VHS, DVD, HDTV and Blu-ray

When DVDs first came out, there would be an ad just before the preview promoting the great new technology of the digital video disc.  It would have a great looking picture on half of the screen and then this totally blurry picture on the other side.  Of course, the ad was captioned "DVD" on the clear side and "VHS" on the blurry side for obvious comparison.  I remember thinking, "Wow, that DVD picture looks great!  It's too bad I don't own a DVD a player and I have to watch this movie on my blurry-looking VHS."

This ad was obviously placed toward stupid people like myself, who weren't smart enough to realize that we were watching the amazing picture and sound of the DVD on a VHS tape.  I'm pretty sure that somebody was messing around in the editing suite with a new "blurry filter" plug-in he just got and applied the effect to half the screen while leaving the over half unaffected.  As a joke he wrote DVD on the normal half and VHS on the blurry half.  Just then, his boss came in but he wasn't quick enough to switch the screen back to the project they were supposed to be working on.

After a stunningly successful campaign, the big brains realized that nobody was wise to their advertising trickery.  So when HD TVs came out, they brought the same thing into the big box store.  Half the screen is blurrier than bigfoot and the other half's showing stunning coastlines from a helicopter.  Still, I can't believe that I watch that blurry mess at home.  The sign says "High Definition" vs "Standard Definition" and I have standard definition at home so that must be how my TV looks.  "It's funny how I never noticed it before," I remember thinking as a carried my new TV out of the store.

I just rented a DVD, and you guessed it...  There was a commercial before the previews that split my TV in half.  One side showed me the crappy picture that I watch all my DVDs on and the other side showed a brilliant looking picture that I could see only if I buy a Blu-ray player.  It saddened me to think that I was going to have to watch the movie on crappy DVD.  Why not just keep watching movies on DVD?  Because Blu-ray looks so much better - I saw it with my own eyes on the last DVD I rented.