Show I Waiting for the winner of ofa a high-definition high high noon noon V r r w R I f fW iI C lb a I W tAr Tr ps Tr l. l E Gl a. a I r i War i C 1 0 s 0 tr rr t d II a 1 r ili I I Washington Post photo courtesy courtes of Nokia okia Research in Motion lotion Palm and T Mobile T Any given smart phone may be a a Web browser or an l player that happens to place the occasional call Rob The Washington Post What's a fair price to pay for video perfection or even something that looks a lot like it In the case of high- high definition movie discs the answer may not just be a boatload of money but having to keep two incompatible players under the TV set Barely 25 years after the heyday of VHS versus the movie and electronics industries have teamed up on a high- high definition remake of that format war HD DVD versus Blu BIu HD DVD arrived first with players and discs available in April You can now choose from about 10 playback devi devices es on add-on to such as a Microsoft's game console a Toshiba player that sells for at retail and computers from Acer Packard Hewlett rd and Toshiba Many of the HD DVD iU y S releases I viewed in May looked distinctly sharper and clearer than regular and all offered convenient interactive features such as the ability to view the chapter list while still watching the movie Had the industry stopped there would have had an easy judgment to make Instead a month or orso orso orso so later the first ray Blu-ray players debuted although they've been hard to find in quantity until recently Then Sony began selling its 3 video-game video machine which includes a ray Blu-ray player The may now be unavailable at any price but other Blu- Blu ray players can be had from Panasonic Philips and others in some cases discounted to Just as HD DVD can provide a clear improvement upon DVD ray Blu-ray can look distinctly sharper in practice Switching from watching T tf J 3 J a movie on DVD to viewing the same title on ray Blu-ray was a little like putting on a pair of glasses with the right prescription- prescription in Good Night and Good Luck the beads of sweat on Edward R. R Murrow's forehead and the handwriting on reporters' reporters notepads jumped into focus on the ray Blu-ray copy This held true even when playing the Good Night and Good Luck DVD on a player that like many new models converting up electronically enhances the discs disc's footage to a high-definition high resolution Up-converting Up can smooth over rough spots but it cant can't put in details that didn't show up on the original copy copy Also like HD DVD Blu- Blu ray discs allow for more and easier interactivity You can summon a chapter list and use that to skip ahead to a favorite scene without having to stop liD HD War Continued on page 3 J HD War heats up Continued from page 1 I playback first ray Blu-ray discs like HD and regular have havethe havethe the thc capacity to store extra features but the thc three I 1 viewed made only minimal use of that space Lethal Weapon and Memento offered only one real extra each less than what comes on DVD editions of those movies For some reason I could not get to any of the bonus content on Good GoodNight GoodNight GoodNight Night and Good Luck with the thc controller Although HD DVD and ray Blu-ray movies may look the same on TV the TV the discs are even the same size they size they do feature some important technical differences on the thc inside The ray Blu-ray format can hold more data than HD DVD although both standards easily outrank DVD in that aspect HD I t DVD movies can be produced in a combination format where one side of the disc contains a standard-definition standard DVD copy that works in regular DVD players But the most important difference between the two formats has nothing to do with print fine-print details like disc capacities Here we have the worst of this whole mess Some movie studios will only release high-definition high movies in one format and not the other Sony is supporting only ray Blu-ray while Universal is opting solely for HD DVD Other companies may release high-def high discs in iii Ii both formats but not evenly so- so for instance Warner Vamer Bros offers far more titles on HD ID DVD than in Blu Just over ray Blu-ray titles are available now About HD DVD titles are arc on sale domestically domestically- though only 20 or so of them are combo DVD- DVD Y compatible discs which shows how much the movie industry is ignoring what may be HD DVD's most convenient feature Prices in either format usually range from 20 to 30 So if you want t to td upgrade your home movie viewing to high-definition high you cant can't just buy an expensive player and some expensive discs that may flop in the you market have to do that twice With all the money and corporate egos L' L invested t. t 1 in both sides Sloes II us its S hard nara U 10 to LV imagine how this ends quickly or gracefully But its it's still harder to imagine how the market can possibly stomach two tw incompatible formats over time The depressing thing in all this is that neither side seems interested in winning by giving customers what they need most an easy relatively affordable way to burn a copy of a high- high definition program The HD-capable HD digital video recorders offered by cable and satellite providers provid rs as aswell aswell aswell well as manufacturers like TiVo might as well be prisons for your recordings they offer no way to share a copy of a recording with a friend or family member or archive it for safekeeping Both HD DVD and ray Blu-ray discs come in unlike flavors the DVD the developers of these formats didn't forget to build in that feature But that possibility remains meaningless ur start until manufacturers LaB shipping players that can also record Meanwhile theres there's always the option of getting an up converging DVD player now available from just about any manufacturer around at prices less than and keeping your existing inventory of It may bug you that youre you're missing out on something with this second-best second solution V si |