How easily can older tv shows (ie pre-2000) be broadcast in HD?

bigshotceo · Member Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Location: University of Ottawa

Here's my question: A lot of HDTV programming out right now is either movies shot on film or recently shot TV shows. Since most TV shows were recorded on video tape as opposed to film, when the day comes where most stations are in HD, how easily can they be broadcast in HD format? Will there be any significant quality gain?

dphirschler · Ut Joined: 29 Aug 2001 Location: Kennesaw, GA - USA

I thought modern shows were recorded on film. They are certainly telecined (3:2 pulldown) when broadcast, so that indicates a film source... unless they have a digital film camera.

Darryl

videopoo · Member Joined: 15 Jan 2003

Any show recorded in standard def like Golden Girls or All in the Family, for example can be broadcast over HD airwaves it just wont be HD. You can put SD material on Blu Ray but it won't be HD. If it wasn't videotaped HD it will NEVER be HD.

jman98 · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Location: Freedonia

Most old TV shows were shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio. I'm not personally aware of ANY TV show prior to the arrival of HD broadcasting that was deliberately shot in 16:9. There may not be any old shows shot in 16:9.

HD is kind of meaningless in that most people incorrectly treat it to mean 16:9, but HD technically supports 4:3 as well. So the old shows can possibly be rebroadcast in HD 4:3, but you can argue whether or not anything can be gained by that. And they can't be converted to 16:9 without either stretching them to fit (that's the ugly solution TBS uses right now - it sucks!) or cropping the image to artificially turn it into 16:9 at the loss of some image. There will be no real gain from either of these solutions.

If older shows were recorded to film, there might be some small quality gain by going to HD, but whether it's worth the cost or not is a good question. The only old TV show I know of that was recorded on film in 4:3 and converted to HD was the original Star Trek series. Star Trek is rather unique and it has a fan base that justifies this kind of treatment (there's money to be made by selling the HD remasters). Could you honestly see people paying big money to buy, say, All In The Family in HD? I can't.

If shows are recorded to videotape, my understanding is that this always means interlaced footage, so there's nothing at all to gain and maybe a lot to lose by trying to go to HD with this kind of material.

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 12:16

Another series that has been remastered from 35mm film to 4:3 HD is Northern Exposure now runing on UniversalHD.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098878/technical

The same could be done for any popular legacy series shot in 4:3 aspect 35mm film.

Also, any existing 4:3 series can be easily electronically upscaled and broadcast as HD. Most library from the 90's is available as a Digital Betacam transfer. Certain Digital Betacam players upscale to 1080i or 720p with choice of sidebars or horizontal stretch. Realtime upscale processors like the so called stertch-o-vision used by TBS-HD allow one playback VCR to feed both SD 4:3 and HD psuedo 16:9.
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edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 12:45

SatStorm · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 17:07

In Europe they had some 16:9 shows since the late 80s. They shot them on 35mm. If someone convert them to HD, we can watch them on a HD format.

Anything on film can be converted on HD and look great. The aspect is the problem.

JohnnyMalaria · Member Joined: 29 May 2006 Location: United States

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 17:15

SatStorm · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 17:27

We also had PAL Plus here (still have actually). I remember those first 16:9 transmissions around 1985-86! They was shot on 35" for sure. For more than a decade, the European Union use to pay the national broadcasters of all the country members, to produce 16:9 material.

Also, the French TF1 station, before 1986, use to broadcast in a unique HDTV format of 819 lines. So they do have archives to broadcast, but they have to convert them to today's HDTV, which from what I read is not an easy task.

JohnnyMalaria · Member Joined: 29 May 2006 Location: United States

Neither of those two things surprise me in the least!

I had a couple of VCRs with PAL Plus but I never used it - but PDC was/is a great feature. As too NICAM.

SatStorm · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 18:03

And don't forget D2 MAC!
It was a satellite hybrid broadcasting system, with amazing picture quality. On the Scandinavian countries, the last D2 MAC transmission stopped 3 years ago.

There was also some HD-MAC stuff in Europe, on a 2048×1152 resolution!

Overall, Europe does have local HDTV material from the last 25 years or so, but the interest to convert them to modern HDTV is limited. I expect the Germans to do the step with their own archives fist, as they did with their analogue archives that converted them to digital SDTV, with amazing results. I'm watching some music German TV shows from the early 70s and they look like shot yesterday evening... Those shows was stored in beta form back then, and for all those years, they use to have a team that their only task was to run the tapes, so to preserve them (beta tapes need that kind of treatment).

Also, most of the European music videos after 1986, shot in 35mm and 16:9 aspect.

Off topic: I remember the visual difference between the music videos of the European top 20 and the USA top 10 on MTV Europe in 1988. It is like the difference of a NTSC VHS and a PAL DVD... And the majority of the European music videos was 16:9

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 18:09

JohnnyMalaria · Member Joined: 29 May 2006 Location: United States

The purpose of PALplus isn't really related to HD. It's a remarkably clever means of broadcasting a widescreen SD program such that a normal 4:3 TV will display it letterboxed whereas a PALplus-enabled 16:9 TV will display the broadcast with the full 576 line resolution. In the UK, the BBC (as ever) were leading implementers and all over-the-air broadcasters used it (quite easy when there were only 4!)

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 18:32

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 19:45

There was a huge political component to this.

Back around 1989-94 there was a huge push by Japan Inc. to get Europe and the USA to adopt HiVision HDTV. Europe responded with internal development of multiplexed analog components intended for dbs/cable and later DVB. The USA launched a competition for HD formats and several were presented in addition to Japanese HiVision.

The US Congress and FCC then formed the "Grand Alliance" (named after a 15th century European coalition to confront France) made up of semi-finalists that then developed the consensus ATSC system. The US system placed HD as a third priority behind spectrum reduction and improved reception as set out in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

By the late 90's the main competition of interests evolved into traditional broadcast interests vs. computer industry somewhat clueless newbie upstarts who were late to the game. The traditional broadcast interests got their way with ATSC (USA) and DVB (Europe).
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SingSing · Member Joined: 30 Apr 2001 Location: U.S.A.

edDV · Posted: Feb 27, 2008 21:22

SatStorm · Posted: Feb 28, 2008 04:18

Many things at the time in Europe was shot "future-ready" and we never saw them in their full glory. We never will, those things are not so interesting. Some documentaries, serials, telemovies and music shows are the only things that we might see on HDTV one day and mostly for "nostalgia" reasons (that happens every 30 years in Europe after all)
PAL Plus wasn't HD, but it was 16:9. So, what was shot to broadcast in that form, had to be 16:9 and since those shots were getting money from the E.U., they use to shot them on film and they were really expensive productions. So, we do have 16:9 elements that can be converted to todays HDTV. The problem is that they don't have any commercial interest to do so.

From what I know, the last Black & White TF1 "HDTV" broadcast was in Paris in 1986. The French were notorious for supporting things that nobody - even them - used.

And don't mention that horror called "SECAM" in front of me! I'm allergic to this system.

.

JohnnyMalaria · Member Joined: 29 May 2006 Location: United States

Do you think the previous Eurovision Song Contests were in HD? Please let it not be so!

edDV · Posted: Feb 28, 2008 11:16

Many BBC/PBS type programs intended for long term replay were shot 16:9 increasingly since the late 80's usually with film and transferred to D1 or Digital Betacam. 16:9 SD broadcast is routine for much of Europe. Over here the PBS-HD (satellite feed), A&E-HD and Discovery-HD seem to have no lack of 16:9 programming to fill their 24x7 schedules although much of it is upscaled.

Most series shot during the 90's were anticipating future 16:9 DVD and HD release so were edited in both versions. The PAL version was often done only in 16:9. The USA market wasn't as accepting of letterbox so 4:3 (aka "Full")versions were usually shown here although DVD releases were offered both ways. Now that much of the USA market has at least one large wide TV, 16:9 is now in demand and 4:3 letterbox is more routine for the NTSC channels.
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edDV · Posted: Feb 28, 2008 11:32

Stingray · Member Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Location: Finland...

SatStorm · Posted: Mar 17, 2008 14:36

Unfortunately, the Eurovision "contest" owned by EBU so when they have a new technology to offer, they demonstrate it through Eurovision.

That HD-MAC I mention before? Well, eurovision used to demonstrate it back in the mid 80s...