It's been standard for some time for studios to transfer films to video in HD and then downconvert them for DVD. For a change, Hollywood had an eye toward the future so they wouldn't have to pay to remaster a film for broadcast on HD channels or for an HD home video format.

Glass masters are used to actually press DVDs. They are not compatible with Blu-rays. A more likely scenario in your latest Blu-ray conspiracy theory would be for a studio to reuse an SD transfer to author the Blu-ray master.

I believe "It's Always Sunny..." was confirmed to be an upconvert.

There's zero question. It says so on the packaging, and there's even an extra on the disc where they talk about it being an upconvert.

Blu-ray discs are virtually never transferred from prints. Catalog titles are generally transferred from an interpositive or an internegative.

Also, 97% of the time, the DVD is downconverted from an HD master, so they already have a high-def master handy to use for Blu-ray. You can definitely tell which studios evaluate the quality of dated HD masters and retransfer vs. the ones that just use whatever they have on the shelf regardless.

Merging with the previous thread on this...

9 Songs is scheduled for release on May 18. This is a situation like 28 Days Later where the movie was shot on SD video and will be upconverted for Blu-ray.

These are very rare, however.

Inland Empire comes out in the UK on Monday. Can't wait to see some screens for that.

Weren't a lot of DVDs prior to 2000 (if not a date later than that) created from actual SD transfers (i.e. as in no HD master was created yet at that time)?

I remember that being controversy with Anchor Bay titles. In the beginning of the decade, we had anamorphic releases of films like Halloween, Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Evil Dead II, etc; but towards the middle of the decade, Anchor Bay re-released them in the "Divimax" editions stating the transfers now came from an HD source.

[It make sense as the Halloween Blu-ray resembles that of the Divimax transfer and not that of the original two-disc limited edition.]

Anchor Bay definitely did that as a standard practice (for a lot longer than much of anyone else, probably), and I'm sure a lot of the smaller shops did too, but I don't think too many of the major studios did. (If they reused a standard def master, a lot of the time it was recycling something from the Laserdisc era.)

Isn't that a case where the source is transferred to film, and then that film is transferred to HD video? So, at least the grain is in HD?

What about movies like Dog Soldiers and Paranormal Activity? Maybe not so much on PA, but I was under the impression that Dog Soldiers was shot on SD and upconverted (if u can call it that) for a BD release.

Dog Soldiers was shot on Super 16.

oh ok

Super 16 is still "higher resolution" than Blu-ray, but not by much.

I thought I read that the French Bound Blu-ray was merely an up-convert. That's what kept me from ordering it, especially at the premium it commands.

Go for the Japanese. It's excellent. Still a high premium on the disc, but if you're a fan of the film then it's pretty much your only option - we're not likely to see it in the States anytime soon.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRe...nd_blu-ray.htm

Given that the DVD for that title was an interlaced nightmare filled with aliasing and jaggies from start to finish, a Blu-ray may actually be an improvement, just by virtue of being natively progressive. (Assuming the movie was shot at 480p, which I'm not certain about.)