In Search of Format Peace

Do we really need the latest in HD and surround sound? Shouldn't the content matter more than the delivery system?

Until very recently, I was the owner of 400-plus VHS cassettes dating from the mid-1980s. With about 800 feet on a reel, that works out to roughly 60 something miles of tape. That was a long walk to the cultural wreckers my video collection took last week (actually, it was a car ride). I’d replaced about half of them with DVDs, but the other half was a loss.

Who wanted the moribund information on these tapes? Not the main library, where I was told sadly to go away. Instead it was the eBay of the real world, Goodwill, that happily said yes. What does Goodwill know that the library doesn’t? Perhaps it’s that people don’t tire of information, no matter what the format is.

Even as TV manufacturers slim down screens as fast as they can and line us up to be the first suckers at the 3-D teat, people remain content, even happy, to watch cruddy, jittery, pixilated, desaturated, low-res video. The local Tech Blob store will gladly blow your eyeballs and eardrums out of your head should you take your non-avatar body into the bricks and mortar location, but at home it’s all lousy signal-to-noise ratio – lots and lots of noise and very little signal. Apparently we’re OK with that.

Why bother with a new format? We’re already into the fourth iteration of digital vision. Remember LaserDiscs? Despite being the size of the Roswell spacecraft, you still had to flip the disc over half way through a film because one side couldn’t store enough data to hold the entire thing. Then came plain vanilla DVD, then HD DVD, and now Blu Ray (I’m leaving aside about ten other formats, I know). Why should anyone feel compelled to upgrade their entertainment system and film collection every few years? Who cares about high resolution?

We’ve established a hierarchy of information purity where the best display (3-D TV, soon to be known as 3V I’m sure), the most expensive glasses for that 3V (sold separately, of course, unless you want the old white ones with the red and green lenses that have “Headache Guaranteed” stamped on them), and the highest bit-rate optical disk transfer system (“Death Ray, the last sound and vision in AV!”) is at the top, and the slow, choppy, micro video streamed to your handheld, which has the advantage of being free (or stolen), is for the bottom feeders. Of course these may be the same people. So here’s a conundrum.

The truth is that the information itself doesn’t change that quickly. Once you get into it, format doesn’t make such a huge difference. I had already replaced five of the DVDs in my collection with Blu Ray discs before this fully sunk in.

What I really want is some decent cultural stuff, never mind the format. Bring me a good script, some good actors (what a concept), good art direction, and forget the rest. Otherwise you might as well wait for the audio-visual cortical stack insert that will let you jam flash memory into your neck and play something on your retinas, which you’ll then be urged to upgrade.

You go ahead with that. I’m going to Goodwill to buy back some format peace.