According to a report last month from Home Media Magazine, 58% of HDTV owners said they have no need for a high-definition player. 27% said they would wait for a winner in the format war before buying a player. But a high def player, as pricey as they are, have more than just the benefit of playing high-definition discs.
A good enough reason to buy a Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD or dual format player would be for the excellence they offer in upscaling standard definition DVDs. I’ve got two decks hooked up to my HDTV. One is a standard DVD/VHS player that I use to play scratched-beyond-belief children’s DVDs. I read once that deep scratches can damage the readers in a disc player. I’m not sure how true this is but those discs go nowhere near the high def player.
The second player is a high-def player and is used to spin my standard def collection. Sitting at the right distance, you won’t be able to tell the difference between standard and high-def discs because the players do such a great job of upscaling the DVDs. There are a few duds here and there, but for the most part, you get excellent quality from those 4.5GB discs.
It’ll be a while before I can afford to replace my whole DVD collection with high-def DVDs. Hell, it’ll be a while before the studios actually get to releasing all their titles in high-definition. There are some movies that haven’t even made it to DVD yet. So why not up your quality now?
