Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: TCM HD still missing the boat

This is topic TCM HD still missing the boat in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 12-20-2009, 09:26 AM:

I just flipped over to Turner Classic Movies in HD and they are showing "How The West Was Won" in a terrible transfer. It is obviously from the latest restoration because the Cinerama "join lines" are virtually non-existent. The image, however, is very soft and lacking in detail. I would say it's not even the quality of a DVD in spite of the scan lines being minimized by upconverting. The silent movies they show on Sunday nights look exponentially better! As a fan of classic films this is frustrating as I know that the blu-ray of this title is gorgeous. Perhaps on specific titles there is a window favoring the video division? I will have to take a look this afternoon and see what the image looks like on "Ben-Hur". It looked great on the promo.

In contrast TNT HD showed "Wizard of Oz" last night and it was a beautiful HD presentation.

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 12-21-2009, 12:17 PM:

Dr. Zhivago looked really good. They said it was a "restored" version and it might have been true HD. Ben-Hur and King of Kings looked marginally better than HTWWW but definitely not true HD. Again TNT had that gorgeous Wizard of Oz on at the same time. I don't quite understand why they are using a poor version of HTWWW on TCM.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-21-2009, 02:47 PM:

Joe,

HOW THE WEST WAS WON was one of the movies that made me take the plunge to Blu Ray early this year when only the smiebox version was going to be available on BD only. It came out when I still did not have a Blu ray player so I bought the standard deluxe edition and purchased it again on BD about a month later after I got the HD playback device. It was unfortunate TCH was not too creative when they aired the restored widescreen version and not the Smilebox. Just think of the kind of impression it would have made if people could have seen a simulation of the original three strip Cinerama presentation. That would have been soooooo cool! [Smile]

Dr. Zhivago was announced as a upcoming BD in 2010 but no release date has been set. It will come in a digibook packaging and that will be nice Can't wait!

-Claude