Knight Rider, The Equalizer, Battlestar Galactica in high-definition on Universal HD
 

If you get Universal HD, they're showing The Equalizer and Knight Rider (the latter starting with the feature-length pilot) starting on Monday, January 2nd.

The first half of season two of Battlestar Galactica debuts in HD tomorrow.

Knight Rider was filmed in HD? I'd be surprised if they shot it in 16mm.

D

Remastered and upconverted to high-definition for broadcast on Universal HD.

Dollars to doughnuts, it's not upconverted.

It was shot on 35mm.

Film has a higher resolution than HD, so if you want to look at it that way, yeah.

A number of other older TV shows shot and edited on film have been retransferred from the original elements and aired in HDTV -- Wiseguy, Hogan's Heroes, Square Pegs, and Charlie's Angels are a few I can think of off the top of my head. I don't believe Cheers has aired in HDTV, but it's been retransferred and is ready for it. Seinfeld was handled in a different way, but likewise there. (HD clips of the show, even though it's one of the few to retain its original aspect ratio, aired as part of a special on NBC last Thanksgiving.)

So what about the framing? Is it close enough or does it looked chopped off on the top & bottom?

Resized HD image:

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/4249/s1e1kr119no.jpg

DVD:

http://www.davidhasselhoffonline.com/Phoenix1.jpg

Wow a good chunk of top mirror is gone.

I noticed the pilot episode of Knight Rider was on yesterday, so I recorded it. Haven't had the chance to see it yet. Should be fun, since I never saw the pilot.

UGH, they crop the 4X3 image to 16X9 on a 20 year old TV series?

Is Universal's library that shallow that they're using Knight Rider to fill out HD timeslots? They have to have something a little more up date than that. How about V.I.P. reruns?

They're pretty stingy with what they show on Universal HD.

I think I like my DVDs of KR better.

This is what I was afraid of... Whywhywhy must they crop the show to the 16x9 ratio? Just show it in 4x3 HD.

I was interested in this for about 5 seconds. Then I saw the screenshots. No sale.