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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Getting to see the entire picture was the only thing my wife and I had on our minds when we bought a laserdisc player. We were sick of renting movies that had been "panned and scanned" (the technique used for television, which, in order to show everything going on in a widescreen frame, creates camera movements or editing that was not in the original film). We wanted to be able to see all of the movies we loved. But the quality of the laserdisc image knocked us for a loop. The image was crisp and vivid, with none of the lines and watery color still common to video, and it wasn't prone to the fading that inevitably occurs with video.
I love laserdiscs. I've put together a substantial collection of them and I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep getting my player serviced or buy a new one if I need to. But the technology never caught on, perhaps because it was expensive (anywhere from $34.95 to $100 or more for multidisc sets) or because, in the age of mini-size technology, the discs, which is the size of an LP, struck people as cumbersome.
When it became clear that DVD was going to supplant laserdiscs, I grumbled the way a lot of us did when it became necessary to switch from records to CDs. For a while I hung onto the rumors I heard that the picture quality of DVDs wasn't as good as the quality of laserdiscs. It was wishful thinking, and the evidence of your own eyes should tell you that it's not possible to indulge in wishful thinking about the future of video.
If you frequent any store that sells both videos and DVDs, then over the last couple of years you've watched the DVD section expand while the video section has been reduced. Even small neighborhood stores are stocking at least some rental DVDs. But the greatest threat to the future of VHS is not just the quality of DVDs but their price.
With the exceptions of a few big hit movies hustled onto retail video to capitalize on their theatrical success, most videos are still released "priced to rent" (usually at a list price of $109.98) before they appear in retail stores "priced to own" (usually at a list of $19.98). By comparison, DVDs arrive in stores at the same time as priced-to-rent videos, at considerably lower list prices, ranging from $14.95 to $29.95. And since new DVDs, like new CDs, go on the market at a sale price, they can usually be picked up online or at big-box discount stores for cheaper than that. They can generally be rented for no more than it costs to take home a video. Online rental services are making DVD rental even more convenient than going to the video store, and some of them (like Netflix) allow you to keep the disc as long as you want and then return it in a prepaid mailing envelope.
How can video hope to prevail against an increasingly available technology that offers comparable prices (which keep dropping; a low-end DVD player can be had now for less than $100, and a pretty good one for less than $200) and immeasurably better picture quality? Of course the big advantage VHS still has is the ability to make your own tapes at home. But now that DVD burners are popping up, that advantage may be ending. If someone can come up with a cheap, easy and reusable method of recording from TV to digital discs, especially when high-definition broadcast becomes standard, it may be time to throw away that VCR.
That also means that the question of "how movies were meant to be seen" is now up for grabs. Much as I would love to rhapsodize the moviegoing experience, reality gets in the way. In the last few years, the owners of the big theatrical chains seemed to have finally registered moviegoers' disgust with sitting in theaters the size of extra-wide bowling alleys, watching postcard-size screens. Most prevalent now are the new stadium-seating megaplexes that offer unobstructed sight lines, comfy chairs and enormous screens. (Art houses, especially in New York, are still a problem. The two main art-film theaters in Manhattan, the Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika, are not raked. If you see a foreign film with a decent-size audience, chances are you'll spend part of the movie bobbing and weaving around the head of the person in front of you to read the subtitles.)
Despite the better physical condition of the multiplexes, the problem of projection remains. In an attempt to save money by freezing out the projectionists' union, most of these chains have resorted to automated projection, with one or two projectionists scrambling between umpteen screens. So if an image comes on unframed or out of focus -- on the new, bigger screens, it's pretty common to see an image that is at least partly out of focus -- you have to leave the theater, tramp the miles to the concession stand and hope to find someone who can fix the problem. And even if a picture is in focus, you have to hope that the image is projected in the correct aspect ratio, or that the theaters are properly equipped to show it that way.
