|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
The reason why this happened was ultimately irrelevant; Warner’s switch precipitated the bottom falling out from underneath HD-DVD. Toshiba slashed prices for players again, but it had little impact on ownership and no impact on studio affiliation. New Line Cinema, then in the middle of being absorbed into Warner Bros., defected from the format after releasing a single film on HD-DVD, Pan’s Labyrinth. Netflix, which had up to that point been supporting both formats, went Blu-ray exclusive. In February of 2008, Best Buy went Blu-ray. Target stores had already gone with Blu-ray. Finally, Walmart went Blu-ray exclusive on February 15th; four days later, Toshiba announced the end of development or support for HD-DVD. The final studio film to be released in the format was Twister - the first film to be released on DVD. Blu-ray won the HD format war, a little over three years after it first took shape. *Except for This Part There’s a saying: “A hundred percent of zero is still zero.” I’m honestly not sure where I heard it, and it seems a little harsh to use that here. I like this version of the saying better: “The best of the Twilight movies is still a Twilight movie.” When DVD took off, it really took off. The comparisons between VHS and DVD in home entertainment, and the clear advantage that DVD had in just about every way except for initial cost of ownership, were visible to the most disinterested layman. I remember walking through a Best Buy in 1997 and seeing a massive demo unit for DVD set up. A clip from the first tornado sequence in Twister was being used, and the effect on the consumer was noticeable: People walking by stopped and stared, almost as a matter of habit. The widescreen image, the clarity, and especially the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio—as an experience, it was head and shoulders above not only the version of Twister that had been available on VHS for six months by that point, but above virtually anything else outside of an actual movie theater. I bring up this anecdote to strike a contrast between SD home theater and HD home theater, and the visible differences between the two, and the very different rate of adoption for SD-to-HD versus analog-to-digital.
[ View other columns by Ben Gruchow ]
[ View other Intermittent Issues columns ]
[ Email this column ]
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
Thursday, March 28, 2024 © 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc. |