Being a movie fan I can remember clearly the days I went to see landmark movies. I can remember when our family got our first video recorder (a Betamax!), my first VHS player, my first widescreen VHS movie, my first DVD player, etc. And now another landmark day has arrived; I no longer have a VHS player in the house...and in it's place a Blu Ray player has arrived!
And very nice it is too. To all those naysayers who claim they can't tell the difference in quality I laugh at them, belly clutched, with disbelief and dismay. The difference between regular DVD and Blue Ray is astonishing...especially if you watch the right movie.
With modern movies (say the last 5 to 10 years) they nearly always look fantastic in high definition, unless they've deliberately shot on a low grade or grainy film stock. With older movies it depends on whether the film has been restored and to the level of quality of that digital restoration. If no maintenance work has been done on the print the film can look little better than it's low definition DVD version (T2 is a good HD example). If the restoration has been misjudged then the images can have a distracting stillness to them (the grain is frozen in time), the contrast can be too extreme (with bright lights and extreme shadows enveloping too many details that were there originally. And digital noise reduction techniques can cause actors skin to look unnaturally smooth and waxy (see Star Trek V.)
On the flip side are old movies that look like they were filmed yesterday thanks to their stunning transfers to Blu Ray. Star Trek - The Motion Picture, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and The Thing all look astonishing in the new format. In fact when I watched them it was like watching a brand new movie. Or it's like a short sighted person finally being given spectacles for the very first time...the image no longer looks ambiguous and fuzzy, but instead sharp and detailed. The Motion Picture I always felt was a dull, grey, grubby movie. In it's cleaned up state it's actually sharp as a razor and amazingly colourful...it's just that home technology up until now has been inadequate to capture the varied and subtle colour pallet the film used.
So count me happy as Larry. All I gotta do now is bu a bigger TV. Or maybe a projector...
1 comment:
DNR - An evil invention for the dumbed down masses. A bit like X-factor.
That said, other problems are usually caused by poor filming techniques (the aforementioned T2)and low grade film stock (see most of the 80s). The worse culprit is US 80's TV. Shot on film, but usually edited on video/ Meaning we will never get HD versions of some great USTV as ir will still look blurry.
As we all know, film is of a higher definition than 1080p TV, so old stuff should always look good, and amazing if they clean the print first.
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