Twinrehz said:
To pose a bit of a different question as well, when will "medium" quality be enough for a film? Let's see some examples. For example, the original Star Wars trilogy? Does its special effects hold up well enough to justify HD releases, or does it just look weird? I know there's been quite a few remasters of it, I suppose the original special effects don't hold well even on DVD, or am I wrong?
I think the effects look fine on DVD. I also think the special editions look fine on BD. I mean, the special editions do add CGI, but not everywhere. By the same token, one of my first HD purchases was
The Last Starfighter, a movie released in 1984 with some of the earlier CGI, and it benefits from the HD treatment because it kind of looks bad on an HD monitor coming from an SD source. Not enough to turn me off of the movie (which I've owned on just about everything), but still enough to make some difference.
Though again, I understand this becomes an issue of diminishing returns. Hell, to some extent I feel that way about the formats anyway. VHS to DVD? AWESOME. DVD to Blu-Ray? Cool! Then I saw a supposedly 4K source on a supposedly 4K monitor and I thought "Oh. That's...okay. Hardly seems worth a new standard, especially since they've already announced 8K."
Thing is, I'm kind of in your camp. Once I got star Wars in DVD format, I stopped caring what Lucas did to them and whether we'd see an original edition release on BD. Hell, the version I watched was my mom's.
I may be off my mark here, but the way I remember it, DVD took its sweet time to gain proper traction in the market, although I loved it.
They all do. It took until like 2008 before BD was able to beat VHS, a format that had been dead for almost a decade at that point.
It allowed for watching of movies again and again, and the quality of the recording would not deteriorate because of wear and tear, as traditional magnetic tapes were known to do. My brother has worn out quite a few video tapes that way. Blu-ray, while it's certainly gaining now, also seemed to me that it took some time to gain proper traction in the market. Now all kinds of old series and their dogs seem to pop up with blu-ray remasters, something that would probably have been more poorly received a few years ago, before it had gotten properly into the market.
I hope they do. There are a bunch of animated shows I'd like to see get a BD release for the smoother look on an HD TV, though I'm not exactly out clawing for them either.
Early adopters are always going to push things forward, I suppose, but most people seem content with what they have. With 4K it's a serious problem that hardware doesn't even properly support it, the HDMI specification for it isn't even ready yet. There may be some devices that support it, but the actual standard has yet to be fully supported via HDMI, only display port supports it as of yet.
Keep in mind that there's usually limited options for early adopters. My dad was one of the first people to buy a CD player, and they barely had any CDs at the time.
Of course, early adopters don't necessarily push things forward. History is littered with failed formats and ideas. The various permutations of CD, for example, never took over because there just isn't a market. People liked CDs and they didn't see the point in spending extra for DVDA, HDCD, SACD, etc. It's worse now, with more people buying non-physical media.
And I suspect it'll be worse for 4K and 8K for that reason, too. Not only are consumers likely to think that BD (or maybe even DVD) is "good enough," I don't think consumer markets are going to want to invest that much in it. I know that the early adopter and cinemaphile will, but will enough of the market care? Will broadcast companies want to broadcast in 8K at a significant cost with few potential viewers? Will enough movies be moved?
I'm not saying "no" but I am kind of leaning that way. I'm sure others disagree, though.