Older films (1 Viewer)

[ChristopherDAC]

Huh. Hee in North Texas, at least, Babylon 5 was originally broadcast over-the-air in widescreen.

Meanwhile, it's by no means necessary to watch Star Trek in High Definition to see its flaws. I recall watching Spectre of the Gun on LaserDisc, and noticing that the "lightning" flashes caused the stick-like trees on the set to cast shadows on the soundstage cyclorama. What can you do? Better just to leave it as it is, in my opinion.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Er, no, it wasn't. Not unless the local PTEN affiliate was hard-matting the 4:3 source material. (And why would they?) They did letterbox the main titles for all five seasons, which may be why you recall the show as being letterboxed, but in fact no widescreen masters even existed during the show's original run.

The lack of any widescreen masters (and WB Home Video's unwillingness to pay for them) was what led WHV to cancelled its planned 1999 DVD release of the series after it concluded that a 4:3-only release wouldn't sell. Sci-Fi, knowing the show had been planned for eventual widescreen distribution, asked WB to remaster the show for them so they could differentiate their run of the show from the TNT broadcasts which had been running for several years.

(In a bid to "burn the show out" and get even with JMS for his post-Crusade comments TNT, which had been running the B5 reurns early on Saturday mornings suddenly started airing the series every day and twice on some Saturdays in order to run all the episodes one last time just prior to the start of Sci-Fi's contract. They aired "Objects at Rest" and "Sleeping in Light" on a Saturday morning. The Gathering Part 1 aired as a one hour episode on Sci-Fi two days later to kick off the Monday through Friday strip. By contrast the folks at the TNT.com website were very classy, changing the home page of their B5 site to announce the show's move to Sci-Fi, the air times and providing a link to Sci-Fi's new B5 home page.)

WB Domestic Television turned the job of producing the widscreen version over to an outside contractor who made numerous mistakes (including the infamous "teapot" incident), most of which were corrected by the 2nd or 3rd time an episode aired. Warner Home Video later used these "free" widscreen masters for the DVD release. This is all readily confirmed by a check of the messages about B5 and widescreen archived at www.jmsnews.net

Regards,

Joe

 

[JediFonger]

this is (in no way) addressed to anyone specifically here or elsewhere, but i get shivers when this question is asked.

film, for all intent&purpose, is infinite x infinite pixels are limited by the film grain. you can do 2k, 4k, 8x, 10k, 50 trillion pixels (yes, i love hyperboles) on it and it will be limited by OTHER factors, but definitely not resolution as we can currently store them.

thus, as someone in this thread has already answered, it really depends on the source material. if the film negative was well preserved and it goes through a good washing and digital touchup by companies such as lowry digital, the movie will look absolutely stunning when released on DVD, internet, HD DVD, UltraDVD (8000x4000 resolution) if you want. i believe wizard o' oz and gone with the wind are scanned @4k, thus UltraDVD will look even better. but the reality is, will most consumers armed with 30" average display and limited real estate/living space really care? no. the only ones that will care are people with front projector and as someone who has one, i can attest that 1920x1080p is the "final frontier" of consumer video format.

thus, newer films can look terrible on DVD and old films can look awesome on DVD. for example, forrest gump looks terrible on DVD, but the recent Charlie Chaplin DVD releases look BETTER! why? the original film negative was washed and lowry digital touched 'em up. but if that costs an arm+leg, then only selected titles will get the VIP treatment. most older films will look scratched, dented and dirty because the studio releasing them don't care to spend another dime to clean the film negative. and even after a good washing you'll still see permanent damages on the film negatives without someone like lowry (or in house technology) to touch 'em up.

so regardless of what format (DVD, HD ones, cable, TV, Video iPod, internet, car display, HD Watches, my mother's handbags) movies are released in, if the original film negative elements are visually tarnished, then so will all subsequent release formats unless someone decides to clean them up properly.

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I've read that the MONSTERS HD channel has shown BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and other Universal horrors in HD, and that they looked fabulous. I also read on the Classic Horror Film Boards that Universal is preparing a 65th anniversary release of FRANKENSTEIN with new extras(including a documentary about Jack Pierce),and this will more than likely make its way to one of the HD disc formats. And, with Warners announcement of many catalog titles on HD-DVD, I think that fans of the Golden Age of Hollywood will be in for a treat.

 

[JediFonger]

i'd love to have some of these classics on HD, but does anyone know for sure if HD-DVD/BluRay are both true 1080p? if it's "only" 1080i, then i'll wait.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Where have you been?

Do everyone a little favor and do just a *little* research on the forum (and at AVS) before posting a statement like that...



bottom line...both Blu-ray and HD DVD support native 1080 24P encoding, and all first-gen Blu-ray players so far will allow full 1080P output via HDMI while the maximum output for any announced HD DVD players via HDMI is 1080I (some new plasmas and projectors accept 1080P input, and most future high-def displays, even those lower than 1920 x 1080 resolution, will start to support full 1080P input, so it's good to have on your player even if your current HD set can't handle it)

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

David summed it up well, but let me just add that currently the vast majority of 1920x1080 displays DO NOT accept a 1080p signal, and must be interpolated and then deinterlaced for playback. So unless you have, or plan on having a 1920x1080 display and it does accept a 1080p signal, then you wont be seeing any difference.

In addition, the quality of many interpolators and deinterlacers is such that there's a very good chance that in blind testing you might have a difficult time distinguishing accurately between a 1080i and 1080p signal.

I recently posted this the following thread that may be of some use for those shopping for new equipment in preparation for these new audio & video formats.

WARNING: Before you rush out and buy any device w/HDMI you might want to read this.

 

[JediFonger]

lol David =). i've been in a Groundhog ditch!! .

i was phrasing my question incorrectly. i've read it several times but i just wanted re-assurance that the content which is being encoded on either HD-DVD/BluRay are both 1920x1080x24p. that's all =). i mean, i'm waiting anyways until both formats can be watched from a universal HD/BR-ROM player for the computer w/HDCP across all the components for DIY HTPC. hopefully, another 5-10 years?

 

[Patrick McCart]

Any film would look better in HD. Even films like The Birth of a Nation.

I had the opportunity to see Harold Lloyd's Safety Last in 35mm. While the DVD looks stunning, it's nowhere near as crisp and detailed as the 35mm print. Not that it's a fault of the transfer... it's just that a 35mm print has a huge amount of detail that cannot be reproduced at NTSC resolution.

In my opinion, HD will simply increase the detail and make older films much more film-like. Of course, studios will have to be even more attentive to cleaning up films for HD. It's not a huge deal to clean up a film for NTSC or PAL. HD, 2K, or 4K, it's a big deal.

And a lot of HD masters exist for much older films. MK2 has HD transfers of all of Charlie Chaplin's copyrighted films (his First Nationals all the way to A King in New York). Modern Times and The Great Dictator have full 2K digital restorations.

Basically, HD will make very old films look more film-like and crisper. Because grain will be more detailed and sharper, the image itself will look sharper. Even a 4th generation print film like Sunrise.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

As for how the studios are actually *encoding* and mastering specific HD titles...we'll just have to wait and see. So far the prognosis looks good in terms of full 1080P encoding...

 

[JediFonger]

patrick, i agree. there seems to be quite a # of older/silent film/classic films on this board =). very nice. i'd love to start some threads on older, less watched classics. would you/other people join me on the fun?

also, i sincerely believe that 1080p is the final consumer video format before holograms or Trek-like stuff is reality. why? 1920x1080p on a front screen projector is every bit as sharp as film itself.

david, so... we don't have *official* confirmation that the content will be 1080p? the reason is that, if content is encoded in 1080p, then there's hope for future players to spit that resolution out properly. otherwise 1080i is kinda' "wasted" =).

 

[Mark Lucas]

The front covers of the Blu-ray cases saying "1080p" is pretty good confirmation.

 

[JediFonger]

link?

how about HD-DVD?

 

[Juan C]

 

[DaViD Boulet]

YiFeng,

HD DVD is making is not bragging about 1080P. They only mentioned "1080I" on their player-specs so far and I don't think they mention anything about 1080P on their disc packaging.

 

[JediFonger]

i wish we had more info on whether HD-DVD is encoded w/1080i or 1080p. it'd really suck if the first generation hi-def discs were 1080i and then they double/triple dip us for 1080p later on.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

YiFeng,

for heaven's sake.



If you're that driven to know about the encoding of the discs...then head over to the myriad of threads on the subject at AVS and spend days and days reading about it. there are guys from microsoft who talk about how VC1 works (who've more or less confirmed that all film-based movies will be natively encoded at 1080 24P on VC1 whether on Blu-ray or HD DVD) and Sony has been bragging about "1080P" encoding using MPEG2 for some time.

We've spoon-fed you plenty in this thread...if you need more go out and get it my son...

(in the speaking voice of white-bearded kung-fu master)



p.s.

Here's the bottom line. As long as the studio doesn't do any additional vertical filtering, both 1080I and 1080P mastered "film" material would look the same once the 1080I signal was properly deinterlaced as complete frame-reconstruction would be no different than a "straight" progressive signal.

So in that sense it actually would NOT matter if some movies sneak through in '1080I' because as long as they aren't overly-filtered during mastering, 3-2 pulldown would produce a perfect 1080P image.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Well said. I tried to explain that earlier, but perhaps it was lost in translation.

 

[Juan C]

And as long as it is properly flagged... because we have never seen an incorrectly-flagged DVD, right?

At least you can't muck 1080p up.