I love DVDs....

Sure I like TV. I LOVE it. But I don't just 'watch' TV, especially not the everyday crap that passes for entertainment that's on today. I love watching science fiction movies, horror movies, movies with some kick. I love watching certain classic, well made TV shows.

But mostly on DVD.

I seem to be kiss of death to well-written, quality shows on TV anyway. Every single show I watch gets cancelled before its time; Wonderfalls, Angel, Firefly, John Doe, Millennium, The Tick. That Star Trek show Enterprise finally seems to have found its voice this season so that means it's a shoe-in for cancellation too.

So nearly everything I watch is on DVD.

I say agan; I LOVE DVDs.

Now THAT'S the way to watch TV; on DVD, where the picture is sharp and the sound is clear. Where I can stop when I need to pee and start back up when I feel like it. Where I can jump around to any spot I want or watch one or two shows or four or whatever in a row, AND NO COMMERCIALS to zip past.

So now I've built quite a respectable DVD library. I've replaced nearly all my old VHS tapes for DVDs. And just when I think I've caught up, what do these bastards do?

They come up with this next generation DVD; high-definition DVD.

So, I say, what's up with this? I hear there's this blu-ray and there's HD-DVD, two competing, non-compatible formats. Not that I even see a real need for a new format already, but are the designers of these so retarded that they don't realize that having a format war will do NOBODY any good?? Are they so stupid (or perhaps so YOUNG?) that they don't remember what happened between VHS and Betamax?

When JVC invented VHS and Sony invented Beta, it caused lot of people to hold off buying either, since you didn't know if one or the other would be around for long. It took years for the one to beat the other out of existence, and the people who bought the loser (beta) were stuck. Don't they see the same thing is going on today between the PC and the Apple???

I'm certainly glad I don't have an Apple computer, no matter how good they are supposed to be.

I know it's all greed. One company wants to hold the patent over all the rest. Just like Microsoft.

But say, wait a moment; I still have my regular, plain old standard DVDs, which, if I remember correctly, I LOVE BECAUSE THEY HAVE A BRILLIANT PICTURE QUALITY, HOLD TONS OF STUFF, AND HAVE BECOME QUITE INEXPENSIVE!

Am I to supposed want these new hi-def DVDs just to have such a super-duper high-definition picture that I can look up the nose of every actor and count how many nose hairs they have? I think the current DVD format is fantastic; it was a quantum jump in quality over video-tape. But can these new DVDs be THAT much better than the DVDs I already have?

I've seen examples of these hi-def pictures. And I don't think they are all that. At least not yet.

Do they think I'm going to spend another pile of money replacing all my PERFECTLY FANTASIC DVDs with these (slightly?) New and Improved DVDs?

I think not.

More on this later.....