Are You Considering Buying a DVD Player?
Apr 08 '00
Digital Video Disks are for home video, what Compact Disks were for home audio. There are a number of reasons not to get a DVD player, one is the price. They are coming down in price, and if you wait a little while, just as with VHS players, I think you may be more comfortable. Another reason to wait, might be that your television is not able to be hooked up to the DVD player adequately, or you may not have a television worth hooking one up to at this point. You may not have a television at all, and if that's the case then you don't need a DVD player, in fact you need not read any further thank you very much.
DVD players offer the same sort of technological step forward that the Compact Disk did in the 1980's. The audio is much cleaner, clearer, it is CD quality. You will need to be able to connect it to your stereo or into your home theatre though. If you don't a good audio system in your home, then DVD would not be for you. Likewise, the picture quality is superior to that of VHS of course even some cable/broadcast signals. It is not only better the first time because of the increased resolution, but if you take care of the disk just as you do the CD's in your collection, it will look just as good on the one hundredth play all other things being equal. As the VHS tape is literally dragged out of the cassette, and snaked through your VHS player, it begins to degrade with each new viewing. Soon wrinkles begin to show up on the tape, "drop out"(little lines that flash) begins to increase, and after a while it is tough to watch the tape anymore. Don't let me get started on "head switching error" or "tracking". It is enough to say that problems develop, and that no matter how careful you are, there are a lot of moving parts in a VHS machine that affect the tape itself.
Once you have seen the difference for yourself, the price may not seem so high. The DVD player allows the viewer new options for the movie experience. Depending on the movie, many options are available. There are often, subtitles available, foreign languages overdubbed, the movie's promotional theatre trailers are usually included. Also included many times, a "making of" documentary, and perhaps even a second channel of audio featuring director's comments, sometime's there is a music video that accompanies the movie. On some disks, "Iron Giant" for instance, you can even choose between the "letterbox"(theater) and "standard"(TV) aspect ratios. It would be impractical to include all of these features on a linear VHS tape because of the amount of tape that would be required. Due to digital compression, it is possible to fit so much more on to one disk, and you can even skip around from scene to scene if you want just as easily as you skip around on your Compact Disks.
One final concern that you may have, is that as of this writing, there aren't as many titles available for rent on DVD as one might expect. This is rapidly being remedied as the old titles are being released all the time. New movies, with the exception of "Star Wars Episode 1", tend to come out on DVD and VHS at the same time. I am satisfied with the availability of rentals in my market, you may want to check your market before you buy a DVD if you rent a lot of movies. I am also happy to own some of my favorite movies on DVD now because I know that with proper care, they should last a long time. I was reluctant to buy VHS tapes in the past because of my experience with their eventual decay even in the best professional environments. One final note, I have been upset before when I put a rental DVD in the machine, and found out that the person before me had scratched it and rendered it useless, but the store refunded my money, and it hasn't happened more than once or maybe twice.
All in all, because I had the audio and video system components already in place, adding a DVD player was as simple as adding a new VCR. Easier really, there's no clock or timer to mess with. The price was a little steeper than a new VCR would have been, but the quality of picture and sound, and the added features available made a DVD player a perfect addition to our home entertainment system. My wife and son are enjoying "Iron Giant" for the "umpteenth" time right now, and the movie looks as good as it did the day we got it (last week).
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