For DVD's, a New Definition
By WILSON ROTHMAN
The runaway success of the DVD notwithstanding, its arrival on the electronics scene was poorly timed. Most of the content published by the movie studios is in theater-style wide-screen format. You can watch a movie letterboxed - that is, squished - taking up only about two-thirds of the screen on a 19-inch tube TV, or you can watch it blown up on a giant wide-screen high-definition set.
Sweeter, maybe, but the screen of the HDTV is made up of 720 to 1,080 horizontal lines of resolution, while there are only 480 lines of picture stored on that DVD. Most people don't realize this, but DVD's are far from high-def.
This uncomfortable incongruity between the resolution of DVD's and newer TV's may be one reason that price, rather than quality, is what most people look for in a DVD player. Still, as each generation of player technology has gotten less expensive, a newer technology has emerged to drive up the price of deluxe models.
In the early days, that option was a Dolby Digital surround-sound decoder, which eventually found its way out of players and into audio receivers. The progressive-scan craze hit later, fueled largely by the myth that the feature would improve the quality of a DVD's picture on a standard-definition TV. Now that even the cheapest players in the pack boast progressive scan, a new premium DVD player has emerged, the all-digital HD upconverter, and it can sell for $100 to $200 above average prices. more...
