20+ year old movies in Blu-Ray

[Octoberist]

That's why I'm holding back in buying certain older films unless it's totally reformated and remastered.

 

[Bizi Jones]

Essentially any movie shot on film, whether it be 16mm (The Wrestler), 32 mm (most of today films), or 65/70 (LOA, 2001) will look great on blu-ray. Blu-ray (1920x1080) is essentially 2K (2048×1080) which a lot of the films are being scanned at, although the move to 4K (4096×2160) is now becoming more common. The negatives go through a digital intermediate where they get scanned and treated for color, image characteristic etc, and then from that they get converted to Blu-ray/DVD. Resolution of course isn't everything, color bit depth, video compression etc are all part of it, but the final objective is for BD to look as close to the original presentation as possible.
Here's a good article on restoring old films
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2880/the-truth-about-6k.html

the bullet points are that everything on film can be captured at 4k

and another with John Lowry, also pretty good
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/701/creating-the-video-future.html?print_page=y

 

[CelticPredator]

Predator looks fine....heh.

 

[xwolverine2]

I have the North By Northwest blu-ray and it's stunning. I've seen that movie so many times on different formats, and I have never seen or heard it like that ever. I'm sure that's what it looked like when it was first released in theaters.

i was hoping it'd look better lol

 

[TruerToTheCore]

why?

 

[Mace Dolex]

I usually read the reviews for BR releases even though I don't yet have a BR player, for instance I read that the Ghostbusters Blu-ray has more grain evident in the film.

 

[Bunker]

The Third Man is even more ****ing awesome on Blu-Ray.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Well, I have the first 3 Rambo movies on blu-ray and the picture is pretty stunning, not as good as the 4th movie obviously but pretty damn good regardless, much better than the DVD version anyway.

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

Or (a very unfortunate common scenario), improper high-def setup.

I've got this factor covered.

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

And the issue with that is the restoration/scanning process.

I can agree. The last time the first five Rockys were restored were probably when they were going in a box set a couple of years ago along with Rambo I-III.

I had an older version of Akira and the DTS video and audio re-mastered versions and they are miles apart in quality. I'm not sure if the Blu-Ray version released recently was updated at all.

 

[War Party]

i was hoping it'd look better lol

Why? The intent is to recreate the way it looked on film when it was first released.

 

[Gunga Diner]

Sometimes this bothers me. I don't care whether or not I can see every speck of sweat on Humphrey Bogart's face, because sometimes the fact that it looks the way it does is part of the charm. Sometimes higher quality seems to make it feel less cinematic. For example, the 10th anniversary of Clerks had such a nice transfer that it didn't quite have the grainy, gritty charm of the original. That is a movie I'd hate to see in blu-ray.

 

[Crook]

Higher quality does not mean it's less cinematic at all. It's just a platform to see the original template in the best possible way. The reason your example suffered, is because it was cleaned up from the source print. Whether or not this was Smith's intention is the real question. I'd always opt for whatever the director had in mind.

 

[ComicChick]

Exactly. Gone With the Wind is 70 years old and that movie looks fantastic on blu-ray. I also have Sleeping Beauty on blu-ray, which is a 50-year-old film, and that looks better than the DVD version I had.

Im so glad to hear that. i still havent opened my GWTW yet

 

[Figs]

35mm film technically has a 4x higher resolution than 1080 High Definition. The problem is that it is almost effortless to transfer a digitally shot movie to Blu-Ray, but transfering 35mm film to digital is a much more costly process. Factors like how well preserved the film is, the quality of film stock used, and the care put into the transfer process all determine how well a movie looks on Blu-Ray. If everything goes smoothly, 35mm films can look fantastic in HD.

In my opinion that is one of the most important factors. My gf and I just recently watched Vertigo from the Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection box set. There were some production notes about how the original print over time got messed up and looked terrible and how the restoration for this film was one of the largest and hardest ones ever done.

The film looked fan-****ing-tastic...and that was a regular DVD copy. So with Blu-Ray, the colors and detail would be even richer than the DVD. The DVD looked damn good for a film that was from 1958 and was known for having it's original print looking pretty bad in the past like with the VHS copies released. Blu-Ray would only look even better.