High Def...

Well, hopped over to the Quicktime movie Trailers site and watched a few…and as rough as Quicktime 7 has been on those who like to watch their movie trailers, I finally saw one that seemed to showcase the ability of the High Def codec. I was really interested in watching the movie Ultraviolet (see previous posts) when I saw the trailer in a small WMV format. Well, Quicktime now has it and in HD too. This is a movie with a unique style and look and a vivid use of color. Put that in with the HD version of the trailer, and you’ve finally got something eye-popping enough to perhaps warrant the Quicktime 7. Or maybe not – I mean, how high definition do you need your trailers to be? I’ve figured out how to grab and edit the URL’s for downloading and saving the various trailer versions from Quicktime’s site, and I’ve downloaded and watched both the 480p and the 720p versions of the HD trailer. Very nice indeed, but I believe my computer (or maybe just my graphics card) needs an upgrade to be able to handle the heft of these higher end graphics. The 720p version tends to stutter step a bit. Not only that, but the 720p will just barely fit on my 17” monitor screen at it’s default size. Makes me wonder what the 1080p version would look like on a capable computer… Speaking of HD, the new wave of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD’s will have a copy protection scheme to work against analog hookups. According to the story at The Digital Bits, your TV will require a digital HDMI connection to be able to see the full 1080 line resolution these new DVDs are capable of kicking out. If you don’t, or you hook it up via other connections, it will down convert the signal to 540 lines which is barely a notch above the regular DVD’s we have now at 480 lines. So basically, if your TV doesn’t have one of these HDMI connections (though most sets sold now have them), you’re out of luck. You know, the more I read of how the bigwigs behind this new wave of HD DVD technology are working so hard against their customer base, the more I hope this whole “next wave” falls flat on its face…