Videophilia explained

[Bevan]

i'm trying to understand a bit about peoples attraction to a/v, video side specifically.

myself i consider mildly audiophilic. as best as i can explain, i would say my interest in high fidelity music comes down to the issue of 'believability'. i want to believe when i shut my eyes that diana krall is standing in front of me singing(and thats not all music as a vicarious live experience in other words. maybe no system that i can afford quite gets there, but it gets close. and if my system is not functioning as synergistically as it could and i am reminded of the fact that i'm listening not to mrs krall but to two distinct drivers, then my enjoyment suffers.

but what i want to understand a bit about is peoples attraction/addiction to to visual fidelity. because for me, i get the same enjoyment from a $60 dvd player as i do from a denon 3910. for me the two dimensional picture can never be mistaken for the thing in itself. imagination makes up for a lot here, infact for so much that it doesnt matter to me if the blacks on bilbo's coat havn't been calibrated correctly. so what i'm wondering is, how do you videophiles defend your hobby and next dvd player upgrade to your wives and girlfriends(as i have to my audio hobby to mine)

and whats your thoughts on the need for a full ht system? i've always been happy with only a 2 channel setup for movies. no sub even(but i dont watch a lot of action movies)

cheers

bevan

 

[dlorde]

I'd have agreed with you about visual fidelity until I decided to upgrade my 28" TV to something bigger a couple of years ago. When I compared the image quality of the flat screens (plasmas, LCDs), they weren't as good as my old TV (in various ways), but when I saw the Loewe Aconda 32" that I finally bought, it was clearly superior. The better quality picture doesn't make it significantly more 'real', in the sense that you're always aware it's a 2D TV image, but it does enhance viewing pleasure, it's more immersive - i.e. you're less aware of the TV screen and more involved in the programme or DVD. In fact, a high quality image does sometimes produce a slight illusion of depth - a kind of pseudo-3D... As far as the DVD player goes, if you are viewing a high quality screen, artefacts and errors from the DVD player are more obvious and will tend to impair the experience, so a player that has a minimum of artefacts and provides a high quality signal is desirable. How far you go with this is a matter of taste and wealth...

The same principle goes for HT- with all the ambient & surround cues from a well produced DVD, the experience is more immersive and compelling. As usual, it needs a decent quality HT system to take best advantage of the surround channels, and a decent DVD to supply them (the film 'Phone Booth' was my eye-opener in this respect).