The DVD Advantage.Nov 11 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line DVD is an amazing technology, and I stongly reccomend you buy a DVD player if you don't already have one!
Right now DVD players are cheap. This Christmas is the perfect time to buy one if you haven't already. I bought a Samsung DVD m101 at Costco is September for $129. This same player is now $119. DVD offers more than enough advantages to make it worthwhile: 1: Widescreen. This is the most important advantage to DVD. This is not something inherent in DVD, but simply an advantage in how most studios have decided to make their releases. Have you ever noticed how your VHS tapes fill your entire 4:3 (standard) TV screen? Now have you ever noticed these words on your VHS tapes "this movie has been modified from it's original version - it has been formatted to fit your screen"? I'm sure you have. But have you ever sat down to think about what this means? What exactly is said "formatting"? In 98% of cases said formatting is simply removing the sides of the picture to fit it on the screen. In doing this your will inevitably remove important picture details. Fortunately for us, the movie-loving public, most of the time DVDs are presented without this chopping. Be careful but, as there are exceptions. Some of you may not care, but I encourage you to watch a videotape and then the widescreen DVD to compare what you miss. I have an EIGHT year old nephew, and he loves Star Wars: Episode 1. I don't think he remembers it in theatres, but he watches his videotape all the time! Once the DVD came out, I invited him to my place to watch it. Throughout the movie he commented on how much more you could see that had been cut out in the videotape. If an eight year old can be conviced widescreen is the only way, so can you. I feel it important to note, that there are some (very rare) exceptions to this superiority of widescreen. One is so-called "open matte" releases. These are movies shot in 4:3 but framed for 16:9, so the top and bottom are simply removed to show in the theater (not losing any important detail as the movie was setup by the director for this). In some cases, a full screen is obtained by simply adding these details back in. Unfortunately, even this has problems. Specifically, it is common in this process for you to be able to see stuff you weren't meant to see (like edges of sets and boom microphones). It also ruins the art of the director's widescreen composition. The second, even MORE rare exception is a couple Disney/Pixar movies (A Bug's Life and I THINK Toy Story 2). These were actually computer made, and were complerely rerendered to create a full TV screen edition. Both are actually very different, but I'd STILL suggest the widescreen as it was the original theatrical version as the director first intended the movie to be. 2: 5.1 discrete channel surround. DVD movies are capable of carrying (and usually do carry) 5.1 discrete surround sound tracks. These are different from Pro-Logic in that they are not an encoding/decoding system based on a phase matrix, but rather actually, true 5.1 channel sound (the .1 is for the low frequency (bass or subwoofer) channel, as it isn't full range, it only gets a .1). There are two formats for this, Dolby Digital, and DTS. DTS is a much higher bitrate, and therefore sound more natural, but Dolby Digital is a much more capable compression system and despite being a fraction of the DTS bitrate, it sounds almost as good. Dolby Digital is more common since it leaves more free space on the disc for other stuff. 3: Picture quality! The picture quality on DVD is truely incredible! Boasting a resolution of 720x480 DVD discs are extremely impressive. To get the most out of your DVDs make sure that you are connected using either SVideo or component video cables. Also make sure your TV's sharpness setting is turned down almost all the way; this may not seem to make much sense, but the fact is, turning down your TV's sharpness setting DOES NOT BLUR the picture. Instead, it reduces your TV's edge enhancement. Excessive edge enhancement simply adds noise (it can create the illusion of sharpness AT THE EXPENSE OF ACTUAL DETAIL). The fact is a DVD signal is so perfect that adding any edge enhancement at all is adding excessive (to the point of creating noise and an unnatural picture) edge enhancement. The same is also true of satellite TV or video games if you have those. Most people have their sharpness too high anyways, even for VHS, it should only be turned up less than a third of a way before the edge enhancement gets excessive (noise-producing). SVideo or component (component is better when possible) connections should be used as they don't mix the choma and luma (most basic video components), therefore eliminating "dot crawl" created by the process of seperating those signals back out. Composite (the plain old yellow connector) does mix these, and therfore introduces some dot crawl noise (the amount depends on how good your TV's filter is). Also makes sure your color isn't up so high as to cause red bleed (this can be tested with a colorbar pattern) and that your contrast isn't up so high to be mixing whites (can be tested with a special test pattern) and that your brightness is up high enough to see a gray that's just over 7.5% (standard NTSC black). All those can be tested with a test pattern. Many DVDs have a set of THX test patterns that work great for these purposes. Because of the high resolution of DVD, subtle differences in TV settings tend to be more noticeable. 4: Special features. Most DVDs have some special features. These can be documentaries, music videos, games, or just about anything else you can imagine. These really add to the value of movies. They differ depending on the movie and are well worth it. I hope I helped you see what the advantage to a DVD player is. And I hope my hints on connections and TV setup help you get the most out of your DVD player if you already have one. DVD truly makes VHS almost impossible to tolerate watching.  |
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