Questionable blu ray movies??

Question

i want to build a library of blu ray films for my PS3 but I'm a bit dubious about the old titles.I don't understand how the creators can make a high definition film out of one that was originally recorded in standard format.Is there some way of transcoding the movies into high def after they are recorded??

I don't want to waste my money on an expensive old classic like Goodfellas,only to find it is exactly the same as my dvd version.Anyone with any empirical answers would be welcome.

Thanks

Answer 1

It is all about the transfer. Breaking down to the base level a movie frame by frame is re-shot digitally and then stitched together to form a movie (it is not that simple but for the sake of clarity I simplified the explanation. So the movie can be shot in better resolution, but it depends on the source material and transfer process as to how good that looks.

Its not a clear answer but I would say to look at the reviews for a go or no go on the blu-ray.

Answer 2

The reason why they can take old movies and get 1080p HD quality is because instead of getting the video from a video tape or DVD, they get the video from the original film format

When you go to watch a movie at a theater, unless you watch the movie in the new DLP digital projections, most movies are displayed from film, have you ever been to a movie and went "man, the image looks horrible"?  No, the image looks pretty good on film, and it's been that way since they used that film format (i'm not sure exactly, but many many years), now keep in mind how big theater screens are, now look at the size of typical HDTVs and HD home theater projectors, when you shrink an image, the quality only gets better, so when you shrink that 1080p like quality film image to the size of most HDTV screens, the quality itself is higher than 1080p

Now take that film image, and remove all of the scratch lines and spots (imagine Photoshop for video), that right there is an 1080p HD quality image and then some, reduce the quality just a bit to fit on a Blu-Ray (along with some special features), and there you have a 1080p copy of an old movie, this can go for movies back in the 70's or earlier, as long as it's still in a film format

Answer 3

Movies have been made with Telecine for decades and this isn't going to change anytime soon.  Basically there are old movies that have been digitally processed that look fantastic (Blade Runner is a great example of this), where there are some movies that have been made in the past year that look horrible on Bluray (Sweeney Todd).

Basically it is up to the processing for Bluray done by the studio and the lengths they go into making sure you get a great picture.  Unfortunatly with each movie, and how it is processed, you won't know till you buy it.

You can always go online and type in the "movies title" and "review" and find online sources on which movie you want and it will tell you the picture quality.

I would also look at "renting" the movie first from Blockbuster or your local place and check out the Bluray title to see if it's up to your standards.

Answer 4

There are a few ways that they transfer the older movies to Bluray.

1) They take the original film and reprocess/remaster is to be 1080p resolution. They often times run it through some processing after that and clean it up a bit.

2) They already have a high resolution digital transfer of the movie.

3) They use processing to upscale the image and could make some fine adjustments to make it look a little better.

They also could remaster the sound from the original recordings and include DTS MA HD or Dolby True HD soundtracks and include the normal Dolby Digital or DTS soundtracks.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/ has some good reviews and they write about picture and sound quality.