Alternative History - What if DVD had been 720p?

David Jimerson said:
Remember that the very first DVDs were single-layer, and even they had to be flipped in many cases to play an entire SD movie at an acceptable quality level.
Click to expand...

I actually do remember that. I had a few of those being a fairly early adopter('98)(also a very early customer of Netflix). No artwork on the disk, just a little band near the hub that had the title and if it was the A side or B side.
 
Just to reiterate, this is fantasy. I know this wasn't possible to do at the time. I know full well that at the time DVD was well suited for its market and a big jump in home video quality. I was there when it happened. I remember reading articles about it in magazines and waiting for it to come out. It's just that looking back now, I wish it had been a little higher quality. We knew HD was coming and we knew widescreen was coming. There had already been widescreen CRT TVs starting to hit the market. I remember seeing them in Europe when was there in 1998 and even DVD supported widescreen. HD was being tested in Japan and elsewhere. There is an HD video from 1993 out there. So it's not like we didn't know widescreen HD was coming. It just wasn't ready for the consumer market for another half decade or so. Yet there are still new DVDs sold in stores and rented at Redbox. When you think about it, DVD came at the tail end of the SD era. All those decades of SD TVs and DVD drops at the beginning of the last decade of it.
 
TubEfingers said:
While we're on the subject of alternative histories - what about High Definition VHS! I never even knew this existed until a few years back.....

https://www.lifewire.com/when-vhs-went-high-definition-1847994
Click to expand...

I almost bought a D-VHS deck back in 2001/2002, with the plan to record the HD over-air broadcasts, because my cable delivery wasn't HD, save for some select programming. Also for the possibility of watching movies in HD, which you couldn't do at the time. Didn't end up doing it, though; I pretty much figured it wasn't ultimately going to lead anywhere.
 
While walking memory lane, this is where it all started for consumers. One of the first color video camera/recorder:

Akai_VT-150.jpg


 
How about those VHS tapes that were HD back in the 90s. Those Sony HDVS cameras were insane!

*if only i read the whole thread, it seems someone beat me to the topic*
 
Last edited:
Going forward...

I bought a new Samsung 4K HDR set a couple of months ago and I am floored at how good the 1080p ---> 4K UHD upscaling is. Sometimes I have to look really closely to determine if I am watching original 4K content or really good 1080p upscaled to 4K.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top