HD-DVD or Blu Ray? Who Cares?

Ahhh the High Definition age. We're staring into the future of television every time we grovel at the plasma / LCD televisions in Best Buy. I'm surprised they don't hand out towels to whipe the drool off our faces.

I purchased a plasma television last year (Samsung SP-R4232) and it's not High Definition. It's an "Enhanced Definition" television which is somewhere in between a regular set and High Definition. The web tells me it displays the same resoutlion as a standard DVD. It's fine for my purposes (which is mostly watching DVDs) and I find myself still amazed at the picture on it.

I have been watching the new High Def DVD wars with interest - not interest in purchasing mind you, but a sort of quiet fascination. Mostly, I'm curious as to whether there is an audience there or not.

To talk about the success or failure of the two new emerging platforms (Blu Ray and HD-DVD), we have to ask ourselves why the movie/TV show purchasing public so fully embraced the DVD format.

VHS was a clunky technology at best (thank God Magnetic Media is dead). It was the inherent problems with VHS (rewinding, lack of storage space) which ushered in the DVD age. With DVD you don't need to rewind, and the extra storage allowed for more special features. The increased picture quality was just the icing on the cake.

The HD-wars are only offering us higher quality video, and it's probably barely noticeable to the general public. When moms & pops are shopping in the Wal-Mart Electronics Department, why should they buy a $500-$600 HD player over a $30 DVD player?

It will be interesting to see if either of these technologies (Blue Ray / HD-DVD) make any sort of impact. They smell a lot like BETA / Laser Disc to me.