Question about older movies put on BD
 

So here's a question I've had in my head.
I got a PS3 and would really like to start building up my BD library.
I see alot of older movies coming out on BD.
How well do these movies transfer over onto a HD format when they were not shot with HD capabilities?
By this I'm about movies form the 80's and earlier.

Thanks!!

The shot on HD part is irrelevant. Most movies are shot on film, and film holds much more resolution than a Blu-Ray currently shows (1080 lines). So there's no reason an older film can't look great on Blu-Ray. The catch being that older films tend to need to be cleaned up and restored to look good. So there's an added cost in doing that, which studios may or may not do. But an older movie can look incredible on Blu-Ray, and it does benefit from the "High Def" capabilites of Blu-Ray. Granted newer movies due tend to look better in comparison, but there's no reason older movies can't look great as well.

I'll echo what Jericho said. As long as the movie was shot on film and the film elements were preserved, it can look great on Blu-ray. I have The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca on HD-DVD and both have excellent transfers despite the films being over 65 years old.

Excellent!!!!!
Thanks guys. Appreciate the response

if you have HDNet movies see how 'older' films look in HiDef - they look more like film than processed video (what current films tend to look like since they aren't actually shot on film anyway)

1956's 'High Society' looked amazing in HiDef... so was 'Bye Bye Birdie'

Casablanca, Robin Hood, and The Thing all look amazing in HD.

Check out Viva Las Vegas for a fairly old film with an excellent transfer.

Although digital filmmaking is on the rise, the majority of features are still shot on 35mm.

If I remember correctly, a 35mm frame has 3 to 12 million pixels, depending on the stock, lens, and shooting conditions. HD has 2 million pixels, so still got plenty of possible PQ upgrades eventually

as a comparison, Blade Runner was remastered in 4k resolution - with the special effect element (shot in 70mm) being remastered in 8k -eek- resolution.

This is truth.

My favorite "old" movie transfer is Black Rain, only because I haven't seen some of the other older movies.

'Close Encounters' was another film where the special effect shots were filmed in 65mm.

You'll find the same of just about any special effects film made before the age of digital compositing (starting in the mid-90s). With optical compositing, the image loses detail when the multiple plates are merged together and dubbed down a print generation. The more plates being used in a given frame, the more detail lost. VFX scenes had to be shot in 65mm to start with as high a quality source as possible, so that after all the compositing you'd wind up with an image about the same quality as the rest of the 35mm footage surrounding it.