You need a hi-def DVD player and Television to successfully playback
our hi-def DVD. Right now, we are not producing sony blu-ray DVD’s, so
you will need a non-sony blu-ray player. There are quite a few on the market
right now. At some point, the “blu-ray” war will be settled, and a victor will
eventually emerge. If blu-ray wins, we will then go with it. For now, we will
produce non-sony hi-def DVD’s. One word about hi-def DVD players- they are painfully slow to turn-on, read a disc, and respond. But the hi-def picture is
awesome, and in the not too distant future, hi-def will be the norm everywhere in the USA.One option you have is to let us shoot in Hi-def and render you a standard definition DVD. Later on, when you are ready, we can render you the hi-def DVD for a reasonable fee. At this point in time, most of our customers are choosing this option.
We shoot hi-def weddings in a format called HDV. It has a resolution of 720 horizontal lines. Standard definition is 480 horizontal lines. HDV 720 line format is much better at dealing with motion than 1080i HD formats. HDV is much more compressed than broadcast level HD, which allows people to edit whereas broadcast HD is for major broadcast professionals with insanely expensive equipment only. HDV is fine for weddings. The main difference between HDV and HD is that HD is not so compressed, so it can render much better graphic performance, and it is also much more capable of hi-end effects and animation etc. It is really awesome, but your wedding would cost a fortune to produce in broadcast HD, and HDV will make most people very happy.
The reason for the higher costs on our HDV options:
The cost of the equipment.
Significantly longer editing time.
Much less time fits onto each DVD, so we have to spend the extra time putting your wedding onto more DVD discs.
The benefits of HDV over standard definition:
720 vs 480 resolution for much better detail
HDV renders much better color performance
HDV is a widescreen format, and so is your hi-def TV.
HDV looks very nice. Is It worth the extra cost? We leave that up to you.