Getting a DVD -- is it worth it?

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

It seems that the Digital Video Disc, DVD, is becoming rather popular in Jakarta. Previously, finding a player here was next to impossible -- if not extremely expensive. Now, one can browse through any mall, shop or electronics exhibition to find the latest DVD player for sale at a very reasonable price.

It's not just individual players that are available. Power users can also add DVD-ROM drives to their PC's, to view movies or to read massive amounts of data. You can now even rent DVDs to watch the best digital motion pictures Hollywood has on offer.

But what exactly is DVD?

DVD was heralded to be the next generation of optical disc storage technology, replacing the Compact Disc for music, VHS (and now defunct Laser Disc) for movies and the computer hard drive for data. While maintaining the same size of a regular CD, the DVD can hold more then four times the capacity for music and data. Thus, a multi-VCD movie you buy at the store can fit on one DVD and still have room to spare for extra features.

The picture quality from a DVD is fantastic. Compared to a VCD, where upon close inspection the movie seems a bit blurry and pixilated, DVD provides crystal clear pictures with superior DTS (Digital Theater Systems) digital surround sound. Also, movies on VHS actually degrade over time and are prone to fungus (which destroys the tape), while DVDs can last practically forever, as it is stored using digital technology.

And one must not forget the extra features. Multiple languages or dubbings and subtitles are standard for DVDs. You can also get commentary from the stars or director on a separate audio channel, providing interesting trivia while you watch the movie. There's even space for a small feature depicting how they made the film.

Although it took a while for it to be a successful consumer product, the DVD does have a few problems, principally involving region locking.

The motion picture industry wanted to control the release of movies around the world using DVD region codes. Movies are released on DVD's at different times around the world. For example, the US and Canada are first, Australia and Japan three months later, Europe five months and Asia two months after that. As such, while a Harry Potter (for example) DVD is available for the U.S. market, Asia has (perhaps) yet to premiere the movie in theaters.

Thus, using region locking, people in Asia would not be able to view a DVD they bought at Amazon.com on Asian DVD players, because their equipment is instructed not to play US region discs. So people will have to go to the theaters first to see the film.

Unfortunately, with globalization and the advances in technology, such regional strategies are becoming obsolete. Some manufactures are providing region free DVD players that will play a disc from any part of the world. Consumers believe that, since they bought the disc, they should have the right to see their property on their players, wherever they may be.

Another problem is the relatively high cost of a DVD disc. At the moment, licensed DVD movies sell for about Rp 200,000 and upwards. One should be aware of pirated products, as some of them are actually edited copies of a hand held video camera in a theater. Such rampant piracy also affects the revenues of the movie studios and may prompt them to reconsider releasing their films here.

You can also play DVD's on computers via a DVD-ROM drive. It is recommended to have a system with a Pentium 3, software DVD player and an MPEG decoder board (recommended). These drives also double as CD-ROMs, so most DVD-ROM's can read various versions of CD's, such as CD-R's (Compact Disc Recordable) and CD-RW (Compact Disc ReWritable).

Making DVD's is a bit more problematic. There are least at four different recording standards that are sometimes not compatible with each other. Supported by different hardware manufactures, these different formats are battling out a VHS- versus-Betamax type war for supremacy. Before you have illusions of making your own DVD film, the available equipment for the different standards (DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD+RW) is still in the thousands of dollars.

Is it worth getting a DVD player or drive? It all depends. Whereas before we rented movies on video, it is now extremely difficult to find a place that rents VHS tapes anymore. VCD's are satisfactory but may lack some things (digital picture, surround sound, etc.) for the average movie collector. Technology continually advances so at some point we will have to go forward with them. Do you want your DVD?