Well, "open matte" implies that it was originally matted, but I can't imagine that a television production from a couple of decades back would have been shot with any sort of widescreen exhibition in mind. I would be very surprised if anything other than 1.33:1 was considered the OAR of a TV show like this. That's not always true for miniseries and TV movies, some of which were made with European theatrical screenings in the back of their minds, but I doubt that's the case with a TV show like Knight Rider.

The negligible difference on the sides probably owes more to the different transfers of this material than anything else. (Find any movie released multiple times on DVD, study them closely, and you're likely to see similar variations.) The 4x3 and 16x9 versions are 'stretched' a little differently, but I tried to match them up as closely as I could:

http://www.wittydomainname.net/me/images/photos/126.jpg

White Lion says: Wait

...because no studio is going to make a commitment to something that won't make them money. A niche company like Criterion can anchor its business around that sort of idealism, but it's unrealistic to expect a bottom-line-focused, multinational media conglomerate to do the same.

Largely the same as it does on DVD, but it's a ridiculous comparison. Knight Rider was shot on film. Three's Company was shot on video. No one is arguing that decades-old, shot-on-video programs are going to offer any significant difference on these formats.

Why don't you read the whole sentence? I said unless the studios master them well you won't see a huge difference on older movies.

Which they are. If you've been paying attention, you'd know that all the movies in the last few years have been mastered in HD. No reason not to expect it.

I think what is puzzling is the way you seem to be singling out "older movies" for this statement. A poorly mastered 2006 movie will look just as crappy as a poorly mastered 1956 movie.

If you are trying to say that a new master of an older film will look no better than SD, or that making it look better will require more work, I disagree. Any film shot on good quality 35mm contains more than four times the detail of HD, even 1080p. These films, properly mastered, will look amazing on HD-DVD/Blu-ray, regardless of their age. I can't imagine any studio attempting to use an old, non-HD master as the source for a new HD disc. For such cases it stands to reason that a new HD master will be created.

On the other hand, if you are talking about restoration and preservation of older films, that is a totally different matter.

This was your whole sentence:

"I will upgrade to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray to buy a few certain titles that will shine on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray (Star Wars, Matrix, LOTR) but I think for the most part many titles older titles will not benefit from HD."

Now. How does that clarify your position? I'm sorry, but it's a silly notion that only newer movies will benefit from HD.

And what studios have not been mastering everything in HD for the past 5 (10?) years? If a release needs a new master, it will be done. And why does the mastering only matter for older movies? Again, that makes no sense. A shitty master will give a shitty transfer regardless of film age. Specifying older movies as a problem makes no sense at all.

You're (deliberately?) misinterpreting his message. The studios, big and small alike, have been mastering damn near everything -- from blockbusters like Lord of the Rings down to obscurities like Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural and never-released-on-DVD films like Night of the Comet for a number of years now. Doesn't matter if it was released in 1964 or this past February: 1080p HD masters have been the industry standard for quite some time.

Don't put words in my mouth.

I never mentioned anything about "hot hits."

And btw? The "movie snob" attitude is getting old.

:thumbsup:

and even Criterion teases us with their standard DVD are being mastered and restored from High Definition digital transfers.

oh the wait is painful.

Improvements in cameras, lenses, and film stocks, but there's no cut-off point where HD transfers of movies look dramatically better, and there's no reason why older films should inherently look worse than newer ones.

I've watched well over a hundred movies in high-definition from the mid-'50s on, and the transfers come in all shapes and sizes. I don't see how someone could watch Forbidden Planet in high-definition and say that there's little-to-no difference between the DVD and the HD presentation. Even long-forgotten, lower-budget TV shows like Square Pegs look astonishing in HD.

And even then, many older films that have undergone some painstaking restoration will be able to rival today's films in every regard when they turn up on HD-DVD/Blu-ray.

I'm betting the classic films that Warner has restored recently like Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz are going to look amazing in HD. I bet the original King Kong might even be worth getting again in HD.

Case in point. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was just recently premiered on HBO-HD. The transfer was nothing short of phenomenal. It looked better than some movies on HBO-HD that were released theatrically in the past 3-5 years.

Image, apparently. Which is why they're not supporting either HD format, citing too much expense in converting to HD mastering.

What really sucks about this is that Image owns Criterion, and Criterion has been mastering in HD, but because the parent company won't support either format neither will Criterion.

Jaws the Revenge is worth is just for Mario Van Peeble's performance (and death scene) alone!

I thought that too, until I tried to watch Timecop the other night. It was 16X9 instead of the proper 2:35 (as it was presented on laserdisc). So zoomed in it was unwatchable, which is surprising since they're showing other Van Damme movies this month in the OAR.

...for movies added to their schedule over the past 5 or 6 months, but for movies that originally aired aired before that (Timecop, The Frighteners, etc.), the majority of their 2.35:1 films were not and continue to not be aired in the correct aspect ratio.

It'll take me a bit to unearth the actual quote since the Mobius Home Video Forum's search engine is worthless, but Don May, Jr. of Synapse Films made it sound as if the compression/authoring was the costly part of releasing on HD-DVD/Blu-ray initially, not really the process of producing a master tape. I believe he said it's because the authoring houses had to invest heavily in new hardware, and they're pushing a lot of those costs onto the early studio adopters.

It may be the case that Image hadn't been transferring their films in HD, but if they weren't, that might make them the largest of those smaller shops not to do so.