An opinion by Ron Epstein, co-owner Home Theater Forum

It's rather difficult to describe this to you without having the ability to see and appreciate it yourself....

There's a small sequence in Paramount's recently released Sahara HD-DVD that's unbelievably stunning.  It's a short scene that takes place in Mali, Africa, where Eva (Penélope Cruz) and Dr. Frank Hopper (Glynn Turman) are burying the dead.  In this shot, the characters are silhouetted in black against a sunset sky.  The effect in high-definition is absolutely breathtaking.  It is one of those moments where you sit back and really appreciate the benefits this new format has to offer.

   After recently upgrading to a brand new display, I have been enjoying a picture noticeably superior to DVD.  This is a format that I believe in on several levels.  In just a few short months, I have become one of the biggest advocates for the new high definition formats.

This is not to say that I don't have high hopes for Blu-Ray.  Fact of the matter is, I haven't even seen Blu-Ray in action since seeing a demo of it at Sony Studios two years ago.  I have been reluctant to invest in the format because of its high price tag (twice as expensive as Toshiba's player) and the fact that there have been many reported problems with the Samsung player as well as quality issues with a few of the first Blu-Ray titles.  I'm personally waiting to see what kind of player Sony releases this October as well as closely monitoring how the studios encode their titles.  There is a very large preference for VC-1 encoded Blu-Ray over current MPEG2.

Over the past two weeks, Disney announced that they will not be releasing two of the biggest Summer titles, Cars and Pirates Of The Caribbean Dead Man's Chest to the Blu-Ray format this year. This is an awful blow to a format that needs a huge push to entice consumers to lay out $1,000 this upcoming holiday season.....

....and I'm not letting the studios associated with HD-DVD off the hook either. What frustrates me the most about BOTH formats is the fact that the studios are acting as if a format war is totally nonexistent.  When we asked HTF members why they were not readily embracing either format, one of the biggest reasons we found was the lack of credible software releases.  

When you look at the overall selection of titles that have been released in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, you kind of get the sense that the studios wanted to play it safe.  We get a very small handful of brand new releases day-and-date with their SDVD counterparts and a whole bunch of rather lackluster catalog titles that seem to be the same sort of fare that got released with the DVD format back in 1997. 

  Let's take, for example, Paramount's initial HD-DVD offerings that include Sahara, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Tim Burton's Slep Hollow, Four Brothers, We Were Soldiers, The Manchurian Candidate, U2: Rattle & Hum, Eon Flux, The Italian Job.  These are rather odd choices to release when you look at Paramount's huge catalog of titles.  Why not release Grease day-and-date with the Rockin' Rydell Edition set for release this September?  How about Saturday Night Fever, Forrest Gump, Braveheart or The Godfather? 

The initial offerings from Fox and Disney on the Blu-Ray format, sans one or two titles, aren't that impressive either.  You look over the list and wonder why the majority of titles are second-rate releases that did only fairly well at the box office.  If Fox had released Moulin Rouge, Alien, The Sound of Music or if Disney had released just one of their huge animated titles like Fantasia -- we may have a real war on our hands that would entice consumers to buy one player over another.  I certainly would have already bought a Blu-Ray player if I knew that Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean would be released to the format.

Though it may seem that I'm picking on just a few studios, I'm actually picking on all of them.  There is a common thread here where the studios chose to launch both formats with a selection of titles that are quite questionable.  Warner and Universal have played it equally as safe, though there are some titles due out this Christmas that includes The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Batman Begins and (hopefully) King Kong.  This is a prime example of the type of fare that can put one format in the winner's circle.

One piece of good news was announced this past week from Paramount who plans to release Mission: Impossible 3 to all three formats on the same day.  I greatly applaud Paramount for their actions and can only hope that the other studios follow suit by releasing new major titles to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on the same day as their DVD counterpart. 

Certainly, I have taken a lot of criticism for my comments regarding lackluster studio releases.  Everyone has different taste in what's good and what is not.  However, when you look at overall criticism towards these new formats there is a large percentage of people unhappy with what the studios are offering this holiday season.  Had the choice of titles been a little better, the studios could have helped pushed sales in favor of their supporting format.  Instead, many are going to skip investing in a new player this holiday season, hoping that 2007 brings a better crop of software announcements.