Some HDTV Clarity

So I have a confession to make: I recently purchased a 46-inch HDTV. Even more recently, I had it connected to a digital cable box + DVR (TiVO clone).

This appliance has brought some new-found clarity to my life. Here is what I have found:

A. HDTV kicks ass over TV. Tech columnists have been saying this for a while, but flipping from regular television to HDTV from the comfort of your own couch really puts this statement in a new light.

B. HDTV kicks ass over DVDs. Here are the issues in a nutshell: (1) DVDs provide output at regular television resolution; (2) You can only ever recover some of this back with "progressive scan" or "HD upconversion" DVD players; (3) DVDs are digitized at a TV rate of 60 frames/sec, while cinema is filmed at 24 frames/sec; expanding the latter to fit the former results in additional degradation of your signal; (4) The aspect of DVDs is all wrong; you have to fiddle around with the TV to get a "letterbox" DVD to display properly on your screen, and that's lame. Either that or you have a "pan and scan" which can never use all of your widescreen real estate, which is doubly-lame.

C. HDTV Movies are as good in your own living room as they are in any theater. This holds when you route the sound over your (decent) stereo system. I can say this because my cable provider includes the channel HDNet Movies which broadcasts only movies in HD. Meditate for a moment, if you will, on how brilliant that is. Last night Erica and I were enraptured by Winged Migration on this channel - freaking awesome, or as Erica said, better than the first time. And since I have the cable company DVR, I can record any of these that I want (Winged Migration is on there now). The quality comparison to DVDs is no contest, and I don't have to do any fiddling to use all of the real estate on the screen.

These primary revelations have in turn yielded two secondary revelations.

D. No wonder box office is down. People talk about the movies this summer being crap, but Hollywood always puts out mostly crap. I say more and more people are realizing that the local movie theater is a lower-quality or, at best, on-par experience to what they can get at home. And they would rather watch something stale at home, in comfort, in HD or via DVD, than go to the theater for something "fresh".

E. No wonder DVD sales have taken a hit. There's no way I'm buying another "letterbox", regular-TV, "premium edition" DVD of ANYTHING. I'm telling you - you might as well start reconstructing your 80's era collection of cassingles. I'll watch the movies I get on HDNet Movies. I'll rent from Netflix or my local video store. But I'm not in the market to buy, not any more - not until the DVDs also provide HD performance.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Martha Stewart kick some nubile unimprisoned ass on The Apprentice (in HD, recorded earlier tonight).