Word: format
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They're starting to fill the racks in video stores, in packages that look like the shorter siblings of DVDs. Netflix carries nearly 1,400 of them, along with 100,000 of the old models. They are Blu-ray discs. This Sony video format, having won a staring contest with rival HD DVD, is now officially the next generation in home entertainment. The promise is that movies will look better than ever, duplicating and perhaps surpassing the big-screen experience. Manufacturers and film companies, investing zillions in the process, want you to say, Wow! But first they want...
...producers are pinning their hopes on Blu-ray for a simple reason: the DVD business, which accounts for most of their revenue, is in the doldrums, and a new format might spur a worldwide shopping spree for the latest application of a cool gimmick - like for PlayStation 3 or Wii, only more so. Yeah, but money's tight these days. Consumers want to know if they have to buy a Blu-ray or whether it's just an incremental improvement that will soon be rendered obsolete when high-quality movie downloads from the Internet become available...
...figures in a scene were in your room; you could almost walk among and touch them. The sensation is the same with old black-and-white films like The Third Man, where the Vienna streets gleam with an almost erotic palpability. Any movie that looks good in another format - Sleeping Beauty, Raging Bull, Chungking Express, The Passion of the Christ - will look better on Blu-ray. Different, deeper, better. Realer...
...also has a practical advantage: DVDs can be played on it. Every other upgrade in home entertainment - from 16 mm to laser disc to VHS and DVD - has meant the obsolescence of the previous format. This time you can embrace the new technology without mothballing your DVD collection. No awful separation anxiety. (See the top 10 movie performances...
Even some high-end critics who cherish film as a visual art aren't sold on the format. "I did buy a Blu-ray," says Jim Emerson, whose cogent blog Scanners runs on rogerebert.com "and I feel like a sucker. To me, some DVDs look more like 35 mm than Blu-ray does. In another 10 years, who is going to need a plastic physical disc to store digitized information? I think Blu-ray is a transitional format that won't last long...