A lot has happened since the last time I weighed in on the splendors of high-definition media and HD-DVD.
For starters, HD-DVD no longer exists. Well, you can still find them on sale here and there, most likely tucked away in some ignominious bargain bin, but for all intents and purposes the format is now effectively dead. In the few months since I publicly gushed about the joys of HD-DVD, the format suffered a series of humiliating setbacks as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Netflix each in turn lined up behind Blu-ray, the competing hi-def format (a mass exodus rumored to be secretly bankrolled by Blu-ray's principal backer, Sony). The tumbling dominoes culminated in a death blow when major HD-DVD supporter Warner Brothers jumped ship to exclusively back Blu-ray.
And that was that. The so-called hi-def format war was over.
It's pointless to shed many tears over the demise of HD-DVD, since the writing had long been on the wall that Blu-ray was the dog to pick in this fight. For my part, I didn't even choose HD-DVD so much as it chose me, having lucked upon a player that was practically being given away — and frankly, the differences between the two formats were always minor. HD-DVD has a few more user-friendly features, Blu-ray offers more storage space, but both formats boast state-of-the-art hi-def sound and image that can only be described as astonishing.
And so the king is dead, long live the king. Blu-ray is the last man standing, and it's rapidly becoming impossible to ignore the high-definition successor to standard-definition DVD. And having been in Blu heaven for the past few months (yes, I sniffed out another cheap player), I can honestly report that the new format blows DVD out of the water. Frankly, the at-home movie-going experience offered by a good Blu-ray is in many ways significantly more pleasurable than what you get in a megaplex.
But let's get the bad news out of the way first. Not every Blu-ray disc looks great — since, as with standard DVDs, the quality of a BD depends largely upon the condition of the source material and on the care taken with the transfer. Smaller, less affluent companies like genre specialists Anchor Bay have entered the Blu-ray game with mixed results — their BD of John Carpenter's Halloween is a knockout, while George Romero's Dawn of the Dead on Blu doesn't look much different from the scads of standard DVD editions out there. Another smaller company, BCI, is to be commended for offering bargain-priced Blu-rays of vintage Euro-horror and kung-fu flicks, but its BD titles have so far offered only a minimal upgrade from their DVD counterparts.
Even the big studios can't always be counted on to release stellar Blu-rays. The original BD of The Fifth Element looked so shoddy that outraged consumers mounted a campaign and actually shamed Sony into releasing a new, properly remastered version. And some films — from Prince's classic Purple Rain to contemporary productions like The Fountain or Superman Returns — were originally shot with deliberately muted, diffused lighting schemes that look appealingly dreamy but don't really allow high-definition to show off what it does best.
When a Blu-ray is good, though, it is very, very good. The best titles out there supply those "wow" moments when we realize that every penny we've funneled into yet another new format is money well spent. Colors fairly pop off the screen, without even the minimal bleeding that occurs with DVD, and images are so sharp, so precisely defined, that a startling sense of depth results that's almost impossible not to describe as "3-D"-like. There are already too many must-have Blu-rays to list, but some of the most impressive would include No Country for Old Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Across the Universe, the elaborate, multi-disc Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, the Korean eco-horror The Host, Ratatouille, The Corpse Bride, the psychedelicized martial arts epic Curse of the Golden Flower, Casino Royale, the Planet Earth series and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
Big, splashy 21st-century eye candy like Apocalypto and the Pirates movies will take your breath away on Blu-ray, but older titles, particularly black-and-white films, can prove equally spectacular. Some of the most satisfying high-definition experiences out there include Casablanca (currently available only on HD-DVD, but in the works on Blu-ray), John Ford's The Searchers, the I Am Legend precursor The Omega Man (a great-looking guilty pleasure), Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and, best of all, Stanely Kubrick's more-mindblowing-than-ever 2001. Bonnie and Clyde not only looks beautiful on BD but also comes with a very cool little book — a significant bonus, since most Blu-ray packaging has so far been notoriously no-frills.
Still want proof that everything's coming up Blu? Look no further than to the Criterion Collection, whose lavish editions of the world's most important films have made them the standard-bearers of the DVD industry. In the fall, Criterion will begin releasing its titles on Blu-ray (priced to match its standard-def titles), with a slate of fully loaded BD editions including The Third Man, The Last Emperor, The 400 Blows, Chungking Express, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, The Wages of Fear and more. It doesn't get better than that, and I have a feeling the floodgates are only beginning to open.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2008.