So old movies like from the 80s or 90s they are going to look the same on DVD and on Blu-ray?

Question

Because HD didn't exist before, only recent movies will be True HD, isn't?

Answer 1

AGB90 and Disney explain it nicely. They are both correct. Thumbs up to both from me.

Answer 2

agb90spruce answered it pretty good.

You can look at it like photo's, before we had digital cameras there were 35mm cameras, If you took the negative and developed it into  5x7 picture you got a nice print, so lets say 5 years ago you wanted to get a larger better picture from the same negative, now you would have scanners for your computer that could do this (not a regular cheap scanner, a special one made for scanning negatives) the negative would be scanned at the best resolution of the scanner and creates a digital image that is really nice, well today the technology of scanners has improved and once again you want to scan your negative, it is rescanned and saved as a digital file that is ten times better than what you would have done 5 years earlier.

This is similar to what you get with Blu-Ray, they are going back to the original film and "scanning it" to a much higher resolution.

Answer 3

Film is generally higher resolution than HD.  

The problem with converting old movies to HD is, the quality of the process used, and the condition of the original master tapes.  

Some movies were shot on nicer equipment than others, and some are in better shape today than others.    Both factors will come into play when they are converted to HD format.

No, they won't look as good as a movie shot in HD orignally, but you will get them in their widescreen aspect ratio, and they will look better than a regular DVD.    

Just some of them won't look THAT much better.

So unless it's an old movie that you just LOVE, I wouldn't bother buying it in HD when it comes out.  

In other words, skip buying stuff like 16 candles in HD.    Do buy Terminator and movies with lots of good action in HD.  

With those, you'll also get some good remastering of the sound tracks on the HD (Blu Ray) discs.

Answer 4

In response to the previous comment ... movie aren't filmed in high definition, they are "filmed" on film (duh!)... 35 mm film can be optically scanned, cleaned up and converted to a 1080p HD digital transfer (i.e. Blu-ray resolution). Film can be scanned at several thousand pixels ... easily enough to support a 2160p transfer ... if such were commercially available.

So, no Blu-ray and DVD won't look the same (any more than they already do if viewed from too far away). Blu-ray disks of older movies (and 80's and 90's are not old ... try the 40's or 50's) will be "true" HD (1080p) while DVDs will be SD (480i) ... i.e. they won't look the same.

This assumes the studio does a good job on the master .. not a given ... but not a limitation of the original film format.

For an example see the link for a review of Casblanca (1942) on HD DVD.

Answer 5

Yes, you are correct.  If the movie was not filmed in High Definition you will not be able to view it in true HD.  You will still be able to watch the movie with all your cool new equipment, it just want be in HD.

Answer 6

DVD and Blu-Ray are two different formats. Blu-ray Discs are High Definition DVDs (essentially). However, in order yo view a blu-ray disc, you need to buy a separate blu ray player. Blu ray discs will not work on your standard DVD player. DVDs will however play on a blu-ray player. Blu-ray players also upconvert the picture quality to near HD. Will make them look better, but still not as good as blu-ray quality. So really there's no need to replace your DVDs if you buy a blu-ray player, unless you want to. THey will play just fine on the Blu-ray player.