Forget Target. The DVD format wars will be settled by porn

[admin]

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/30/porn_dvd/index.html

[drfsupercenter]

And here I am still using DVDs... on a 27" CRT TV, who needs HD?

[admin]

All that extra detail HD would offer might do more harm than good when it comes to pornos ... there are certain things best left to the imagination.

Many TV presenters already hate HDTV, which can be very unforgiving when it comes to blemishes and whatnot.

And who needs 10 hours of porn on 1 disc anyway ... most people only need about 10 minutes.

[drfsupercenter]

LOL

Honestly, I don't like HD as it looks like crap here... LCD TVs look bad if you're too close or too far back, so you have to rearrange your house. Plasma is one thing but those get burn-in...

Someone find me a 72" CRT and I'll all for it!

[admin]

The plasma burn-in issue is greatly exaggerated (mostly by LCD manufacturers). The early generation plasmas do suffer a bit from it, but it usually occurs because of the poor default settings which are designed to show off the screen in harsh lighting conditions (eg. inside a store). With these screens, if you use normal levels of contrast/brightness for the first 1000 hours of usage, then the problem goes away after that. Later generations have pretty much fixed the problem with several new techniques, although you may get temporay image retention if you are on a still image for too long, but it goes away after a few minutes of watching normal TV.

Burn-ins have always been on CRTs, in fact, that's where the term "burn-in" comes from (burning of the phosphors in the tube). Only LCDs don't suffer from burn-in, but they do suffer from temporary image persistence just like plasmas.

[drfsupercenter]

I have had channels (such as Cartoon Network, which has a nearly-opaque watermark, oppose to those of antenna channels that are semi-transparent) on for 12 or so hours at a time and don't have any burn-in whatsoever... how long are they thinking people are gonna have TVs on?

Point being, HD isn't as great as it seems... stand close to a HDTV and it looks more pixelated than a 320x240 video file, sit far back and it looks fine, but SO DOES ANY PIXELATED VIDEO IF YOU DO THE SAME

[admin]

I haven't noticed the pixelation effect, maybe I'm used to it, I don't know. I think proper HD looks awesome on proper HD screens. The problem is that there is a lack of proper HD video, and lack of proper setup. Some people are still using cheap $5 component cables, when a $25 cable means a world of difference (but a $100 cable won't improve things too much compared to the $25 one). Also, some HDTV broadcasts are at low bitrates, basically almost DVD bitrates for content that has 5 times more data than a DVD.

There is a huge difference between SDTV (or un-upscaled DVD playback) and upscaled DVD and HDTV. The difference between HD DVD/Blu-ray and upscaled DVD is slightly less (both are sharp, but HD DVD/Blu-ray has "real" details, not just sharpening of existing details). And I'm only talking about my experience with 720p TV. 1080p should offer even more contrasting results (although again, the difference between 720p and 1080p, I'm told, does not really inspire the "wow" factor).

[drfsupercenter]

Well, I tend to be picky about pixels... even the "best" AVI file looks like crap here, partially because I have a LCD monitor. But if you ever go to Costco and look at their HDTV displays (I realize they don't have Costco in Australia, LOL) if you stand within 3 feet of them they look worse than most AVI files I've seen.

[NightTran]

avi are for small screen, you need BR HDDVD or atleast H264 mkv file in order to look good

[drfsupercenter]

I don't think Costco uses AVI

And my monitor is 15", how much smaller can you get?

[NightTran]

I don't think Costco uses AVI

And my monitor is 15", how much smaller can you get?

may be the card or avi file my 19" look good with decent avi

[admin]

Most stores don't know what they are doing though. For example, some stores here doesn't even use digital TV when displaying their high end screens, and almost never HD. They usually get the aspect ratio wrong (displaying a squashed full screen image on the widescreen). A real experience someone I know had was when he went and asked if the TV had HDMI input, and the sales person kept on saying it didn't, even though the HDMI logo was on the front of the TV.

To really find out the advantages of HD, go to a specialist store, they will usually have a demo home cinema, that will properly show off HD. You won't need to have exactly the same high quality set up at home (although a room where you can draw down the curtains during the day is recommended, if you watch movies during the day, that is).

Basically if you want to think about it in gaming terms, it's the difference between playing a game at 640x480 resolution and playing the same game at 1920x1080 - that's a huge difference!

[drfsupercenter]

My friend has a plasma TV... picture quality is far too dark and generally sucks compared to my 27" (Though I like its big size!)

[admin]

Just like all electronics things, plasmas vary in quality a lot. I would skip the lower priced ones and concentrate on the more expensive models, the Pioneers, maybe even the Panasonic Viera range.

LCDs will give you more brightness, but some find the colors unnatural. They are best in bright rooms, whereas plasmas require a more controlled setting.

[drfsupercenter]

I still can't get over how pixelated LCDs are.

I tend to be very picky when it comes to video quality, I've even complained about studio DVDs being crammed on a single DVD (box sets of shows, for example) that have bad quality.

So I don't think I'll ever want a LCD... unless they stop looking like crap.