Hi-Def = mos def? Not so fast…

I’m not sure I’m as crazy about Hi-Def as I’m required by law to be as of this week.

First, a caveat: Although we have the kick-ass TV and the high-def satellite package, we haven’t sprung for the Blu-Ray player, so unless it’s a program being broadcast in high-definition, we’re just getting a Much Crisper image, not a true Hi-Def one.

Also, we don’t watch sports, which I understand is a transcendental experience in HD, so as selling points go, that’s off the table.

What we do watch is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (still broadcast in basic-cable low-definition), news and politics shows and scripted series when the TV gods smile upon us. Well, we went hi-def just as the TV season ended, so we missed out for now on whatever coolness that may have had to offer.

A quick digression: At least we won’t have to watch shows anymore, and I’m looking at you, “Sesame Street” and “Lost,” where the networks broadcast the widescreen version in a pan-and-scan format for viewers without the big bucks to go high definition. A tip of the hat to Fox who started out last season doing that, and switched back to the more viewer-friendly, old-school letterbox effect about halfway into the year. Shit was so obviously cut off of the sides of the image, we’d watch the end of ‘Sesame Street’ where they’d say, “Today’s show is brought to you by the number 3 and the letters Y and Z” and all we could see was the Y in the middle and little bits of the edges of the 3 and Z. Or the opening titles cut off of ‘Medium’ or the cropped-off location tags on ‘Fringe.’ It was just downright disrespectful, I thought.

So anyway, I may well have no idea what I’m talking abut here. Perhaps some day this post will read like a turn-of-the-last-century rant about those dad-blamed horseless carriages filling up the streets, but I gotta say it.

Watching stuff on our new high-def tech tends to make it a lot less special. And it’s not just that I can see every pore on an actor’s face or make out the texture of the rags extras are wearing in period-pieces. It’s not the stuff that’s added that bugs me, it’s what’s missing.

There’s a distance, a reserve that’s missing. That whatever-that-is that says, “Welcome! You’re at the movies!” is for the most part gone in high definition. Instead of watching pharaoh’s city being built by a cast of thousands in “The Ten Commandments,” you’re watching a bunch of funnily-dressed, overheated men and woman trudge past the camera in front of a background that is obviously fake. And remember, I’m not talking about true everything-is-high-def hi-def. I’m just talking about the latest standard-DVD release of this fine film.

The interior scenes are even worse. It’s like looking at a filmed-on-video production of the local community theater’s extravagant production. The grandeur is gone. Yul Brynner is no longer the pharaoh Rameses The Great re-shaping the world in his own image, he’s Yul Brynner, actor in make-up, saying silly things on an over-lit set.

And it’s not just the classics. I rented a few videos this week and checked them out during The Missus’ latest job-related trip away from home. Except for hyper-stylized stuff like “The Transporter 3” (shitty film), the same You-Are-There-And-It’s-Boring feeling persisted.

Even the flick I ended up liking, “Crossing Over” (an ‘issues’ film with Harrison Ford leading a strong ensemble cast, directed by the frigging mad genius who directed “Running Scared;” it seems like there’s no genre this guy can’t do) kept shaking me out of the film, scene after scene, with how stage-y everything looked.

I did a test – I ran a little bit of the same film on my office TV/DVD player combo, and it looked just fine. A little softer-focus maybe but a lot more like a movie experience and less like a well-shot stage play. I began to wonder if maybe part of what makes the moviegoing experience cathartic and transporting is the slight detachment from reality that film provides. That’s why they made the movie screens themselves literally larger-than-life. It was supposed to be something you used to escape from the real world for a couple of hours, not be forced to stare down the barrel of at close range.

Then I watched a new-release period-piece, “Defiance” with Daniel Craig as a Jewish resistance leader in WWII. This one fared even worse. The period costumes looked blatantly stage-bound, and the actors looked like actors in the woods, hitting marks and delivering lines.

I also watched an early-season episode of “Lost,” broadcast in HD, and Sayid’s Baghdad-flashback greenscreen backgrounds and wide-shot matte paintings stood out like sore thumbs, where I’d never noticed the artifice before.

On the other hand, I watched the opening foot-chase scene from “Casino Royale” and the fact that I was watching stunt people actually run up the sides of buildings and across construction cranes hundreds of feet in the air gave the scene considerably extra dramatic oomph. But again, not in the Great Movie way it impressed in the theater, but in a “I wonder if anybody died filming this” kind of way.

I even watched a little bit of “Dark Knight” tonight on HBO-HD, and the truck chase through downtown Gotham seemed as remarkably staged as it was crisp-looking. The one thing that HD didn’t diminish was Heath Ledger’s performance. Christian Bale looked like a guy in an uncomfortable PVC suit, but Ledger still mesmerized.

I guess what I’m saying is, so far my experience with high-def TV is like going to a Penn and Teller magic show, where they explain how every trick works before they perform it for you. A lot of the gee-whiz specialness is gone.

Oh, it’s great for cartoons, though. Awesome! “Batman, The Brave and the Bold” and “Iron Man: Armored Adventures” (both running on some Nik cartoon channel) look fantastic on the new equipment. The Boy has no idea how lucky he is, in this one respect, to have been born when he was.

In the long run, I think what we currently refer to as high-def will turn out to have been a middle step on the way to some truly immersive audio/visual experience, like 3D without the glasses. Like they have to master this technology before Jim Cameron can adapt it into the first truly holographic home viewing experience.

As a middle step, I suppose I’ll get used to this damned high-definition craze. But I’m going to keep the old analog set in my office as long as there remains old-fashioned tech to run it. Sometimes, I’m sure, I’ll still just want a movie to feel like a movie, even if I have to squint a little to keep the illusion alive.