Standard Definition on High Def discs...

[wbassett]

I know that seems to defeat the purpose of High Def media... but I am talking about storage here.

Not just disc storage, but our own personal shelf storage. I have many TV series on DVDs and each season takes up a lot of space. So here's the question...

Would you buy a full season in SDVD resolution but on one disc instead of the typical six sets? Either format could accommodate it, but BD definitely would have the upper hand here with their 50GB dual layer discs. The question is, would anyone be interested in something like this?

I know I would. It would have to be the same price as the SDVD box set since what my idea is it would still be SDVD.

I figured this would be a fun topic to kick around. Seriously though, it would be incredible to consolidate a foot or more of shelf space down to a few inches. For instance one of the series I have is the Highlander TV series. All the cases take up 15" of shelf space, the Monty Python series takes up 8.5", and Star Trek takes an entire shelf and then some, and each shelf is 3' long.

Highlander could go from 15" of space down to 5" of shelf space!

Like I said, I don't expect them to do anything like this, I just thought it would be a fun discussion to see what others think. BTW, some of these series already look extremely good just upconverted to 1080.

[Funkmonkey]

wbassett wrote:

I don't expect them to do anything like this

Why not? That is a great idea. I am sure that people would be interested. Especially for stuff that was originally shot in a lower def format, like old TV shows and such. My wife is always on my case about having too many CD's & DVDs. She likes to have all that stuff out of sight, in a cabinet, closet, or behind a door, and frankly we are running out of that kind of space.

As a counterpoint, collectors tend to be packaging freaks as well. They are just as interested in the package as they are in what it contains, if not more-so. So it would need to include a nice book of pictures or something to set it apart.

I am inclined to believe that our days of hard, tangible digital media (CDs, DVDs) are numbered. My guess is that in the not too distant future everything will be on media servers, and downloaded over the internet, or on a tiny flash drive or something similar. I just hope that the quality increases, and everything evolves into a loss-less format (strange to me that they keep trying to increase the quality of movies, and simultaneously decrease the quality of recorded music)

[wbassett]

Funkmonkey wrote:

As a counterpoint, collectors tend to be packaging freaks as well. They are just as interested in the package as they are in what it contains, if not more-so. So it would need to include a nice book of pictures or something to set it apart.

I am guilty of that myself! Got the metal Rambo case, special boxed sets... but when you get up to around 1500 DVDs space starts to become more of a priority than fancy cases!

I agree the physical media days are numbered, and I am not looking forward to that day when it comes. Pefect example, when I get in the mood to watch a series, I usually do a marathon. We dropped cable back in 2004 because we were sick of the bad programming and I hate commercials. It took around three years and we finally decided to get cable again. Mainly I was interested in checking out the 'On Demand' programming. Here is where owning the media is much better than an 'On Demand' system... I've watched all of what's available for Rome and the Soprano's and now I have to wait for them to put new episodes up. (In the case of the Soprano's I think I have been waiting almost a month now!)

If I owned them I could just throw it in whenever I want. Actually, I could get things faster from NetFlix than On Demand!

Back to putting SD TV series on a high def disc, I definitely would go for that because of the convience of space alone. I'm actually archiving a lot of things to hard drives now to save space, but if I could get an entire season on one disc... that would be excellent!

[Funkmonkey]

wbassett wrote:

...We dropped cable back in 2004 because we were sick of the bad programming and I hate commercials. It took around three years and we finally decided to get cable again. Mainly I was interested in checking out the 'On Demand' programming. Here is where owning the media is much better than an 'On Demand' system... I've watched all of what's available for Rome and the Soprano's and now I have to wait for them to put new episodes up. (In the case of the Soprano's I think I have been waiting almost a month now!)

If I owned them I could just throw it in whenever I want. Actually, I could get things faster from NetFlix than On Demand!

I cut back to basic cable about a year and a half ago, but recently upgraded to Digital HD service, still no premium channels. The wife and I do the same thing with TV shows, marathon rather than deal with commercials. Most of the time we have been using Netflix for that, but it's kind of a drag that they don't ship or process anything on weekends, so it takes about two weeks to receive all the disks for a season of TV (3 at a time). Advantage: Whole season on 1 disk! (or even 2 disks)

So even from a rental perspective your idea is sound, at least for the consumer. I am sure that they would make more money at your local video rental place with more disks. A monthly subscription place like Netflix would actually save money on shipping, and handling costs, most likely a significant amount (1/6 the cost for a 6 disk set on 1 Blu-Ray or HD-DVD)!