After watching much discussion on this newsgroup about DVD, its trials, its tribulations, its triumphs and its trickery, I decided I just had to see it for myself.

I'm a laserdisc owner without all the real fancy gizmos. (Not that I wouldn't mind having them, but...) I simply have a Panasonic LD player (about the fanciest feature--it flips sides automatically), a Samsung 27" TV without any SVHS, Component, or any other fancy video input (aside from coax cable and RCA video/audio inputs), an inexpensive Sony Dolby Pro-Logic Surround receiver and five rather generic speakers. My VHS VCR is a Samsung-near-bottom-of-the-line unit with HiFi Stereo.

Now, as such an "Average Joe" I thought the idea of DVD was pretty neat. It could do everything (more or less) my laserdisc player could do, plus hold 133 minutes per side (single layer), contain this "neat new" audio format Dolby Digital (which, as I understand it, is a new name for AC-3...another component not yet in my price range), be a little smaller (size of a regular CD), and cheaper ($20-25 instead of $35-???).

I went over to the "Average Joe" store--Best Buy--to check out their demo unit, demo disc, and so on. They had the Toshiba SD-3006 hooked up to a real nice $4000 rear-projection 16:9 Toshiba television and the newest Dolby Digital receiver from Pioneer (I'd guess this is their standard demo setup). The unit was playing the all-so-talked-about demo with the clips from Twister, Space Jam, etc... The first thing I asked was whether the demo was the Toshiba-shipped one or shipped by someone else. They told me Toshiba. I watched about 30 minutes of the demo (much to my wife's distress). I stared at the screen as hard as possible looking for "artefacts", glitches, mistakes, dark spots, the Aurora Borealis, and so on. I saw none. I talked to the relatively-ignorant salesperson, who knew less than I did, and asked him if he could tell me anything new about the unit. His answer was a simple, "Not really." I guess buying at a nicer HiFi store has it's advantages...

Since I had a little extra money floating around and was, despite all I'd read, sort of impressed by the DVD unit, I bought a Toshiba SD-2006 for $500. (I didn't see any purpose in spending the extra $150 for the 3006, considering I don't think I'll have a TV with component video inputs anytime in the near future.) I got home and plugged it in...and of course for the first two days, I could only use it as a real expensive CD player...that seemed to work fine...nothing spectacular, just fine. Then came "Release Tuesday".

I strolled back into Best Buy and purchased BATMAN and BLADE RUNNER. My wife (who is far less a videophile than even I am) and I watched the movies. We were both impressed. The quality of the video and audio on both discs was equal to superior over both my LD and VHS units. As closely as I watched, I didn't seem to find any artefacts. Maybe my eye isn't well-trained enough, but to me the picture was dynomite. My wife's comments were similar--plus the comment that it was nice to be able to watch a two-hour movie without flipping discs. She also really liked the "Feature Menu"--which, if the studios actually use it on a regular basis, would be a nice addition. Batman's menu was the nicer of the two..it had a few more features included. We were so impressed that we went back out and dropped another $20 on THE FUGITIVE. Again, we watched a large portion of it (we got tired) and saw no flaws.

Now, no--we do not plan to throw out our laserdisc player and our laserdisc collection. (Just as we didn't throw out our VHS and VHS collection when we bought the LD.) In fact, until Fox and Paramount decide to release their films on DVD, we will still purchase laserdiscs for any hot titles we want in our collection from those two studios (we haven't found many Disney titles that we really need on disc--videotape at best for those..hehe). However, where a choice is involved, we'd rather by two DVDs for the price of one average laserdisc.

My verdict: there's nothing wrong with DVD. All these people talking about..."When HDTV comes out, your equipment will be outdated."...for that matter, my VHS VCR and TV will also be outdated. The earliest figures I've seen on the initial prices for HDTV televisions are in the $1500-2000 range for a low-end HDTV. My TV cost $350. Sure, I'd love to buy an HDTV when they come out--but right now, I don't see myself buying one for at least 1-1/2 to 2 years. And with all the standard VHS VCRs out there, all the laserdisc players, and every other type of standard NTSC equipment, those first HDTVs will have to be backwards compatible...

Just the ramblings of an "average Joe"...

David
daneel@ameritech.net