My Thoughts on HD

By Jason Gutierrez
©2008 Jason Gutierrez

The Disc War is OVER.
Blu-Ray is the Winner, or is it?

Now that the format war between HDDVD and Blu-Ray is over, we are getting closer to the point where a High Definition standard will be AVAILABLE for delivery. Yes you can buy a Blu-Ray DVD player, and the major motion picture studios are all on board and delivering their content on Blu-Ray, but the consumer delivery market is far from ready to start producing Blu-Ray DVD's. Let me explain.

I have recieved a few request for HD wedding videos, and a few of my competitors have made the plunge into HD, though I still have a few reservations, and I'll tell you why.

* While major motion picture studios can mass produce Blu-Ray media, at this time Blu-Ray mastering of media is not available for consumers.

Since the Blu-Ray format had been originally released, there have been changes that may render future playing of Blu-Ray media useless on newer players, in 5 or so years. In other words, thei disc you get mow may not work in 5 years when you upgrade your player. I'm constantly watching and listening for updates and I will offer Blu-Ray after things stabilize. In context, I would rather not commit to a costly HD development work flow thay may have to change in the near future. Sometimes it's better just to wait.

* The manufacturing process is not cheap.

Well, at least at a price that can be affordable. Google up Blu-Ray media, and hit the Shopping search at the top of the results window. You will see that a spindle of Blu-Ray discs can run between $400-$525 for just 25 discs. This is over 10 times the cost of DVD media. As things settle down, the price should hopefully come down.

DVD media (an I use professional grade media, not the kind of media that you buy at Wal-Mart or Best Buy) is very inexpensive compared to master quality Blu-Ray discs (see the artilce listed above on why go with Blu-Ray). It happens that on occasion a DVD burn will fail because that particular disc had a defect in the manufacturing process. For DVD media were talking 40-60 cents to put a new disc in, where as Blu-Ray media can be any where from $15-$25 per disc. Bottom line, this translates in to higher costs for you the consumer. In the future Blu-Ray media will get cheaper and faster just like DVD's did.

* Various standards in HD shooting formats. 720p vs. 1080i or 1080p.

If you walk into your local electronics store to buy an HD set, your first decision will be choosing the resolution of the set you want. Resolution? I thought they were all just HD? Yes, but HD has two basic sizes, 720 and 1080. These numbers represent the number of vertical pixels on the screen. I'll not talk about 1080p which would be the best format to shoot in. It is highly expensive to produce, and would be out of the price range of most videographers to shoot in.

There is a whole other conversation that we need to have regarding video compression, and what that does to the final image. In other words, how are we putting the video on the recording media.

What I have found that works, and will not break the bank!

I recently purchased a 1080p HD TV, and when confronted with the $500 to shell out for a Blu-Ray player, I decided to opt for the $75 upscaling Philips DVD player. This player will upscale (resample the standard definition frames to HD sizes) to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p!

How can I help you with this?

The cameras that I shoot with are important in this particular solution. I shoot with Canon XL 2 cameras which have a native 16x9 wide screen imaging chip. Contrast this with many other cameras that use a standard 4x3 square imaging chip, and streettchhh the image out to 16x9 wide screen. Try as they might, but stretching that image will blur it and reduce resolution. Upscaling bad resolution will not make it any clearer, just bigger.

Conclusion

The field of HD is getting closer to consumers each quarter, and it's only getting better. Manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic and Canon are making cameras of better quality at affordable price points so that videographers can satisfy your craving for HD video. I expect a boom in requests for HD in 2009 when the FCC will require all broadcasters to broadcast in HD which will help to drive consumers to embrace this format at home.

In this posting I've listed only a few reasons why I'm holding out for now, and I'm very interested in your thoughts on this topic. Send me an email, I would love to hear from you.

Thank you
Jason Gutierrez
jasong@dentonbridal.com

For more light reading:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/
http://www.blu-ray.com/