Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Upconverted DVDs on HDTV

This is topic Upconverted DVDs on HDTV in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-19-2009, 02:47 PM:

I am just amazed how good many of my DVds look after they have been upconverted by my Blu-Ray player and viewed on my 1080p HDTV. One recent example was the two disc special edition of THE KING & I. The image was very sharp and extremely colorful and it looked like I was watching a Blu-Ray disc. Another similar experiences were the THE TEN COMMENDMENTS and VERTIGO, both VistaVision films Could it be the 55mm film stock and the 35mm eight perforation negative image have anything to do with the high quality image? These were not the only films on DVD that looked great that has been up converted by my Bd player. practically all of the DVD I have watched on my HDTV look good and this has made me very happy I had stopped using my old DVD player although it was a a very expensive Denon player with SACD playback and my wonderful Sony Trinitron analogue TV. Because of my experience, I have been trying to get a lot of my friends to scrap their current system and upgrade to Blu Ray and 1080p HDTV.

-Claude

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 12-19-2009, 03:32 PM:

And you are probably watching NTSC ("american") DVD's which have a resolution of 720x480 and encode 23.96 frames per second which then are un-evenly spaced out interlaced over 29.97fps. And that's if they are well made (some actually encode the full fake 29.97fps, which is even worse).

Imagine how good a properly made, anamorphic PAL DVD looks like, having a 720x576 resolution and an extra (non-made up, just accelerated) frame per second (25) without interlace artifacts (i.e. two consecutive fields make a "perfect" frame, so 100hz tv sets which have been very common for ... ever here can display what amounts to virtual progressive frames).

That's one of the reasons why in Europe i.e. blu-ray is not getting so popular so fast. You get HD from TV (very little but more-and-more all the time) and upconverting DVD players (which cost as little as $50 around here literally, really) play back PAL DVD's looking more than good enough for the general public.

Sure blu-ray has more resolution and it's taking-over quite rapidly. But also, blu-rays are not made anamorphic, so their actual resolution can be something like 1920x804 on a Scope movie. 804 is not all that much difference (in vertical res) from 576 (anamorphic) PAL. But in all reality, if you respect the 2.35 ratio, it wouldn't be 576 either, but you get the point.

Again, not saying blu-ray is not far better. Just that some PAL DVD's can look really excellent. Specially when anamorphically enhanced, which virtually all titles are, and upconverted, which most DVD players in the market in the past 5 years do, even cheap ones, and displayed progressively 576p (i.e. in 100hz displays).

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-19-2009, 04:45 PM:

Wow! [Smile]

Thank you for the information, Julio

-Claude