HD vs. Blu-Ray... Do You Care? These Guys Sure Do.

In my 40+ years here on earth I've lived through a handful of technological skirmishes: VHS or Beta? Mac or PC? Quark or Pagemaker? Atari or Intellivision?

In most of these instances I've come down on the side that ended up being the long-term winner, even though the other side may have had the better quality. These days the big tech debate seems to be Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD, with both sides attracting major studios that pledge to issue their releases in one, exclusive format, thereby excluding an entire customer base.

Forget the fact that whatever format "wins" will probably be housed next to 8-tracks and Pong in the Quaint Technology Museum in about five years.

The big question is: Do You Care?

Personally, I don't. We recently bought a 42" HDTV and any new movie we watch on DVD looks, well, awesome. Would RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION have looked even more awesomer in high definition? Sure, but how much more definition of Alice slicing and dicing her way through hordes of the infected in this DAY OF THE DEAD retread do I need?

The real test, though, comes when I watch an eighth generation DVD-R of a Turkish VHS boot of some 40-year-old spaghetti western starring Klaus Kinski. I can't hit that 'PIC SIZE' button on my remote fast enough so I can blow the sorta-crappy picture up to a pretty crappy, but BIG size.

And you know what? I don't care. I'm happy just to see the movie.

But that's not the case with everybody. Check out this post and another from Neowin.net – these people really care about this and one of the posts pretty much devolves into people calling each other "retards" and questioning their motives for defending one format over the other.