HD curiosity

[gsdx]

There have been promotions for Seinfeld claiming that it is now available in HD and that it's something like 33% larger.

Is it 'fake' HD? I mean, is it like 2D movies which are altered to resemble 3D?

 

[Corny]

It depends .. if they have the source material on a better medium than video tapes it could be possible that they re-scanned it for HD.

But it could also mean that they just upscaled the original material, which make it look only slightly better than a low-res pic that you resize. Some research among user reviews at amazon and the likes might reveal if it is worth the money.

 

[gsdx]

I'm not looking to buy. I'm not a Seinfeld fan by any means. I don't even watch it in low-res on TV. I was just curious how they would do it, but it seems to me that it was recorded on VHS and I wasn't certain how they would change that to HD without faking it. It's not like they just switched it to digital.

 

[GM1985]

Never mind my unedited post. If they recorded on VHS, I have no idea how they'd manage to get HD quality, though I suppose they'd upconvert it like bluray players do for normal DVDs.

I know the same problem stopped Star Trek: TNG from being transfered to bluray, but apparantly CBS think it's worth the money of going back to the stock film and re-editing the episodes digitally.

 

[GM1985]

From a blog article I read on the TNG matter, apparantly the guy that wrote it says it would have been very unusual for them to film straight onto anything but actual film, which contains more detail than even HD Bluray can handle. If that's the case then all they need to do is an HD transfer from the original film for Seinfeld.

The problem with TNG was that they actually transfered the film to SD video and did all the editing and VFX on that footage rather than the true film, hence the reason they've had to re-transfer the original shot footage for the upcoming HD release.

I'm not very clued up on this sort of thing, just going by what I've read in discussions etc.

 

[GM1985]

Ah, I dunno, I'm just going by what I remember reading in an article. It was answering a similiar question about TNG and if it'd be possible to do an HD transfer.

Isn't Friends older than Seinfeld? If they shot onto videotape, then the HD episodes on TV are very impressive!

 

[looseliam]

Seinfeld in HD? Next we'll have All In The Family in 3D.

Truth be told, I doubt Seinfeld in true HD would engage the viewing experience.

 

[trinket]

Hey gsdx. Check out these links for a bit more. "Seinfeld" as a series was shot on 35 mm film apparently (here's the IMDB info), so higher-definition transfers are possible. Although, I'm with Keeland, I would have thought it would've been video by that point - though in saying "shot on video", it's not literally "VHS" (a consumer-grade format) as you suggest, it'd be whatever industrial formats they'd use in the business and I know there's been variants over the years/technologies of it.

Technical Specifications for "Seinfeld" (1990)

Camera: Panavision Cameras and Lenses
Film negative format (mm/video inches): 35 mm
Cinematographic process: Spherical
Printed film format: Video (HDTV) (remastered re-runs) / Video (NTSC)
Aspect ratio: 1.78 : 1 (remastered re-runs) / 4:3

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/03/seinfeld-goes-hd-on-tbs-hd/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Seinfeld_in_HD

http://forum.blu-ray.com/movies/125925-seinfeld-hd.html

http://www.techenclave.com/graphics-and-eyecandy/friends-s02-seinfeld-hd-how-do-185400.html

Seinfeld in HD? Next we'll have All In The Family in 3D.

^ Heh, when I was seeing if I could find any info on this and gathering those links, I saw this trivia factoid:
"First American sitcom shot on videotape: All in the Family (1971)."

 

[GM1985]

Well, apparantly 35mm holds more visual detail than even bluray can handle, so who knows, in years to come we may see fully 3d holographic representations of our favourite shows XD

 

[GamerBear]

They show Seinfeld in HD in my area it's in 16:9 aspect ratio 1080 or 720 but it just seems that they chopped more of the top to fit on the sides to make it seem widescreen. It's almost like how they made TJ Hooker look HD or even Charlie's Angels look amazing on Universal HD Channel. They just try to zoom in to fit it into 16:9 but sometimes they chop off the top which is ok since you're not missing much.

It looks decent, I know that when the channel shows episodes of I Love Lucy it looks like shit but when I bought the complete series on DVD I could see a huge difference cause they made it look way better than whatever source the TV shows.

 

[trinket]

They show Seinfeld in HD in my area it's in 16:9 aspect ratio 1080 or 720 but it just seems that they chopped more of the top to fit on the sides to make it seem widescreen.

Hey GamerBear. Yes, see the Wikipedia link in my post above: "Unlike the version used for the DVD, Sony Pictures cropped out the top and bottom parts of the frame, while restoring previously cropped images on the sides, from the 35 mm film source, to use the entire 16:9 frame."