Posted by Marc Martin on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/UFO-on-Family-Room-HD-tp1510555p1510569.html

> A while back you said the HDTV was sourced from the original film -
> obviously the highest definition possible. I have two questions to
> ask about this: firstly, has this HD version produced an exact
> copy of the original film quality? Or is it not possible to replicate
> the original and there's always a downgrade of sorts?

I'm not sure what the resolution of the original film stock
is -- it is certainly possible that it exceeds 1080 x 1920.
However, when you go to see a 35mm in a movie theater, what
you see does NOT have this much resolution, because it is
several generations removed from the original.

I would consider the HDTV version a downgrade for reasons
other than resolution -- because they've reformattted it
for widescreen, and they've processed the sound to make
it sound like it's in surround sound. However, if you're
trying to make out some fine details in the image, it
should be better than watching film projected in a theater.

> Secondly, are
> there plans to transfer this HD version onto DVD for home viewing?

I know of no plans for this to be released on disc.

> You mentioned compression and how this reduces picture quality.
> Forgive my total ignorance of all things digital, but I just don't
> get the point of this.

Well, these days, all things released on disc and broadcast
on digital television are compressed. There is always some
quality loss through this process. Even our beloved UFO DVDs
look worse than the original uncompressed versions created
at BBC Resources. This is simply because it would require too
much bandwidth (data rate/file size) to use an uncompressed
version. However, sometimes the cable and satellite
companies compress things so much that this destroys
any advantage that a digital / HDTV picture might have
had.

Home video releases on disc are also compressed, but
usually not as much as cable / satellite, so a disc
release should look better (assuming that they don't
try to squeeze too many episodes onto one disc). But
someone with a sharp eye would still be able to spot the
differences between this and an uncompressed version,
although many probably wouldn't notice any difference.

> An HD version would look considerably better
> on the 50" screen compared to the SD on that same screen, but
> wouldn't necessarily look better than the SD on the 28" screen.

Yes, if someone is watching a 30" screen from 10 feet away,
they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference
between standard TV and high definition TV. It's when
you get larger screen sizes or watch from a closer
distance that you can see the difference.

> Talking of comparisons, Branko and Rob both commented about watching
> the SD DVDs on giant sized TV screens and in one case the picture
> quality was judged to be excellent, but not in the other!

Yes, some TV's (or DVD players) do a poor job of scaling DVDs
to HDTV resolution, while others do an excellent job. Scaling
technology has become an important factor in picture quality
on modern day televisions, because the source resolution
is often different than the TV resolution.

> After all this rambling, my point is - just what advantage would HD
> DVDs actually have over the excellent SD versions, should they ever
> became available? Would it really be worth all that extra expense?
> Or is HD as a technology upgrade a bad case of diminishing returns
> and is really only a load of hype to get everyone to spend lots more
> money?

Heh, heh, well there is no single "right" answer to that question...
the advantage is that the picture quality should be better,
especially on larger sized sets. However, as we all know, the
picture quality on the current DVDs are already pretty good,
and perhaps "good enough" for many.

Marc