A question about old movies on blu-ray disc..?

Question

I was going to buy Rambo box-set on blu-ray as we have a ps3 and a hdtv to play it on now, but whilst i know number 4 will look clearly better on blu-ray than on normal dvd, i'm not too sure about 1, 2 or 3. I mean they're 20 yrs old now anyway, and obviously they weren't filmed in HD so are they basically just re-mastered and cleaned up a bit or is it actually possible for them to take an old movie and re-do it in true HD so they'll look anywhere near as good as number 4 will do?

Answer 1

if they've remastered them from the original celluloid film print then they should transfer to HD very nicely indeed. If they've just re-purposed the video/DVD files then they won't be as good.

Answer 2

Yea, basically what these guys are saying is that the original film is far higher resolution (although you cant compare analog to digital) than even HD.  Therefore, most of the time when they rerelease an old movie on Bluray disc, what they do is rescan the original film into the higher HD resolution.

Answer 3

Blu-ray can be done with a great remaster with a cleaned up image from the original film or very poorly. So .... you can't assume an old movie won't look great on Blu-ray.

On the other hand, I wouldn't buy any HD movies without checking out disk reviews of the video and audio quality first. The best site I have found for reviews of Blu-ray (and HD DVD) disks is HD Digest.

In the case of the Rambo box set they found it to be well done -- not perfect, but a good release -- but read the review for yourself at the link.