Mark-P
Senior HTF Member
There is a new trend of classic TV shows that were shot on NTSC videotape being remastered and upconverted to HD. Two recent examples are Night Court and Welcome Back Kotter, which are now available for purchase in HD on iTunes. You can sample preview clips and I must say the upconversion process is pretty impressive. Historically, the digitization of videotaped productions have looked pretty atrocious, but they have gone back to the master videotapes and found a way to digitize and upconvert that preserves all the original detail but also make them appear to mimic HD quality. No they don’t look like real HD, but they do look much better than the SD digital versions. The only thing that I don’t understand is why they reduced the framerate from 30 FPS to 24 FPS. That’s the one superiority of NTSC video over film, and they decided that the lower framerate helps to better mimic film by eliminating the “soap opera” effect. Anyone else have an opinion on this new trend?