At Frye?s over the weekend I saw two half shelves worth of HD-DVD software. This is only remarkable because I had not been to an electronics superstore recently to see such a display. I know they?ve been out for weeks or a month or a I don?t care.
The HD-DVDs were grouped at the end of the anime section just before the nature and historical videos. I can?t remember the first weeks or months of DVD?s launch but it was probably just as pathetic (I remember only seeing Eraser and Twister DVDs for a year before I cared about DVD as a source of entertainment). The discs were packaged in the same clam cases as normal DVDs, the HD-DVD banner at the top was the only tip-off. Blockbuster!/must buy! titles included: Rumor Has It, The Chronicles of Riddick, Van Helsing, Swordfish, Doom.
This is all I get after dropping $500 on my new Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player? (I ask hypothetically, as I don?t have any such player.) Penny Arcade found a use for the Phantom of the Opera HD-DVD.
If I were the King of All Home Entertainment Media (like Mark Cuban or Mickey Mouse), I?d write this memo to all my media minions:
Dear whichever studios are launching HD-DVD: The following titles will force me to adopt your new disc format: Digital Video Essentials (to calibrate before we watch the rest of the launch titles), Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner, Alien and Aliens, King Kong, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Harry Potter movies, Moulin Rouge, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Princess Mononoke, Serenity (actually this is a launch title! Go Team Whedon), Sin City, Apocalypse Now, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Romeo+Juliet, Fight Club, Terminator 2, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Lion King, The Incredibles, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Spider-Man movies, Batman and Batman Begins, X-Men Movies, Superman 1 and 2, Kill Bill, Casablanca, North By Northwest, The Graduate, The Fifth Element, Blue Velvet, and Planet of the Apes.
Now that?s a launch.
After every geek collects their jaws from the floor they would be ready to invest in the best HD-DVD player they could find. The entire launch catalog described above would break all home video sales records. These are the movies we are willing to buy over and over again. It wouldn?t matter if half of the titles were rushed to production and didn?t eek out the finest high definition quality because the movie studios could release an extra special edition six months later and we would buy it again. The HD-DVD would just have to look and sound marginally better than the best SD-DVD had to offer for the same title.
HD-DVD?s launch needs a huge push. Rumor Has It couldn?t launch a bottle rocket with a flame thrower.
Father, Husband and Geek. My geeky interests have not changed since I was a kid. I still love comic books, anime, role-playing games, console video games, indie rock, imported toys and mecha models, bad American and great British sitcoms, and all the tech that let?s me experience these hobbies to their fullest. Now that I?m married with children, I?ve had to strike a balance between supporting and pleasing my family and feeding my geekery hunger. Lucky for me, my wife is very accomodating and even geeks out with me on occasion (the ladies love Joss Whedon?s Firefly). My two year old likes anything that moves on the front projection screen and makes noise, so far she is easy to please. Geekwithfamily.com exists to enrich the lives of fellow geeks and the friends and family who put up with them.
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