Posted by moonbasegirl on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/UFO-on-Family-Room-HD-tp1510555p1510591.html

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the reply :-) Forgive me, but I've a few more comments/
questions to ask:


> 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 believe you; what I meant to establish was whether HD would be able
to replicate the original film resolution to the point where we could
watch at this quality on our own TVs - if this makes sense :-}

 
> 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.


Isn't film a different size ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9, so wouldn't
some cropping of the original image be necessary in both cases to
make it fit onto television screens? Sorry if this has been
explained before!

I'd be interested to hear the pseudo-surround though! Why do you
think this is worse? Have they added extra sound effects or
something? :-/


> 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.  


If this is so, then why can't they release an HD DVD version using
the uncompressed SD remaster as the source, to be able to see the
higher quality resolution? Or are the two disc formats totally
incompatible or something?  

I'm sorry - I did say I was completely ignorant about digital
technology! As a consumer though I'm interested to understand how
HD is meant to be an improvement over SD. Seeing what you've just
said - that we can't even see the SD version at it's best - makes
me wonder even more what the point of HD is... :-/



> 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.



Okay - so with reference to UFO on ITV 4, although they are an SD
digital channel they are somehow broadcasting the old analogue prints
converted into digital - they can't be showing the DVDs because the
picture is so rubbish!! If they are then compressing this digital
signal even more, doesn't this mean what we are watching now is worse
in quality than these same prints when they were broadcast over
thirty years ago?  

If the quality of current SD broadcasts is being deliberately reduced
through compression to fit more channels in, resulting in a picture
quality worse than analogue, then surely this means by the time we've
all bought new HD equipment and are saying "WOW!" at the
apparent "improvement", all that's happened is the HD picture quality
is really not much better than the old days of analogue and CRT -
just bigger?



> 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.


Hang on - are you now saying that compression doesn't make much
difference in picture quality? Or only in ways that the average
punter wouldn't notice? Or that there are acceptable levels of
compression? Help, I'm even more confused!!


 
> 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.


Oh dear, yet *another* factor to have to consider when buying new
equipment ;-O Could you clarify what you mean about a difference
between the source and TV in terms of resolution and why it matters?


 
> 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.


So it really is all down to size?

Well, for the time being I'm very happy watching the SD DVDs on an
outdated relatively small screen CRT, they are such an improvement on
the old videos! Still, I'd very much like to be able to see UFO on
HDTV for myself - does anybody know if these versions of UFO will
ever be screened on an HD channel that can be seen here in the UK?


Thanks again, Marc :-) I sincerely hope I'm not testing your
patience too much!


Best wishes,


Sarah