By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 20 October 2014
Edit Thread
Hiku said:

I'm not confusing them. I thought I made that clear as I specifically mentioned DVD movies, which is separate from consoles and their games.
Not sure what you mean by first DVD movies though, but the first one I saw was Gladiator, I believe, and the difference in clarity from movies we usually watched on TV or VHS blew me away.
As for Laser Disc, I watched only a few a long time ago, but I don't recall any of them having that kind of sharpness. So I searched for comparisons on Youtube.


I'm sure you can guess which one of the two is the DVD. These were even calibrated to have the exact same color levels, and yet even the color difference is huge, not to mention the sharpness.
But how good or bad Laser Disc was is really besides the point. Besides the fact that it never became a household standard due to high production cost so many people never even experienced seeing one, I was mainly refering to when we first made use of this technology as a standard for our console games. And that was in the previous generation.

That video doesn't load for me, but I lived through the transition. I had a CRT projector connected to a LD player on a 72" screen. Then I bought the first DVD player, a DVD drive for PC in Februari '98 with S-VHS out via my video card. (I got it with Tex Murphy Overseer, first game on DVD) DVD movies looked worse than a good Laserdisc. 6 months later I imported my first standalone DVD player and it looked about the same quality wise. Since then codecs and compression technology have improved DVD by leaps and bounds, as well as the introduction of 16:9 enhanced DVDs. Gladiator was a November 2000 DVD release, by then DVD was outperforming LD quality.

It's similiar with consoles. Early games to late gen games show massive differences, and unlike a new movie format (early blu-ray to todays show massive improvements as well), games never quite mature to the level that more improvements can't be made.

PS2 supported games with progressive scan as well, already solving the clarity issue of 480i. It looked great with component cables. There are 2 factors that make last gens transition feel bigger. First for many people it coincided with going from CRT to a digital screen, the consoles were no longer hampered by overscan areas and interlacing, plus 16:9 became the standard. Second, last gen the HD twins were a bit further ahead on the tech curve, this gen they're back on the normal trajectory making it a bit smaller leap in comparison.

I wouldn't call this gen of consoles weak. One thing is quite different from last gen. You tube videos generally tended to make games look better than they did blown up to full tv size. This gen you tube videos murder the visual quality of new games. Same with compressed screenshots watched on a browser. Most of the improvements today are in movement, dynamic physics based lighting and other effects.