Harrylime:
I've just turned on 'ON THE TOWN' on Film4HD. This is the classic Bernstein/Kelly Technicolor musical, and one of my faves. I have 'AN AMERICAN IN PARIS' on BD and it looks truly beautiful and so I was looking forward to seeing an HD TX of another of my musical faves from the period.
But....
UGH!!!! No detail. No depth. No 'pop'. No nothin'. Whites (it's sailors' uniforms
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. Without doubt this was the worst this film has ever looked on TV. SD, HD Any D.
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my VHS looked better......
How can Four get away with calling this high definition? How very dare they?
What can we do?
Now I know that they (broadcasters, that is...) say that many HD channels are simply HD feeds of existing channels that by definition mix upscaled SD with true HD. And they also say that their upscaling hardware is soooooo much better than our 1080p TVs or Farouja amps can produce.
I say.
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HD is HD. Upscaled looks upscaled, My upscaling is fine. When I jump between the SD channel and the upscaled 'HD' channel I can see no difference. So how can they justify calling their channels HD?
'ON THE TOWN' was unspeakably bad. Inexcusably so. Insultingly so. The western that preceded it was also terrible, but that was a B movie anyway. There can be no justification for this and - most importantly - no explanation for having to pay more for these upscaled channels. It's not just Film4. Five is
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. Unless it's CSI. Living variable to say the least.
I know Ofcom is on its way out but isn't this all a breach of the Trades Description Act (1968)?
This has huge implications for BBC1HD, btw.........
Harry,
I think we have to accept that for some time there will still be a high proportion of upresed SD footage on the HD channels, simply because there is such a lot of back catalogue and it is an expensive process to bring some material up to an acceptable standard for HD.
I know you state in another thread that 35mm film is an HD format (which is true), however for a film company/distributor to justify spending the not inconsiderable sum to get that on to a more convenient HD format (such as HDCamSR tape), then it has to be done properly.
If you're expecting broadcasters to buy the rights to show it and consumers to purchase the Blu-ray, then you can't just fling any old theatre print onto a telecine, give it a one pass grade with no restoration and then expect it to be regarded as an HD master - that would be rather like making a CD copy of your favourite classic album from the cassette you'd made 5 years ago and left on the floor of your car, rather than finding the original vinyl, having it cleaned and then record it from a quality turntable
All you'll have is an HD master with unstable weaving pictures covered in sparkle ,scratches and blemishes, join bounces, stretches and frame warps, and in the case of older material, grade and racking hops where an optically processed dissolve was spliced in. Look at all the complaints a few missing arrows caused on the Blu-Ray of 'Gladiator' which led to Paramount re-issuing it.
And when you are talking about films like for example 'On The Town' made in 1949 the problems get far more difficult and expensive. You'll be searching for, at best, the original neg, or if not, an interpos or interneg or even perhaps an answer print. Finding this material can be time consuming and often bits and pieces can be missing so you can end up with a mixture of them all.
It'll then need to be scanned a frame at a time into either a 2K or 4K file on a film scanner - preferable to a telecine as it helps remove most of the frame warps and stretches seen over neg joins which a telecine can't remove and gives a more stable end result. Also it lessens the chance of further damage from scratches or dust which running the film through a telecine at 24 fps can cause (even with a wet gate - which causes problems of its own).
For a 90 minute feature, with a scanner processing 1 frame per second, this is 36 hours. This data then goes to restoration, which depending on the budget, can be mostly automatic (grain reduction, sparkle removal, frame stabilisation,) and then some manual work to remove large blemishes e.g. water marks, tramline scratches ,and bad neg joins, right through to a frame by frame total restoration.
In the case of films with optical effects these will often be sent off to a specialist effects house where for instance black key lines will be removed or colour spills in composites, match graded out. The data will then go to a grading suite or DI theatre where it will be graded to match the original answer print, and then any masking or re-racking originally done will also be re-applied. After that, all those restored DPX or Cineon files will need downresing from their 2K or 4K size onto a 1920 x 1080 tape master.
And in their website for Film4HD, they do quite categorically state that:
Film4HD is a direct simulcast of the core Film4 schedule. A proportion of the films will have been originally made in the HD format, or converted from 35mm film to the HD format. The remaining non-HD programmes will be up-converted from the SD source material.l.
http://www.film4.com/features/article/hd
And there really is no comparison between the quality of the broadcast spec up converters which are used and the chipset in even the most expensive home cinema amp, TV or Blu-Ray.
Broadcast kit such as the Teranex Xantus we have at work and costing in excess of £80,000, work with an uncompressed SDI SD signal path when upconverting to HD, whereas your home kit is working on a very highly compressed mpeg datastream.
Also don't forget that in that transmission path there is a mass of compression going on to get that lovely HD original down to a reasonably transmittable bandwidth, and that doesn't help one bit.
Berating Film4HD for transmitting material which was supplied to them in that state by the film studio/distributor is mis-directing your ire. Better still that you complain to the studio/distributor themselves and see whether they have plans to release an HD version of the film.
And I have to say in Film4HD's defence, they do insist that films are shown in their original aspect ratio and not some horrendous full screen pan and scan, just because a few people have moaned that there are black bars at the top and bottom of their screen. They also appear to use very low compression and transmit a stream with a high bitrate.
Also, broadcasters in general are trying harder and harder to transmit as much material as possible in HD and not just newly shot material. For instance, Granada/ITV Studios are presently restoring many of their old drama series - I'm presently working on the original series of 'Sherlock Holmes' starring Jeremy Brett, as well as 'Jeeves and Wooster' with Fry and Laurie and I know that 'Frost' and 'Cadfael' are also being readied for transmission.
As far as possible and where still available, everything is being sourced from the original A/B neg rolls or IP, being scanned at 2K, and each show given a 2 day restoration with a team of three people. The results so far are superb and does go to show that where possible, they are more than willing to make a concerted effort to have high quality HD material on their HD channels.
However, I'm still not sure what the simulcasting BBCHD channel are going to do on Xmas day when they show yet another re-run of the 'Only Fools and Horses' Xmas Specials considering that all the studio based scenes were shot on analogue composite SD tape ......perhaps it means they might show something new and original instead.!!
Rob
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