So I caught up on Lost in time to watch the season 3 premiere tonight. I wanted to post about Season 2 earlier today but the day got away from me. This is not the post to discuss Lost though - I'll write that next. I was looking forward to watching an episode in Lost in HD because one of the things I've been hearing from some of you folks lately is that DVD is "good enough" - that a HD-capable disc format is overkill. I didn't believe it but I wanted to make sure I had a good A/B case to present. Well here you go - I watched the Season 2 finale on DVD on Monday night. Brand-new discs, presumably pretty much state of the art in DVD compression. I watched the season 3 premiere off my DirecTV HDTiVo , pulled in from my rooftop antenna tonight - and some of the "previously on Lost" footage is the exact same shots. I'm here to tell you - y'all are on crack. The color range is better, the lighting detail is better, it's just a better picture. And I don't want to hear what puritan "mainstream America" has in their homes - I have a high end TV because I value quality entertainment, and I can clearly see the bandwidth limitations of DVD. From what I've read Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look even better than broadcast HD television - and I'm excited to see content become available for these higher-bandwidth formats. Was it as big a jump as from VHS to DVD? No, not quite. Maybe about comparable to going from laserdisc to DVD. Meh. If you want to cling to your NTSC sets, and your combination filters and your red pushes go right ahead - I'm not even going to argue anymore. It's not like I personally own either a HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player right now - the content isn't available yet. But I've seen better than DVD-quality video - I pretty much watch it every night when new programming is available. And I'm ready for a disc format that provides it, and I don't really much care what some mythical "mainstream" consumer thinks on the matter.

technorati tags:HDTV, Lost, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray

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EDIT 09//27/06: I accidentally omitted the link to see the Weird Al videos, it's there now.

Link-a-licious time!

Humor Item: Most time the Daily WTF is fairly programmer-centric. I think almost anybody can enjoy this collection of message boxes.

Pimping the music item: Weird Al's new album Straight Outta Lynwood releases next week - and it's a DualDisc with music videos on the DVD side. Sweet! You can see some of the videos here - I recommend "White & Nerdy" myself.

Pimping the book item: Time Spiral - the first book in this block's trilogy is out. If you really want to read my book next year you'll need to read this one first. Speaking of which Amazon has mine listed - although it should list Scott and I as co-authors. I assume that will get fixed as we get closer to release day.

I can also point out now that this story is not entirely independent of previous stories. (When people asked before that was a super-secret covered-by-NDA detail. But since book one is now out, that's no longer a secret tidbit.) While we did our best to make sure new readers would enjoy the story it does build on previous novels. If you're not current on the Magic storyline you may want to read this recap.

Random link I saved away and then didn't post: A really cool machinima with a thousand cars racing on a custom track. It pretty much uses cars to simulate fluid dynamics - but it's way cooler than that sounds. I saw this first on Wonderland - which is a great gaming blog.

technorati tags:music, Weird_Al, Magic:_The_Gathering, fiction

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I can't believe that even though I grew up with Star Wars and I've seen A New Hope dozens of times in both "normal" and "Lucas-ified" versions, this never occurred to me. The funny thing is, it's actually a perfectly good freaking point!

technorati tags:Star_Wars, humor, flash

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Last August I tallied up the "Xbox 360 experience" on Kotaku. The idea at the time was that while the Xbox 360 was as little as $300, that didn't really deliver the full experience and even $400 didn't give you everything you really needed to fully appreciate the Xbox 360.With a little more than two months before the PS3 launch I think it's time to put Sony's next-gen console through the same ringer. Unfortunately, there are a few key numbers missing, so right not this is just a comparison based on a few best guesses. Please keep that in mind while reading.

Price Check: Xbox 360 Vs. PS3 - Kotaku

Kotaku did an interesting attempt to figure out if you bought the same features for both consoles what the final cost is. Their conclusion is that if you try to match feature for feature the 360 is more expensive than the PS3! $839.94 versus $688.97

Now the real slight of hand here is that to make the 360 match the feature set they buy a wireless adapter and the HD-DVD add-on. They also presume the HD-DVD add-on will cost $200 but that's a reasonable guess. So somebody can argue "I don't want the HD video playback so lop off the $200", and that's a reasonable argument - although it's still really close unless you argue that the WiFi adapter is a stupid addition - and it clearly isn't.

I'll put my new disclaimer on this post. If you're somebody who hates all discussion of HD and you're convinced that all of America still loves themselves some NTSC and you are preparing to froth at the mouth about how DVD is so good that we don't need a replacement format - don't. I'm tired of that discussion. Now, there are some major flaws with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and the format war is stupid. I'd love to have rational discussion about those issues, but I'm barring the gate to people who have a reasonably informed opinion about HDTV - and that means having seen real HDTV in action, that means being aware of the numbers in terms of HDTV sales and US market penetration. If your "research" will be anecdotal evidence about who you know who doesn't have a HD set I'm not interested.

technorati tags:Xbox, PS3, HDTV, gaming

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