Variety article: "1,000 Classics and Cult Hits to Be Restored for Home Entertainment" (1 Viewer)

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/classics-and-cult-movies-restored-reliance-mediaworks-1201257457/

Upconverted from standard definition........

And yet sadly, The Alamo isn't one of them, because the current CEO of MGM is an evil and arrogant man.

Standard definition. Really? (shaking my head).

Well, "restored" is definitely the wrong word then - more like "re-mastered" at best.

For me, it's a very confusing article. They mention some titles ("Notorious", "The Third Man") which are already on BD w/ good-to-excellent transfers. So why would they be doing an upconvert from SD?

Upconverted from SD? What?

Jari K said:

Upconverted from SD? What?

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Yeah....a very bizarre article.

May possibly be good for some titles that would never see the light of day again.

I emailed Reliance MediaWorks about this but no response yet.

Thinking more about this.....I wonder if this work is being done for these films to be put on streaming services in "HD"?

atfree said:

For me, it's a very confusing article. They mention some titles ("Notorious", "The Third Man") which are already on BD w/ good-to-excellent transfers. So why would they be doing an upconvert from SD?

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Indeed, it's totally confusing. This seems to be an Indian company. Are these being "restored" solely for the India market?

Video on Reliance MediaWorks web site -

Sorry, I don't know how to add a video file to a post.

If the above doesn't work, go to this page.

If Reliance is working on SD video transfers of films shot on film, why aren't they doing it for, say, stuff that actually originated on tape?

atfree said:

Thinking more about this.....I wonder if this work is being done for these films to be put on streaming services in "HD"?

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I think your on to something there.

I really want to know if the article is correct or whether the author made a mistake as i cannot believe a company would upscale SD masters and release these on blu ray or indeed via streaming as high definition, they are upscaled, they are NOT high definition, never will be, i think a Canadian company did something like this with Dog Soldiers, i saw that in proper HD on Channel 4.

Of course the Lowry process degrains everything and then they add fake grain back in, if they are SD masters and degrained and then have fake grain added back in then i have to ask just how detailed it will all be, maybe it's good enough to fool our eyes but it would still be upscaled SD. So the negatives don't exist, use Interpositives or separation masters but don't upscale SD content.

This sounds like a cheap way to get content out there, do any current distributors do this, i wonder.

Is it first of April again?

If they only have SD masters, I'd rather they just put those on DVD and be done with it. Upscaling is already done by any player out there.

Rick Thompson said:

If they only have SD masters, I'd rather they just put those on DVD and be done with it. Upscaling is already done by any player out there.

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There are benefits to using the better codecs that blu ray provides but they need to label these as upscaled. ( if they are )

The cynic in me estimates they are going to focus on obscure (no residuals to pay ) content. If they never even made it to DVD it sounds like someone wants to build a streaming or download library of obscure public domain content otherwise why bother most HDTV have decent upscaling circuits already built in.

FoxyMulder said:

There are benefits to using the better codecs that blu ray provides but they need to label these as upscaled. ( if they are )

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Agreed, AVC on Blu-ray is far superior to MPEG-2 on DVD.