HD Content

[Tom Saurus]

I am curious about if everything that exists in video media can be converted to HD. I mean for example a tv show from the 70's like "The Beverly Hillbillies", can be converted to HD. Hollywood must have millions of hours of great entertainment to convert to HD, is there a limit to what can be done. For some reason I have it in my head that something would have to be digital already before it could be made into High Definition. Could someone expain thorougly what this new HD Era is going to be like?

[BJ_M]

it would be expensive , but anything shot on film could be easily converted to HD .. many tv shows where shot on film ..


but -

first find the neg and stabilize it and clean it.. finding the org. negs often very difficult and sometimes not posssable ...

scan it (or more in likely telecine it to D5 HD or HDCAM or maybe just d-beta) .

fix all the dust and scratchs , color correct it .. crop and resize it , edit it ..

match the mag stripped audio or whatever source the audio was on .... in many cases - have to pull off audio from the distro. tapes that were sent to the stations (3/4" or even 1" , or newer SP or D-Beta) that were made of the original transfers ..

re transfer to tape and encode ..


your looking at between 10k and 75k per 20 minutes of film .. depending on a number of factors .. plus add the cost of paying for the rights, if any music on there - that really can complicate things (why all the music was removed from WKRP)


it is also what i do a lot of daily -- many of these steps .

[DeadLamb]

I don't know how much older stuff will be "converted" to HDtv.. at least as far as widescreen or any sort of high res etc.. I mean in many cases just going to DVD format at 720x480 "raw" size results in stuff that just looks pretty bad.. Info is just not there to scale up for..

Now up sampling, as in just taking whatever and sending it as a digital 1080i signal or 720 is going on right now. Well, everything over the air digital in my area is 1080i or 720. NOT really true HD content but just being digital it looks way better then say the same show on cable tv..

I think for a long time that is all the "filler" sort of shows are going to be.. Same stuff we have now on network TV but upsampled to HDtv size as they send it out..

heck I'll give ya an example right now.. will fire up the TV card and you get whatever I find in 30 seconds..

ok here ya go.. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 1080i ad for some steak house.. Welcome to HDTV!!!!



So that is what HDtv is going to be for a while, plain old tv upsampled to HDtv size for the bulk of shows and primetime shows, sports and special events ect being true HDtv widescreen etc..

[Tom Saurus]

Thanks BJ_M and DeadLamb for the information you have provided.