1) Both
Babylon 5 and
Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman were shooting in Super35 and protecting for 16:9 in anticipation of HDTV in
1994 three years
before the debut of DVD. (Everybody thought HDTV was going to arrive a lot sooner than it did, and the producers of
B5 assumed the widescreen home video release would be on
laser disc.
)
2) Unless it is a tube set, John's TV is either 720p/768p or 1080p - probably the former. The fact that it can accept a 1080i
signal is irrelevant. If it is a fixed-pixel design (LCD, LCD-RP, LCoS, DLP, about 90% of plasmas) it scales everything to its native resolution, which is going to be progressive.
3) "10+ years" referred to the age of the actual
films (when they were produced) not the TV and not the home video versions released on DVD. Jari completely misunderstood the original post, hence the off-kilter tone of the replies.
And yes, all other things being equal an older film in hi-def is going to look better than an SD version of that film. As Paul noted there is far more detail in film than can reproduced by any home video system, so a higher resolution reproduction of a given film is going to show more detail than a lo-res one. Does a full color reproduction of the Mona Lisa in a $200 coffee table art book look better than a photo of the painting in your daily newspaper?
Now it is true that the condition of the original is going to affect the final outcome, and the perceived
quality, but in terms of basic image reproduction the higher res version is going to more faithfully reproduce the original. An art book picture of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" will show more cracks, fading and other damage much more clearly than one taken with a tourist's pocket camera, but that's because the painting really is cracked, fading and damage, and the better photograph captures more of the detail.
As Paul also noted, all things almost never
are equal, so how much of an improvement you see or how well a
particular transfers to Blu Ray will vary.
Regards,
Joe