The Gamer's Quarter

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

I noticed something recently.

I personally, perceive no improvement using DVDs over either VHS tapes or Video-CDs, and I see no improvement using HD TVs (with HD compatible programs) over regular old TVs.

(for the record, I do see a use for DVDs with regards to videogames, since they allow increased content, whereas with films, it mainly seems to be for a better picture, or some useless bonus material)

I noticed this a great deal over the last few days (having had it in the back of mind for years), and have been... How can I put this? Concerned by it slightly.

I went into a giant electronics store, and they had HD TVs on display, with big signs pointing out that they were HD, and on them they were running some kind of specially made program, showing insects close up, and fishes swimming around, things that had been magnified, etc. Film footage designed to show how much detail these TVs can display.

At least, I assume that's what HD TVs are meant to do. Show more detail? Because while a couple of locals were standing there oohing and aahing, I stood there confused as to why everyone was so excited, and why they'd pay so much for these TVs.

I saw no improvement!

Only when I moved much closer to the TVs, did it really become apparent these things were displaying a sharp image. For you see, I on purpose, for years now, have kept my spectacles' medical prescription lower than 20/20 vision. As a result, through my own choice, I walk around in a world that is blurry. Or naturally anti-aliased, if I wanted to say that.

This supposed new era of TVs means nothing to me, purely because I don't care to see things in sharp detail. 20/20 vision in the past has made me dizzy, gives me a headache, and is too sharp. Too many things to take in, especially in a world so dominated by advertising, and just plain ugly structures. I quite like things having a soft edge. It's like beer goggles, except it works on everything.

This also translates into my film collection. If I have a copy of something on DVD and VHS (I have this thing going where I get free DVDs from a relative abroad, hence the duplication of some titles), I'll watch the VHS and notice no difference in quality. Not unless I REALLY look for it. I was watching a Video CD yesterday, and it was fine. Having to change discs was a pain, but I couldn't see any loss of quality, not enough to warrant a bump from 1.2Gb, to what.... 3Gb, 4Gb, 5Gb on modern DVDs?

I feel kinda disillusioned, and kinda alienated by the consumer world. Remember when having an RGB cable was all the rage, and all you really needed for a good picture?

I'm posting this here, mainly because this forum has a smaller, more close knit community, and I dare not make such bold statements where thousands might read them. I'm also doing it mainly for catharsis. Does anyone else think even a remotely similar thing?

Wolverine · . Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 39

What exactly are you using to watch DVDs? Cos I can clearly see a much improved picture on movies I own on both DVD and VHS. My VCR broke a couple years ago and I've had absolutely no desire to get it fixed and basically use my VHS tapes now to prop things up really (have a few under my bed propping up where one of the wooden slats of the bed snapped) . Apart from the enhanced clarity I've never seen any white fuzz at the top or bottom of the screen like I would occasionally get with VHS tapes despite ages fine tuning the tracking. Plus theres the fact its much easier to rewind and fast forward movies and quieter too (back when I lived with my folks they hated me watching vids at night when they try to sleep cos of all the clunky tape noises and buttons.

By the way I have slightly blurry vision too after being wrongly prescribed to wear spectacles since the age of three. In the twelve years that followed they had been damaging my eye sight when I never needed them in the first place so now I'm sorta stuck with less than perfect vision yet I can clearly see a very visible different between watching a film on tape and the same film done for DVD.

As for HD. I haven't seen enough of it yet to warrant any consideration. Only just got me my own big TV finally and am having plenty of fun with that (I'm actually viewing this very page on it as I was just playing arcade games in MAME on the big screen via a TV out cable).

wourme · . Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 362 Location: Maridia

I very much dislike the DVD format, but just because it is way too fragile. I do notice the difference between DVD and VHS, but VHS tapes are a whole lot more durable.

Fortunately, it's possible enough to copy things on disc formats these days so you don't need to touch the originals. But unfortunately, that's still kind of a pain to do with DVDs and requires extra work/hardware to do with more recent video games.

purplechair · . Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 378 Location: in my pants

VHS tapes degrade faster than DVDs? (Probably?) The sound and picture quality of all my favourate VHS tapes has dropped a lot since I first got them, but I've only ever had one or two DVDs die on me, and they were home-made things.

Also, indexing! If you're watching a DVD and you want to get to a specific part - like a particular episode or something - you can just hit the right track number or whatever and it'll go straight there. With a tape, you have to know where to rewind the tape to... and even if it's indexed so your player knows when to stop, you still have to wait for the tape to rewind/fast forward.

Wolverine · . Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 39

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

I was hoping this topic would be more about HD, and it's utter uselessness. I see the benefits of DVD, just don't like the format much. I felt like ranting, so tacked it on the end of my HD rant. Bit of a mistake on my part really.

I watch DVDs on a dedicated DVD player. They are very fragile, and several of mine don't work anymore, despite not having scratches (these being commercial DVDs, not bootlegs).

I do notice a slight quality difference, when I really look for it. But I mean, I'm drinking a beer, I walk into the lounge, someone's put a film on, I sit for a few minutes, and it doesn't HIT me suddenly, that it's a DVD. It's not right away apparent to me, and it doesn't stick in my mind as significant. I mean, some people can see a shift in Frames Per Second when playing games, I don't notice this. Neither do I suffer from nausea when playing FPS games. I honestly don't think I pay enough attention to the world to notice these things.

Perhaps I should reword it:

Wolverine · . Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 39

[quote="Szczepaniak"]I watch DVDs on a dedicated DVD player. They are very fragile, and several of mine don't work anymore, despite not having scratches (these being commercial DVDs, not bootlegs).

wourme · . Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 362 Location: Maridia

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

ApM · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 1:57 am Post subject:

I really don't care about HD, except when I see misconfigured HDTVs in restaurants and such stretching a 4:3 picture to fit the whole screen. That pisses me right off.

GSL · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 3:04 am Post subject:

You're not the only one, Szczepaniak. While I can percieve a slight difference in my DVD and VHS collection (mainly in the fact that my DVDs don't have snow or require tracking adjustment), I really think a lot of the fuss about HD is somewhat akin to the emperor's new clothes. I love the convenience of digital media as purplechair mentioned before--there's no rewinding, and no sitting through a half-hour of 'coming soon to a theater near you' advertisements, but I could not care less about the percieved picture quality. As a digression, widescreen pisses me off, too, but for a totally different reason.

Long live Laserdisc!

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

Widescreen? You mean where they put an annoying black bar the top and bottom of the screen, making it really small, and then someone tries to tell me that it's somehow better that way because it's like being at the cinema?

I find it stupid in the extreme. I'd prefer if they digitally stretched the film vertically (making things sem overly tall), or simply expanded the screen and you lost the sides. I hate black bars on my TV with a passion (it's a PAL thing), purely out of principle.

Apparently, with fancy digital TVs, you can manually alter and stretch the image being displayed. Is this correct? If so, the first thing I'd do is remove all black bars. Let's see them try and force that crappy widescreen format on me then, hey? Let's see them try it. Smile

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 6:42 am Post subject:

friedchicken · . Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 496 Location: Port Land, OR

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

Toups is right, CDs biodgrade, quite literally. Come the year 2014, all those rare Turbo Duo and Sega CD games we have will all have rotted to nothingness. Saturn and PS1 to soon follow.

It's depressing really. For a medium that has some true gems, they will eventually be lost entirely. Here's hoping a few of us have made copies by then. Wink

dhex · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 9:27 am Post subject:

john, you've always been outside the mainstream - except in my heart.
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GSL · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 11:12 am Post subject:

Lestrade · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 11:16 am Post subject:

Widescreen = good, because cropping movies ruins them aesthetically. VHS = good because I prefer simple cardboard sleeves to two tonnes of plastic that houses no more than a jewel case ever did. However, DVD = nice because I like bonus features and piracy.

SuperWes · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 12:48 pm Post subject:

The advantage of HD is pretty much the same advantage as playing a game in 1600x1200 resolution vs. playing it in 640x480. You get more detail and the picture just looks much more crisp. Widescreen images on HD TVs should theoretically not have the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen because the screen should already be widescreen. If anything you'll see black bars at the left and right sides of the screen because the image was made for standard television instead of HD television.

I'm not sure if I even need to say this, but having widescreen makes a huge difference in games. Have you ever played a game that splits the screen vertically instead of horizontally? Doesn't this seem really annoying? In most 3D games it's imperative that you see as far as you can to the left and right. Enemies rarely come at you from the top or bottoms of the screen, they come in from the sides, and in driving games, finding the next corner when your peripheral vision is improved makes for a more fun experience.

I'm not saying it's neccessary, or even worth the cost, but if the technology is there and people are willing to pay for it why not go ahead with the HD revolution. The ultimate goal is to have watching TV emulate the experience of watching a story unfold through the window of your house. Right now HD doesn't quite bring us to that point, but we're closer there than we were when I used to watch Transformers on my 10" Black and White TV in my dad's basement.

-Wes
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GSL · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject:

Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

Widescreen = good, because cropping movies ruins several scenes. Go compare Ghostbusters fullscreen and widescreen if you don't think the edges of movies are important. Some of the best jokes are completely removed.

Pan and scan makes me physically ill, much the same way some videogames do.

I have trouble watching VHS tapes now. DVD didn't seem to be a big deal at first, but it's one of those things I adjusted to and can't go back. For my collection of bad movies, this is fine, because they're supposed to be bad. For movies I like, no. Too much fuzz, even on my nicest VCR. HD may be the same way. I won't know because it'll be long before I can afford one of those things.
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sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

I remember turner had a small documentary showing the differences between widescreen and pan and scan between movie showings. While the documentary itself was more or less some interstitial fluff to pad the movie times so they could start the next movie on the hour, it showed direct comparisons between widescreen and pan n scan. I was against those "experience-ruining" bars on the top and the bottom, but now I'm convinced that losing half of the picture is far more experience-ruining than half a screen of dead space.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Well look, if you're only watching movies for the story and characters, pan&scan doesn't cut out the story, and it really doesn't cut out too many characters either (it's about 30% of the screen, but usually actors are positioned inwards just slightly past the rule of thirds if not front and center, so you see most of their faces nearly all the time).

If you're watching movies to watch movies though...

sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

My main argument for widescreen movies goes like:

but, but.... preserving artistic integrity... ;_____;

Anyway. I don't mind black bars too terribly because it provides a nice color-neutral background for the movie to sit on. Another thing about pan and scan is that it has the unintended effect of blowing up a person's face on a screen. If we have a shot of someone's face in the corner contemplating a beautiful sunset on a wide-open prairie, the pan/scan shot will only aim to get as much of the face in as possible, even if the actual subject is the sunset on the other side of the frame.
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dhex · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject:

sawtooth · . Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419

I don't think directors like it and discourage it whenever they can, and it probably costs the studios a lot(though probably not a whole lot, relatively) to make a fullscreen version. I could see them trying to phase it out as an excuse to push the whole HD ideal, anyway.
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tsudo · . Joined: 07 Feb 2006 Posts: 5

On the HD topic I have seen Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 demoing at the neighborhood Walmart on a lcd screen and I thought to myself that the screen is HD so that it must me the screen showing this amazing detail, but I have seen the 360 play call of duty on a 13 inch plain TV and you can still see striking detail. Which made me question myself and I believe that the HD is becoming more mainstream as more people become tech savvy, but we have yet to see what HD can really do since no one has really put it to good use (still recording using film instead of digital recorders and the such).

In short I agree that HD is just new and more people like it just because of that and the difference isn't screming there is something wrong with my eyes its too blurry (yet).

Wii has know this and has made a choice to be nonHD and I respect that. Not like those 360 owners who complain about it and don't own a HD TV.

GSL · Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 12:32 am Post subject:

Tablesaw · . Joined: 29 Jun 2005 Posts: 303 Location: LACAUSA

dhex · Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 9:00 am Post subject:

GSL · Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 11:53 am Post subject:

I suppose my analogy was a bit borked. I meant mainly that HL2, thanks to the scalability of the Source engine, looked as good running 640x480 on my rig as it did on my friend's 1024x768 with most all bells and whistles attached. I just tried to relate that to the wide vs. fullscreen and failed miserably.

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I am not coming near this thread with a 10 foot pole.

I disagree with almost everything said in one way or another. Actually, I kind of agree with Sawtooth a lot, but he has not said too much.

...

must hold back.
will return when I have hours to type.
have
to
resist...
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GSL · Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 1:05 am Post subject:

OtakupunkX · . Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 730

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Let's start with just Pan and Scan VS Widescreen. I can handle that for now.

GSL · Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 2:21 am Post subject:

Mister Toups · Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 7:09 am Post subject:

did I hear you say Outside the Mainstream?
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OtakupunkX · . Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 730

I don't have a widescreen TV, but I still prefer widescreen movies. I don't mind the letterboxing at all, even if it's on a small TV, because I dislike Pan and Scan a lot.

Good non-film example - Resident Evil 4. That game would've lost a lot of it's magic had it not been presented in widescreen, and it would've been a lot harder to play. Pretty much every film made in widescreen is the same way. There's a reason most movies aren't done in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

dhex · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 1:58 pm Post subject:

there are hard sells and there are hard sells.

taste is a hard sell.
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SuperWes · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 2:03 pm Post subject:

GSL · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:19 pm Post subject:

Are you saying that Szczepaniak is really Wal-Mart?

Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

Maybe he's saying I'm the kind of guy who typically shops at walmart. Sad

(which is totally untrue I'd like to add. My shopping habits are quite odd, non-predictable, and very eclectic. You can be so mean sometimes, Wes.)

EDIT:
Unless you're trying to say that I'm secretly the owner of the Walmart chain... In which case, damn, my secret is out.

SuperWes · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 10:31 am Post subject:

Mister Toups · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 12:54 pm Post subject:

Lestrade · Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:14 am Post subject:

Everyone in Europe laughs at us in North America with our archaic 4x3 televisions. Aerisdead told me so.

I would rather have a widescreen television, but my Panasonic tube-TV is just so good there's no reason to upgrade. When this one dies (which may take a while), my wife and I would probably get something HD.

As far as movies go, though, I really have no interest in the forced "next-gen" format wars. DVDs + S-video = pretty damn good to me. Besides, have you seen the list of movies that are to come out on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD? Most of them are godawful shite anyway. I mean, are a few hundred lines of resolution going to make Doom 3 a good film? Hell, that's a movie I'd rather watch on a worn-out VHS tape, because it would take some of the taint away somehow.

Higher resolution games are all right for me, but I'll get to them on my own time. To be honest, I have an odd infatuation with playing videogames on little 14" tube-TVs; there's something beautifully intimate about a little TV with a game console propped up next to it. It's like cozying up with a book. I was in a vintage store two weeks ago and I saw an old, dial-operated, slightly miscoloured set with the SNES version of Street Fighter II running on it. I am sad to admit that I sort of caught my breath and looked on in awe. I suppose it reminds me of home, but I'm now determined to get one of these little TVs.

I played Silent Hill 1 on a 14" TV that sat a few feet from my couch. As I've said before, I've never been more terrified by a videogame in my life!

GSL · Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 1:53 pm Post subject:

thatbox · . Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 99 Location: nashville / nola

There are videophiles just like there are audiophiles, and there are videophilistines just like there are audiophilistines. Some people can't tell the difference between a 92kbps WMA and a 256kbps VBR Ogg Vorbis, and some people can and don't care. It's generally cheaper to be one of the guys who can't notice or doesn't give a shit, so more power to them.

But the difference between 640i's 204800 pixels and, say, 720p's 921600 exists all the same. Look at a crappy webcam shot and put it up against a 1280x720 digital picture. Voila. And it isn't even just raw resolution, it's interlacing vs. progressive scan. 60 fields per second is 30 frames per second, while 60 frames per second is 60 frames per second - which means you're getting even more information per unit time even on top of the size disparities.

Some of you like playing games on 15 inch CRT TVs. Challenge! Take your 15 inch CRT TV and put it next to your similarly sized CRT computer monitor. Grab your Dreamcast and your VGA box, and then start up Skies of Arcadia or something on one and then the other. Oh man! And that's not even HD! (It's just 480p, while HD proper is 720p or greater!)

It certainly is a different feel from the era of playing SMB3 via coaxial RF cable plugged into a TV from 1970, but there's a place for each paradigm in The New World.
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