Created in the early 90s and released as a consumer product in 1996, DVD has been around a while. While 10+ years is a long time for any format, the standard-definition DVD format continues to offer astounding picture quality on both standard-definition TVs and large widescreen HDTVs. With all the talk and hype about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD one would think that DVD will soon be obsolete, but that couldn’t further from the truth.

Foresight
The original designers had the foresight to see HDTV and widescreen TVs on the horizon, and designed the DVD format to handle anamorphic (enhanced for widescreen) formatting. Anamorphic is video that is squeezed horizontally so when the image is projected on a widescreen TV the stretched image displays geometrically correct while using the full vertical resolution available.

For non-widescreen users, the DVD player simply does the conversion within the DVD player and ads letterboxing to the top and bottom of the image. DVD players have offered this feature since the beginning.

Progressive-Scan
In 1999 with HDTVs become more prevalent in the market, progressive-scan DVD players came out. These players upconverted the DVD signal from 480 interlaced to 480 progressive. The benefit of doing this was that not all TVs came with good internal video scalers so using a progressive-scan DVD player produced better picture.

HD Upconversion DVD Players
Around 2004 as more HDTVs came out driven by digital fixed-pixel display technologies, the need came to have the standard-definition DVD signal upconverted to an HD resolution so these types of displays didn’t have to re-scale the image.

The reason fixed pixel displays caused this issue is they cannot change their resolution and retain sharpness and clarity like CRT based TVs can. CRT TVs can swap resolutions from 480i, 480p, 1080i and look razor sharp in any mode. Fixed pixels displays only look sharp in their “native resolution” of 720p, 1080i, or 1080p.

Having the image rescaled by the TV can produce only decent to terrible picture quality so it’s best to have source that needs minimal image manipulation/scaling if any at all. With an upconverting DVD player you get the best picture quality possible from the DVD format for fixed pixel displays.

A good upconverting DVD player can make a high quality DVD transfer such as Training Day and Star Wars approach HD quality even on super huge 11 foot screens. It’s simply amazing that the DVD format that has been out for over 10 years has grown so much, and continues to offer excellent picture quality on today’s advanced HDTVs.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
With picture quality form standard DVDs able to produce such great video one has to wonder whether there is a need for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray high definition technologies.

Well-mastered DVDs produce excellent video quality, and in some cases it’s on par with HD picture quality. Movies that are not well mastered have more video noise plus various other image compression issues such as artifacts and blurriness.

The high-definition DVD formats can make it easier to produce high-quality transfers with 2-4 times the resolution and greater storage capacity on the disc.

That said, many Blu-Ray transfers are simply terrible, and many HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players have had quality issues. So an HD formatted movie is no guarantee of excellent picture quality.

If HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are able to mature in the marketplace they may be able to iron out these difficulties, but the formats need reliable and fast players with high quality transfers. Consumers don’t want to waste the effort and money on a high-definition movie to find out the picture quality isn’t much better than DVD, and with some Blu-Ray movies the picture quality is worse than the DVD.

Conclusion
Consumers expect higher quality from consumer electronics and unless a format works consistently, is reliable, and offers much higher quality, they won’t buy it.

The lack of a need of a high-definition DVD format becomes apparent when you consider the format war fence sitters, the tremendous quality capabilities of well-mastered standard-definition DVDs, and the low prices of DVDs and DVD players.

I also own an HD-DVD player with more than a few movies, and I’m still not completely sold that the high-definition DVD formats aren’t simply a niche product for videophiles out there who can actually see or appreciate the difference.