High-definition DVDs, too? Yep

[Gregg Lengling]

By Lee Gomes
The Wall Street Journal

The next chapter in the history of television entertainment began a week or so ago. Pay attention; it may be coming very soon to a living room near you.

The event took place in Japan -- no surprise there. Sony announced the first model of a next-generation DVD, a high-definition version that holds more than five times as much data as current DVDs. More such announcements are expected.

A high-definition DVD might seem like the worst sort of gratuitous innovation. What, after all, is wrong with current DVDs? Aren't they a perfect, no-compromises digital version of a movie?

Far from it, as can be attested to by the growing number of movie fans who own those big, new high-definition TV sets.

For one thing, current DVDs aren't really high-definition. The technical details of why that's so involve a blur of numbers. For starters, DVDs have 480 horizontal lines on the screen, while HDTV systems have as many as 1,080 lines.

Think of it this way. If traditional TV has the general quality of a newspaper picture, then a DVD image is like a color photograph in Time or Newsweek. Real high-definition, though, is akin to a well-produced coffee-table book full of rich colors in exquisite detail.

You can't get real high-definition from a DVD because a single DVD can't hold all the digital data needed to create such an image for a typical two-hour movie, as an HD-DVD can.

On current low-resolution TV sets, none of this matters. But in the world of big-screen HDTV sets, the contrast between a medium-quality and a high-quality image is instantly apparent. The ranks of TV viewers with these sets are growing. Some 2.5 million HD consoles were bought last year, or 1 in 10 TV sets. HD prices continue to decline, dipping under the $1,000 mark.

Storing a high-definition signal is one of the key problems the new generation of DVDs is designed to solve. How? If you've ever looked at the laser source on a DVD player, you'll notice it's red. The new DVD sets, though, use a blue laser has a shorter wavelength and can create more data "pits" on each disc.

The bad news is that there are three approaches to HD-DVDs. The blue lasers are spurring a sumo match among Japanese electronics giants, one reminiscent of the famous VHS-Beta tussle of the early 1980s. A group of eight other companies is aligned with Sony in the Blu-Ray camp; Toshiba and NEC have a rival, incompatible system called Advanced Optical Disc.

Hollywood studios, meanwhile, are pushing a separate Golden Oldies approach: Keep the current red-laser system but use newer forms of software compression that can produce better pictures in the same technology space.

In all three instances, consumers would need to buy new DVD players to play HD-DVDs. It's expected that any new system will be able to read current DVDs.

The new Sony player costs $3,800. Don't worry, that won't last long. Prices for DVD players fell by 95 percent in five years.