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SD vs HD, a link to a great site with picture comparisons. (1 Viewer)

Ryan Peddle

Second Unit
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Nov 28, 1999
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473
I found this link over at AVS and it blew me away.

Fellowship of the ring SD/HD comparison

I am assuking that the first images are from the dvd (doesn't specify if it is SE or EE editions), and the second is from a 1080i broadcast from television.

Cool stuf in my opinion.

Be sure to click on the pick to et an even bigger view.
 

Mike Williams

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Those comparisons are pretty dramatic, although it seems to be the SDVD picts aren't as good as they should be, even before they're compared to the downconverted HD samples. Even so, the HD shots do show enormously greater detail and if that is from a cable or satellite source, the difference will be even more dramatic when we're looking at a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version.
 

Kyle_D

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Eh.

Are the differences noticable?

They sure are. One day I'm sure I'll be buying all my new titles in some HD form or another.

Are the differences drastic enough to prevent me from enjoying my DVD copy and all the rest of my DVDs in the same way that DVD made VHS and even Laserdisc unwatchable by comparison?

Nope :)

The only HD presentation of a movie that really made me feel like I was seeing the film for the first time all over again was The Matrix on TNT - a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was sourced from the new (completely re-color timed) transfer used for the box set , though the extra detail was often astonishing.

Everything else I've seen has been nice, but DVD is certainly still watchable. I hardly ever feel like I'm missing anything even after I've seen that film in HD (Matrix aside).

Then again, cable HD is pretty badly compressed and probably isn't be that great of indication of how good HD can look on optical disc...
 

Ryan Peddle

Second Unit
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I definitely agree with both of you. I think that the image difference is pretty dramatice especially in the hair. But I am by no means using this as a exact comparison. Until I can have a HDDVD and and SDDVD running on their respective players and see the difference on my HDTV I won't be overwhelmed. I expect to be, but not until then.
 

JeremyErwin

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I've seen those pics before. However, one question remains.

Why did he have to use photoshop to bicubicly resample the image?
 

Ryan Peddle

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Nov 28, 1999
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I have no idea. Thats one of the reason why I am just sharing and enjoying and taking with a grain of salt. I think it is a good representation of what the HD difference could be like, but I think the SD image is not exactly perfect in this case.

To me looking at the hair in the picture of Gandalf is a fantastic representation as I have taken the time to look at this on my setup and it is in fact much softer than the HD image here.
 

Mark Lucas

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NTSC dvds are 720x480. In order to compare it to the HD version you have to interpolate it to the same resolution. This mimicks what a scaler or an upconverting dvd player does.
 

JackKay

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Mar 27, 2004
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Ryan, thanks for the pix!

Last weekend I saw the demo disk Toshiba has out promoting HD-DVD players. The player's highest output was 1080i and we watched 5 or 6 of the trailers. Trailers naturally are quick edits, but in close ups there was fine detail. The movies Dukes of Hazard and 40 year old V looked OK, but Corpse Bride and especially KING KONG looked absolutely fantastic. Great Detail.

Now these were just trailers, and I don't know if Toshiba thought these were the cream of the crop examples to make their case for the new format. Personally, If I were showcasing something of this nature I would of also included a complete movie like Harry Potter or LOTR in their best possible transfer. (you know, get people hooked on the movie and admire the high def for a half hour or more) But, the wow factor (to me) varied from trailer to trailer.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I mean, the who and how of the transfer of the film to HD-DVD looks like it will vary from film to film as our current standard def DVDs do. (if the demo is any example of what we are going to get)

In my HO, from what I saw, I would bet that Gary over at DVD BEAVER has job security for years to come.
 

JeremyErwin

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720x480i, actually. I would think, however, the the algorithms used by photoshop are somewhat more complex than those used by e.g. Faroudja. Or can photoshop apply the bicubic filter 60 times a second?
 

ChrisWiggles

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While HD is certainly superior, this comparison has absolutely no details about how those images were captured, and based on my experience with both SD and HD content, this comparison is completely erroneous.

Don't draw too many conclusions from this, the colors are WAY off as well as it seems gamma, and the DVD capture looks quite poor, and the image resolutions are way too small.
 

Jerome Grate

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You can have fun with Shot #3 whereas you can find a good dance song and move cursor up and down over the picture in sync with the beat and you've got a Hobbit's video;)
 

Brent M

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Sorry Mark, but I don't see it that way at all. If anything, the HD shots look too dark and muddy IMHO.
 

Mark Lucas

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Wow. The dvd has awful blown highlights and an orangish tinge. Yuck. Good screenshots, Adam.


Oh c'mon, that's crazy.
 

Jerome Grate

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I'm surpise that the scaled picture looks so bad. That 1080i shot is all I need. I can be satisfied with 1080i over 1080p. Hurry up format war, let's get down to some serious DVD viewing.
 

DaViD Boulet

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You guys are missing the whole point of that web link.

It's not upscaling DVD to HD resolution...it's doing the OPPOSITE...it's DOWNSCALING HD to DVD resolution!!!

The point of the link is to show you how many DVD images we think of as "great" actually don't even take full advantage of what 720 x 480 has to offer...which is quite dramatically illustrated here when the HD image is down-resed to 852 x 480 (852 instead of 720 to keep the pixels square so the image is not distorted...the DVD image is 480 high in this example but has been upscaled along the horizontal domain from 720 to 852 as well to give it the proper aspect ratio otherwise it would be distorted in a computer screen with square pixels).


His DVD shots are actually pretty accurate...I've watched this particular DVD title several time on my projector and it's pretty soft/blurry by "reference" standards. The Two Towers was better mastered, and the Return of the King is sharper still (much closer to real reference material) though none of the 3 DVDs come as close to the DVD format's potential as the downresed HD captures above.
 

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