The Beginning Experience of Blue-Ray not the Same as DVD

Posted By: Xecab | March 18th, 2009 @ 10:20 am | Filed In: Views

I remember back in 1997 when DVDs had just started to come out walking into Wal-Mart and there, well, not being any. When I asked the staff about these illusive discs would say they never heard of a DVD and I would be given that look of despair on their face. I still receive the look each time I go to Wal-Mart.

I purchased a first generation Toshiba player which cost me some unreal amount of money at the time. I ordered this player through a website and received it promptly 2 days later. This was excited. After the FedEx delivery person handed me my new toy, I opened up the box, hooked up my new player and put in Batman Forever. This was the only movie I could find between time of having ordered the player and receiving it. I know, but you get what you can get.

Finding DVDs was about as much fun as watching them. There were only a few specialty stores that carried the discs and you were lucky if they had even 5 different movie titles. You constantly read Internet forums about what new discs would be coming out. Some lucky individuals would get these new movies a week or two before their release. I was lucky enough to have been one of these people.

The first Terminator 2 disc was a major event when it was announced. Not only was the movie itself a popular, but this would be the first major released movie on DVD which featured RSDL (Reverse Spiral Dual Layer). This technology is commonplace today, but at the time it was new and amazing. Allowing a movie to gain nearly 100% more storage capacity on one side would allow the movie to look a much better and not be so heavily compressed.
This was the golden disc to get a hold of.

Talk was everywhere on the Internet. Everyone had theirs on order, including me. While walking around a Sam Goody, I happen to notice the disc. This was I believe two weeks from the day it was suppose to be released. I could not believe what I was seeing. I grabbed it, took it to the front counter and paid my $34.95 for it. It was expensive, but worth ever cent.
Once I got back home, I threw the movie in and as most of the other people who had been in a position like me, I hopped on the Internet and started posting that I got my copy early. I was greeted with optimism from many on the forums. So I posted a copy of my receipt. Slowly people started to believe me. It was a great feeling to have this disc so early and to know that almost no one else out there did.

During this time one could track the amount of DVD player sales on the Internet. I was right around 45,000. So I was one of the first 50,000 people in the world to own a DVD player. How exciting.

DVDs were a medium that I had dreamed about for about since I first found out about Laserdiscs. Laserdiscs were nice, but with having anywhere from 8 to 196 discs to a movie and having to change those discs out every 6 minutes during a movie, I decided there had to be a better way.

Enter DVD. Small, cheap, higher picture quality and only one disc. The one disc part would change soon. There was more than one time when I would talk with someone at a store about their new selection of discs. Often the other person would tell me the format will never take off. It’s going to die or just replace Laserdiscs. I of course knew better than this and told them they were the fool they were. No one ever agreed with me. As it turns out I was right. DVD became huge and is here to stay, at least for a few more years.

The format is nearly perfect. Even on high definition televisions, it looks great. There are now players on the market which can triple or quadruple the lines of the DVD, giving it an even better picture quality. Most people cannot even tell the difference in a DVD with line manipulation from a Blue-Ray disc. The whole experience I and others had with DVD is not the same with Blue-Ray. There is a lack of enthusiasm for the new format. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the Blue-Ray format, but there was a magic that DVD captured and I don’t think we will be seeing that again. At least any time soon.

Be Sociable, Share!