Blu-ray vs upscaled DVD

[Homeroids]

The reality is the world is going HD. TV stations have gone HD, Gaming is going HD, home movies are going HD. Pragmatically, in the home movie space there is 2 possible ways to see HD. Download/streaming on demand or the physical media known as BD.

Timewarp back 2-3 years. HD ignorance was extremely high. HD TV's were still predominately 1080i CRT's, HD transmissions on free to air were hardly mandatory. The physical media war was about to begin and the first "HD" consoles were upon us.

The PS3 came to market too early to be used as a HD media centre. Heck, the uncertainty with BD winning over HD DVD was enough to put the educated HD person right off. We know the history behind the HD media war and why PS3 has BD.

Now the physical war has been decided. HD Ignorance is still high but as necessity bites, HD will become more relevant. 1080p TV's are now a standard rather than an option (almost) and HD is "leaking" into the general ignorant population. People are becoming more HD aware.

It's a question of when, not if. Hollywood will dump DVD as soon as they can collectively give it the big A and the big boot because one of the huge drivers behind the new formats (BD and HD DVD) was that the DVD market was saturated and the DVD market was becoming margin squeezed on profit. Hollywood have it their power to "kill" DVD tomorrow if they so wished. DVD is at the mercy of content provision just as much as BD and when BD hits a critical mass then DVD will drop off because Hollywood gets more margin on it.

WE can now debate BD vs Downloading. Downloading HD is predominately 720p with archaic audio (often stereo). It is a falsehood HD. But hey, it might be enough to keep Joe Ignorant HD Blow, happy. That, I can't predict.

Personally I only started getting BD over DVD. Put it this way, unless it is some crap movie that might be just for the kids, some low end comedy, then from now on I will always get the BD version. It is that much better but then again, I am not HD ignorant.

My mother is 65yo. I showed her a 1080p HD movie and even she, in all her uneducated HD glory, was awed by the clarity. If she can tell on a good source, so can most.

To finish, when HD first came out I went to have a look at a local store for a demo running. I quickly pointed out to the salesman that their demo was not HD. He said the TV and the channel it was set to was HD. I told him the TV was HD and the channel was HD but the demonstration was NOT HD because the idiot had a composite RCA video cable running from the external HD tuner to the HD TV. You cannot carry a HD signal over composite video. Ignorance is a funny thing!.