD any time soon and you will probably find few movies done specifically done for higher capacity drives. Any transition will be very slow, especially since most people will be perfectly happy with a standard DVD.

  • Get off it and get one (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:17PM (#6464836) Homepage Journal
    First, I have about 300 or more DVDs. Only seen artifacts on a handful. And only on a crappy, Apex DVD player. And even then, only in lack of handling dark scenes well.

    Second, you can get the aforementioned, crappy Apex for $40, a reasonable name brand model for $110 and really nice stuff for a bit more. Expect the higher end jobs to be just about as relevant as SVHS players/recorders.

    If you are really seeing artifacts on DVDs frequently, then how can you stand tapes? If you buy them, they are much more bulky, no random access, etc. If you rent them... Lord help you. When I was still renting tapes, if I couldn't get it within a week of release, I passed. It was generally just barely viewable to me. It was unwatchable to my wife, as the captioning information degrades VERY quickly on VHS. This is just one very obvious sign of the lack of durability of VHS tapes.
    • The captioning data fails because of tape streach. It does not take much. The dubbing process also does a job on it. The only good way to dub a captioned tape is to TBS the source and encode the captions as you are dubing. Almost no one does that I am afraid.

    • Apex (Score:2)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      Admittedly some of their models are crap.

      But others are VERY nice players that rival the "name brands". In some cases they blow away the "name brand" players. Apex makes one of the most feature-packed portables out there. Apex is well on the way to joining the ranks of "Name Brand" manufacturers.

  • Buy a good one. (Score:3, Informative)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:18PM (#6464844) Journal
    When DVD players were first coming out, I won one on the radio that retailed for $800. Almost 5 years later, that model is still selling used [dealtimeshopping.com] for almost $200. The picture quality on it is awesome, and it still works perfect.

    Now, compare that one to some of the cheap new ones that some of my friends bought at Wal mart for around $100, and there is a very definite quality difference in the picture and sound. On my player, there is only pixelation if the disc is very dirty. The cheap new ones pixelate if you so much as look at them wrong.

    The bottom line is, if you are really that bothered by pixelation, fork up some cash and buy a nice one, not an Apex or one like it.

  • Still gonna be awhile (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:20PM (#6464865) Journal
    Seriously ... you're talking about pre-recorded DVDs, right? Even if all the companies offered violet lasers today, it wouldn't change how many of the original DVD players are out there.

    It will be YEARS before you see DVD movies move off of the current standard. There is no reason for the movie industry to alienate the current adopters. They will not be releasing movies (much less re-releasing existing DVDs) until the proportion of violet laser players in use is larger than the install base of older players.

    The only way around this is to make violet laser DVDs backwards compatible and that doesn't seem feasible to me.

    I'm not against the technology, I would love to see HD DVDs become standard, but it isn't realistic to base your adoption on the new technology. The only place violet lasers are going to make a difference in the near future is for data storage.

    BTW, I would guess you were watching on a fairly cheap DVD player. There is some low level color distortion (not nearly as much as on DirecTV streams though) in the MPEG encoding, but better DVD players can prevent most artifacts. I waited to buy my player until the new Faroudja chipset was available about 18 months ago and I couldn't be happier with the picture quality. You can get better than that, but the Faroudja based players are reasonably priced with great quality.

    • If they went to violet lasers...it also wouldn't change the picture quality of the DVD's that exist now.

      You have to realise that if they used HD resolutions with DVD, they would be more artifacts since they would have the same datarate per frame, but with a higher res, which would require more loss.

      Like trying to compress a 800x600 JPG to the same size as a 640x480...your just net gunna get better quality...unless the picture is simple (like non moving adjecent frames would be on dvd).

  • Don't forget regions (Score:2, Informative)

    by esm ( 54188 )

    I have two problems with the DVD format: compression artifacts and low-level pixel dithering [...]

    Actually, you have three problems. If you're new to DVD, you may not know about the 'region' nonsense. Simply put: if you buy a disc in Europe [wallaceandgromit.com], forget about playing it in the US, and vice-versa.

    There is no technical reason for this. It's pure marketing BS. However, there are DVD players on the market which make it possible to circumvent the region encoding. You may want to consider one of these...

    • Multi-region DVD players are easy to find. The question is, does your consumer level TV set handle both NTSC and PAL singals properly?
      • It's not even like it's underground any more, at least in the UK. I saw WHSmiths had a small half-width player for 50ukp, and they were giving out sheets with the key sequence to make them multiregion.

        I bought my last player, a Toshiba SD330e, from amazon.co.uk and it was supplied multiregion out of the box.
  • Next-gen DVDs aren't expected to really get off the ground until 2008-2010, so unless you really don't plan on watching any movies in the next five years, you'd better get a DVD player.

  • I'm worried (Score:3, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:23PM (#6464906) Homepage Journal
    Everyone seems to use jpg now and gif looks like dead, should i get a jpg viewer or wait for png to break through fully? I'm in a limbo here and fear the 0.000c investment for jpg viewer could be in vain if everyone use png soon :(

  • There will always be poorly compressed videos (Score:5, Informative)

    by KU_Fletch ( 678324 ) <bthomas1 @ k u .edu> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:44PM (#6465113)
    Being an early adopter of DVDs, I always have to act a bit shocked when I hear people don't have one when I'm on my 3rd player. So I fully suggest you go out and get one seeing as VHS is all but dead (hizzah!).

    As per your comment on poor video compression, more often than not, poor video compression is the fault of the studios. I've seem a lot of crappy transfers (Highlander, Evil Dead, etc) and a lot of beautiful transfers (Anything Pixar has done, LOTR, Panic Room, etc). The fact is a lot of studios are willing to cram a crappy video transfer on a disc, edge "enhance" the hell out of it, and cram in some extras with th space they've saved. But the good studios (Dreamworks, Universal sometimes) have learned that it's better to put good video and audio on one disc and put the exras on a second, resulting in much improved video transfers.

    So don't let a few bad transfers spoil the DVD experience, the bad transfers are usually equally as bad on VHS, so it's not like you're losing much. I'd say invest in a good solid medium range DVD player now (you can get solid progressive scan units for about $150), and then when the new laser models come out, wait through the price wars and tech sniggles and get one of them when the technology has been tightened up and the prices have gone down.

    • Another common problem I see is watching an anamorphic-mode DVD on a non-anamorphic-aware TV. Most consumer DVD players do a lousy job of antialiasing, so you get hideous stairsteps. The best example I know of is the opening credit sequence on the "Spider-Man" DVD. Looks great on an anamorphic-capable TV. (I thought about this when I saw it in the theater. Geek life strikes again.) Lots of stairsteps on a non-anamorphic TV, or if you have your DVD set to "4:3 Letterbox" when you have a 16:9 (anamorphi

    • Being an early adopter of DVDs, I always have to act a bit shocked when I hear people don't have one when I'm on my 3rd player. So I fully suggest you go out and get one seeing as VHS is all but dead (hizzah!).

      Using VHS for time-shifting 99% of the time and occasionally watching bought videos of quality comedy and drama, and good films (of which there are less that 10) I can't see why anyone would buy a DVD player to put up with blocky DCT image artifacts, unskipable warnings, dropped frames etc.

      When the

  • Buy a DVD player! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by angle_slam ( 623817 )
    I agree with the others. This is a stupid question. Whatever the faults are of the DVD format, it is still many times better than viewing pre-recorded VHS. But I'll be a little more serious with the recommendations.

    You can buy a very cheap player for about $50. But why not spend a little more. For just a little more you can buy a decent progressive output DVD player. Check out this DVD Benchmark test [hometheaterhifi.com] which seems to be more thorough than most DVD tests. They recommend several players that retail for only $2

    • One other thing I should have mentioned. Who cares about violet lasers? The linked to article points to a DVD recorder , not a player. The various manufacturers have yet to finalize on a format for next generation, pre-recorded DVDs (presumably High Definition). According to the DVD FAQ site [dvddemystified.com], there are at least 6 competing formats, and it will be a while (if ever) before they standarize on a single format. Waiting it out will be years. Buy a player.
  • There's always something better coming, and you wouldn't want to miss out!

  • Why DVD _S*U*C*K*S_! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @05:03PM (#6465307) Homepage Journal
    Like the original poster, I have a lot of problems with the DVD format.

    DVD sucks because:
    1) It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs.
    2) Discs usually have mandatory, can't-fast-forward-through-them FBI warnings at the beginning of disks. By jove, when I buy a movie, I want to see a MOVIE, not some goddammed threatening legalese from the MPAA!
    3) artifacts. DVD players (or at least the Sony my sister lent me) can't seem to keep the most basic artifacts suppressed. I remember seeing a white-painted wall, and noticing that the paint "crawled" like white noise as action elsewhere in the frame caused a wacky encoding of a simple signal. Call me back when you can film white walls.
    4) compatibility issues. One in twelve DVDs I rent doen't work on my player, in which case I have to watch it on a laptop. (Unless THAT also doesn't work.) Yes VHS tapes get eaten, but not at that high a rate. VHS is more reliable.
    5) Skipping. Usually have to endure this once or twice per film on rentals. Lame.
    6) Frilly menus. Please less ghay animation, more do-what-I-want.

    For these reasons I continue to prefer VHS to DVD. Yes, I use trolly language here, and for that I apologise, but I'm bitter everyone else has been so suckered by this crap technology. (And yes I had a Betamax way back when, and Yes, I'm bitter about that losing too).
    • 1) It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs.

      It's not going out of the way to screw you. There are better connections available. You can't be backward compatible with everything. You can buy a TV for about $150 that has the connections needed to plug in a DVD player.

      2) Discs usually have mandatory, can't-fast-forward-through-them FBI warnings at the beginning of disks. By jove, when I buy a movie, I want to

        • 4) compatibility issues. One in twelve DVDs I rent doen't work on my player, in which case I have to watch it on a laptop. (Unless THAT also doesn't work.) Yes VHS tapes get eaten, but not at that high a rate. VHS is more reliable. 5) Skipping. Usually have to endure this once or twice per film on rentals. Lame.

        I've rented 6-10 movies a month from Netflix since September 2001. Number of compatibility problems = 0. Number of skipping discs = 0.

        I'll have to concur. Right now I'm using a rather cheap D

        • Since there is extra storage space and interaction capabilities many immature designers do unnecessary stylistic things that in the end detract from the experience. Bad menuing systems on DVDs remind me of (the very typically horrible) desktop themes/skins.

          It reminds me of Flash for web pages. Every web designer in the world seems to think that I want to see a Flash intro and Flash menus when I go to a site. But at least most of them have a Skip Intro button.

      • It's seriously probably your DVD player...I don't think it's a compatability issua since it's a standard...maybe it's that your DVD player isn't compatibly with the standard. Or it has a crappy laser, so it can't read beat up, scratched, overly washed, discs.
    • 1) It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs. Just depends how smart your VCR is. My Sony doesn't handle Macrovision at all and you can't feed a DVD to it. But I have two current RCAs that are perfect video to RF modulators for DVD players as long as you don't try to record to tape. Much better than those crappy $30 RF modulators and not much more expensive.
      • I don't want to have to buy a new vcr to use a dvd. I already have a working vcr, and a working tv, and the right jacks, except for their damn encryption bullshit. Fool me once, shame on [MPAA]. Fool me twice, shame on me. That's why I'll not be buying new video entertainment hardware for a few years.
    • 2) Discs usually have mandatory, can't-fast-forward-through-them FBI warnings at the beginning of disks. By jove, when I buy a movie, I want to see a MOVIE, not some goddammed threatening legalese from the MPAA!

      This is where all the research you did before buying pays off and you flash the DVD player with firmware that enables UOP (which allows you to fast forward through all that nonsense).

      • 2) Discs usually have mandatory, can't-fast-forward-through-them FBI warnings at the beginning of disks. By jove, when I buy a movie, I want to see a MOVIE, not some goddammed threatening legalese from the MPAA!

        This is where all the research you did before buying pays off and you flash the DVD player with firmware that enables UOP (which allows you to fast forward through all that.

        Heh, or I just use my VCR, which doens't require flashing, whizzing on, or doing other obscene things - just stick it in and wa

    • If you buy good movies, instead of these new crappy ones, the dvd plays when you stick it in, and puts the FBI warnings at the end.

      References: Dune [imdb.com], Logan's Run [imdb.com]

    • It goes out of its way to screw you over by refusing to route video signal through a VCR, thus rendering it inoperable with most legacy TVs.

      You have a shitty VCR then, one which is overly sensitive to macrovision. You also have a fairly shitty DVD player which doesn't allow you to disable macrovision.

      We used to route a DVD player through a VCR all the time. Finally switched out the TV in that room so we don't need to anymore. Oh, and funny that... the picture quality improved. Substantially.

      artifacts.
      • They can film white walls. Your TV is incapable of displaying them. The dot crawl almost never originates from the DVD player, but instead from the incredibly poorly setup TV - odds are the sharpness, contrast, and brightness are completely fucked up and the DVD player is showing you just how poorly the setup is.

        Sorry bud.I can confirm that for the guy. I get that effect sometimes on my 19" Hitachi CM771. It certainly is the mpeg2 encoding.
        K
    • To everyone who replied, essentially: "your TV and VCR both suck, no wonder you hate DVD" my response is: my TV is a fine TV, it does what TVs are supposed to do. My VCR is a fine VCR, it does what its supposed to do. I blame DVD players for not interfacing to legacy equipment sanely. They're the new kids on the block, and they're the one flouting the old protocols. Well they I say they suck.
  • 1st of all:

    "wait for a violet/blue laser standard to emerge?"

    Standard? To emerge? See DVD+/-RW/RAM/ROM/R for standardization example. In other words you will wait till the end of the world...

    2nd of all:

    Go get yourself a $50 DVD player. And that is before rebate, or without any deal. You can afford this, go ahead. You can invest another dinner when the violet/blue lasers get market share.

    3rd of all:

    I agree with you about the poor quality, but realistically it will be 10-15 years before another format
    • Standard? To emerge? See DVD+/-RW/RAM/ROM/R for standardization example. In other words you will wait till the end of the world...

      Actually, the comparison to the various DVD recording formats is invalid on its face. Nobody really has a good reason to force standardization except consumers who want to trade their discs around. Even then, in terms of making DVD movie-type discs which can be played in normal DVD players, most players that can play -R can play +R and vice versa.

      What will drive the DVD man

  • First, DVD looks much better than VHS. Most/all cable providers now have 'digital cable'. This provides cable in Mpeg2 that is much more compressed than your average DVD. Digital cable looks like crap.

  • You can't be serious (Score:5, Funny)

    by chunkwhite86 ( 593696 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @06:17PM (#6465990)
    I've been resisting the indoor-plumbing pull for a while but out-houses are becoming more and more obselete. So, I'm thinking about joining the hordes, but I have two problems with indoor plumbing: paying the water bill and the periodic cleaning, which annoy me to no end. Maybe I've just seen crappy looking toilet bowls, but this leads me to my question: should I go ahead and purchase a toilet and indoor plumbing regardless of my qualms or wait for a machine which sucks the shit straight out of my ass? My hope is that such a machine would lead to a more convenient defecating experience, but, then again, I could be waiting in vain. Plus, I don't want to embrace modern technology only to have it be replaced within a couple of years.
    • This is funny, but too true.

      DVD players, like all consumer electronics these days, are immensely disposable. There will always be newer and better media (and players), so bite the bullet and shell out $59 for a cheap DVD players (or a DVD-ROM drive) and enjoy it, or buy a really expensive player (what, $170?) and gets the bells and whistles. When a better one comes out, move this one to the other room, sell it for $10 at a yard sale, or put it on the street -- what's the big deal? It costs as much as a
  • You may as well buy now. I too am often bugged by the dark scences looking a little bad. But by the time the blue standard is widely adopted you will be wondering if you should wait for ultraviolte or other new technology that will be coming down the pike to store more.
  • .. the movie industry is going to suddenly decide on a new standard simply because the quality will be better. Pfft.

    DVD players work just fine now. People are happy. Everybody has one. I wouldn't worry about new discs coming out until HDTV is in use like DVD players are today. Until then, things will stay exactly like they are.

  • cheap vs. GOOD (Score:4, Informative)

    by andrewleung ( 48567 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:02PM (#6467121)
    ok... i am a video compression expert so it's my JOB to find artifacts and deal with them. in the lab, we have some seriously high end equipment, if the input signal sucks, the equipment shows it. if it's good, it shows it.

    until recently, we have been feeding our alternate encoder with DVD source as a test for reliability. we had some PS2s sitting around and used that. on the set, you can see DVDs that were sourced from DV camera and it looked like shit with all the interlacing and the block noise in the shadows, etc.

    THEN, we got a VERY nice Sony DVP-NS915 [sony.com.ph] progressive output DVD player... the output with the SAME DVDs...

    UNBELIEVEABLE.

    there was such a world of difference! we even turned off the progressive mode and it was STILL beautiful! this thing kicked the crap out of the PS2 in output quality. no block noise, interlace noise gone, and a LOT cleaner image.

    now i know, all DVD players are not equal. you definitely get what you pay for!

    for a question like this, get a NICE DVD player and you'll be very happy. get a crappy one, well... you'll be asking this again and again.

    also, blue-ray rocks! but you MUST have high end stuff end to end or you're just wasting money.
  • A decent DVD player today plays DVD's, CD's, VCD's, SVCD's, MP3's, JPEG picture CD's and probably more. I got a Phillips [amazon.com] for $139 and I've been very pleased with it (except for the lack of real buttons on the front). Compare that with a JVC I bought in '97 for $499 that sucked ass to the point where it wouldn't play some DVD's (and that's all it was supposed to do) and it seems like a great deal.
  • Old DVDs had a lot of artifacts. The publishers were still figuring out how the compression worked. New DVDs rarely have artifacts. One thing you have to remember is that, like most things, you get what you pay for.

    If you spend $69 on a DVD player don't expect perfect video. I had a cheap player before and it was the weak link in my home theater chain. I upgraded to a nice, but expensive, Pioneer Elite 47Ai and it looks FANTASTIC. The bigger the TV the more difference you'll notice, of course. A goo
  • While a violet-laser DVD might be available, it will probably be some time before any media is availble for it. If you are looking for high-definition, uncompressed video, DVHS is currently the only way to go. As an added bonus, you can even record on them, as well as play back regular and super VHS.

    JVC [jvc.com] makes a few nice models.
    • The only readily available DVHS recorder/player on the market is the JVC HM-DH30000U (Maybe there's a new one available now...), but probably over 25% of 30ks went back to the service center within months and in some cases JVC is taking many months to fix returned units.

      I've heard that the Mitsubishi units are good, but they're impossible to find.

      If you want to get DVHS, you also need to find:
      An HDTV tuner with 1394 output
      Invest in a good broadcast TV antenna (None of the cable HD boxes seem to have 1394
      • If you want to get DVHS, you also need to find: An HDTV tuner with 1394 output Invest in a good broadcast TV antenna (None of the cable HD boxes seem to have 1394 outputs) Invest in an HDTV display.

        Not quite true. You only need an HDTV tuner if you wish to record HDTV. One of the benefits of the D-VHS system is the ability to buy pre-recorded HD content. As for the HDTV display, why the hell would you buy a HD player/recorder if you didn't already have, or plan to get in the near future, an HD display.

  • If you see a lot of blockiness, chances are your TV is not adjusted correctly. Most sets come from the factory with brightness and contrast settings that are way out of line. Blacks are gray and everything in shadow is too bright. The encoding blocks up a lot in dark areas, but on a well-adjusted set those will typically be dark enough that you don't notice.

    If you want to talk *artifacts*, try Tivo on Basic (or even Medium) quality. That's a great way to see the mpeg process live.

    Anyway, get a copy of

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