High Definition & Blue Ray Technologies are a scam. Don't be fooled.

Originally posted by jedimiller

Originally posted by flice
you can ofcourse make Bladerunner look much nicer and more "HD" like.
But I bet if you compare it up close with a movie shot in HD you could still see the difference couldn't you?

Good point. you could try to make blade runner look like HD..and trust me they have..they are selling an HD, blue ray version for 100 each. But of course I know it's not really HD. it's all fake. and a rip off if you ask me. because people are ignorant on the subject.

and you could tell the difference..if blade runner was shot entirely with sony hd cams..you could absolutely without a doubt, know it's HD.

i've just checked and seen it listed on amazon in HD DVD for $27.95.

read this for info on how these next-gen DVD transfers are being done.

www.soundandvisionmag.com...

and please stop being an elitist for picture quality. no consumer has access to the master films of these movies.

[edit on 24-12-2007 by bizone]

watching a film that was transferred from film, to HD cannot happen. You cannot ever, watch a film that was shot in cellular film..and watch it on HD or Blue Ray. Because they are different technologies. .. transferring film to a computer destroys the original film image.

are you kidding me? Jedi, your posts are usually filled with misinformation and etc. but this is going overboard. Where is the source of this info? Your teacher? I assure you he is wrong. You may have taken lots of classes, but I actually work in a major studio, and can promise you this is not the case.

The fact is, film is an analog format. So if you convert any movie shot on film, when you transfer it to a digital format like HD, the resolution is much better than DVD, because the bigger HD format allows a more accurate digital reproduction of the analog originals.

Just like transferring music from reel to reels into CDs, or MP3s. Or better yet - transferring the sounds from an acoustic guitar, or a human voice, into a digital format. I assure you that is possible as well. It all has to do with resolution. Currently, the standard video format is 704x480. Think about setting your computer screen's resolution to 640x480, compared to 1024x768. The images are sharper, and since there are more pixels now, the original image can be more accurately emulated. No, it's not the actual analog footage, but every time technology advances, we get a step closer. We don't really need to display a perfect image anyways, because at a certain point, the pixels will be smaller than the human eye can see, and the frame rates are already beyond our brain's speed.

Originally posted by jedimiller
Well, I don't know too much about how Blue ray works, But I do remember hearing from my teacher that the blue color is the color that makes the movies look sharper

well your teacher has no idea what he is talking about. You are also very misinformed as to the difference between actual film vs digital storage.

All that being said, yes HD and Blu-Ray are scams, but so was DVD. The truth is, any type of tangible media that forces you to play it in specific hardware is a scam. Digital is the way to go.. luckily, the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray codes have already been cracked, so digital 720 and 1080p movies are already available online.

Hopefully the studios will get smart and start offering HD downloads soon, before they waste billions in legal fees trying to stop the inevitable yet again.

it has everything to do with convenience. Film is a hassle to work with, but can retain a high quality that's simply converted to a digital format. Digital allows you to dynamically change things easily, but it's limited as a source.

[edit on 24-12-2007 by scientist]

Film is a daunting project to convert & enhance frame by frame to digital video let alone HD and doing it by hand would be on the scale of re-making shrek
So software is the way to go and it has to enhance the resolution by techniques like averaging out the gaps while trying to keep shape outlines distinct. Results are less than perfect (by a mile or several).
If the hairs on the model's cheeks weren't in the original they certainly won't appear in the converted version (I assume you meant her face ).

Originally posted by scientist

All that being said, yes HD and Blu-Ray are scams, but so was DVD. The truth is, any type of tangible media that forces you to play it in specific hardware is a scam.

Yes, but DVD was not trying to sell itself as this magical format. The problem I have is in being true to the consumer..telling people out there that movies like bladerunner are in HD when it's not 100% true. I'd rather watch the original version of blade runner on DVD, without the special effects added and all the cleanups. And I saw the final cut at the movies and they changed the entire film, added more blue colors and effects and things...that's wrong from my point of view.

Maybe I should be working in a studio like you to get some sense into those pesky marketers.

Originally posted by scientist
Hopefully the studios will get smart and start offering HD downloads soon, before they waste billions in legal fees trying to stop the inevitable yet again.

NO! heck NO! I'd rather watch a beta tape than watch a movie on an Ipod, Mp3 player or on a computer using digital storage. there is no way a movie will ever look good using a microchip memory type device. Downloading movies on the internet should be illegal and punishable by law. another reason why I hate youtube, we have to fight to stop piracy scientists..and downloading a movie only endorses that. Someone just told me at work that I could watch the golden compass on the internet..I refused. and I wish I could pick up the phone and report these people to the police.

Originally posted by jedimiller
there is no way a movie will ever look good using a microchip memory type device.

Why the hell not? When it's on tape, it's stored as magnetic 1s and 0s. When it's on optical discs, it's stored as holes and flats representing 1s and 0s. When it's on chip, it's stored as electrical 1s and 0s.

What's the difference? They're all 1s and 0s....

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Why the hell not? When it's on tape, it's stored as magnetic 1s and 0s. When it's on optical discs, it's stored as holes and flats representing 1s and 0s. When it's on chip, it's stored as electrical 1s and 0s.

What's the difference? They're all 1s and 0s....

Hi beachcoma,I admit I've never seen a film on a chip. I've seen video clips over my cellphone and they look like crap. I've also seen people watching movies on ipods, so small it's hard to see. I think the reason that is, because the digital memory can never hold that organic feel about film. it can also get lost in all the times and loose relativity and overtime not lasting. I think you have have about 4GB's and still not fit the entire star wars film in the appropiate size relating to the original. you would have to digitize it down and dumb it down for the player. hope that makes sense?


Edit; and they tried that in the 70's with atari games..you know when you slided the cartridge in? later you started having the connectors fading and the connections didn't work.

[edit on 24-12-2007 by jedimiller]

Originally posted by jedimiller
Hi beachcoma,I admit I've never seen a film on a chip. I've seen video clips over my cellphone and they look like crap. I've also seen people watching movies on ipods, so small it's hard to see.

That's because of compression and lack of resolution. If bitrate used was alright, and there was enough space, there shouldn't be a problem. For cellphones and iPods, the encoder needs to re-code the source so that it actually fits the phone -- this causes the bitrate to drop, hence quality drops.

If they coded it for high bitrate, the quality would be good (although it's still limited by the resolution of the screen). Problem is, higher quality requires more space. A standard DVD can hold 4.3GB of space. That's 4.3GB for a Star Wars DVD. That is why it looks clear on DVD -- more space for a higher bitrate + resolution. Blue Ray discs can hold 50GB, HD-DVD 30GB.

Now do you see why those discs can store higher quality videos? More space. That's all there is to it. If an iPod could hold that much space, you can be sure the quality will be better (but it's still limited by the screen size and resolution). There are chips out in the market that can hold the same amount of data as a Blue Ray disc.

Now if only they could come up with an iPod that has a built in projector...

You might as well be saying that DVD is useless because there will be no difference between that and a video cassette.

The only way youd have any argument is if the original film is a lower quality than the DVD its being converted too and that will only happen with really old films, not the terminator.

You just sound like youre parroting what someone told you without thinking about it yourself.

Originally posted by jedimiller

Yes, but DVD was not trying to sell itself as this magical format. The problem I have is in being true to the consumer..telling people out there that movies like bladerunner are in HD when it's not 100% true. I'd rather watch the original version of blade runner on DVD, without the special effects added and all the cleanups. And I saw the final cut at the movies and they changed the entire film, added more blue colors and effects and things...that's wrong from my point of view.

Maybe I should be working in a studio like you to get some sense into those pesky marketers.

Lets look at this in another way...

If I have a physical picture and I scan it to let’s say less than 1 meg it is the picture but rather coarse in the digital reproduction. If I now scan it to 10 megs I get a much finer digital print, but it is now 10 megs of data. My only limits here are the quality of the physical print and the size of the digitial data. Checking a few film sties I see that 10 megs is about equal in quality to Fujichrome Velvia 35mm.

Now when we are talking 70mm film it is of a far better quality than anything digital at this time. (Notice I didn’t say HD or blue ray?)

Below is a chart that shows 2k and 4k digital movie projectors. 2k is the standard with 4k just coming up on line. This clearly shows 70mm as the best out there still. So the question is can we reach the quality of old movies shot in 70mm with digital? I would say no, and 70mm is still better than what we have available today. (This is coming from a layman)



Now this takes us to HD and Blue Ray. Both of these are just storage devices. The old CD can hold 700MB and that is why the older disc players had those record size disc that you had to flip halfway through the movie, and then the normal DVD came along with its 4.7 GB, so now we get our movies on one little disc with the extra storage and MEPG-2 compression, but today we are still limited with DVD to about 9.4GB (17.0GB 2 sides 2 layers) and so this still doesn’t even come close to the storage needed for 70mm quality.

Along comes 1080i TVs and that great DVD starts to not look so good anymore as it once did on our old 480i TVs, and so we go back to the old 70mm and push the digital quality of it once again, and just like the 1 meg picture that is pushed to 10 megs to equal 35mm film we need more storage on a disc for the higher quality movies.

This is where HD and Blue Ray come into the picture for they can hold about 50GB (2 sided) and that is what gives us the extra room to make higher quality digital movies. Both of these are nothing more than storage and whether you put games on them (Play Station 3) or a movie it doesn’t matter for they are storage just like you blank DVD or CD sitting on your desk.

Now I challenge anyone to convince me that old 70mm film made before anything digital is of a lesser quality than HD today, and in fact we still have a long way to go to equal that old 70mm in digital even in the movie theater. What this all basically means is the limiting factor is not the 70mm film and so with better and better digital capabilities we will come closer and closer to the real thing. In the end HD movies ARE better than DVDs, VHS, Beta etc and should be on your future Christmas list.

Originally posted by jedimiller
Yes, but DVD was not trying to sell itself as this magical format. The problem I have is in being true to the consumer..

You may be too young to have been in the market for a DVD player some 12 years or so ago. These machines ran north of $700. Yes, the DVD was pretty much billed as the final frontier in image and sound quality and guess what, for a while it was. The DVD movies looked decidedly crispier than the tape, and still do. The 480p scan DVD players can produce is twice as much as the "real" VHS resolution, 240 lines, going to 480i. It really works magic on screen, not to mention the sound.

telling people out there that movies like bladerunner are in HD when it's not 100% true. I'd rather watch the original version of blade runner on DVD, without the special effects added and all the cleanups.

Well it's your right. Some people like the tape decks and turntables for their music. I personally love analog synthesizers (and have a collection of these machines).

EDIT: I just re-read this thread and jedimiller, your posts are mostly based on misunderstanding and are mostly without technical merit. Sorry, but this is true.



[edit on 24-12-2007 by buddhasystem]

Is it okay for this guy to blast us with misinformation, lies and assumptions that aren't backed up? Infact they've been debunked already, could the mods please close this thread?

Jedi-

First of all... my post did not contain "my personal views about HD"
that are "biased by looking at my name High Definition Films"...

What I posted are FACTS.

The only OPINIONS I stated were regarding when HD will REPLACE
film as the shooting medium of choice for Hollywood filmmakers.

Another thing-

You actually stated that "a 35mm movie, watched in the home, should be watched with a film projector"

Um... Jedi, a 35mm film projector costs over a quarter million dollars.

In fact- that is why HD (or Blu-Ray... I use the term HD to refer to HDTV, not HD-DVD in particular) is so fantastic for movie lovers...
because i actually captures so much of the original visual information.

And no- the pixels do not FILL IN, as you state, the chemical elements if the film image.

A TELECINE videotapes the film image onto the video medium... in this case, a HD medium that captures most of the clarity, color and depth of field of the movie ou would see in the theatre.

Jedi... I do not blame you for your misinfornation.

I blame the teachers at the film school.

I went to NYU Film... is that were you are now?

There are bad teachers at every school- I sure had a couple bad ones there...

But please- stop defending your wrong point of view-
here is a chance to learn... a little from me, and a lot
from other smart members who have posted terrific
information and insights on this particular thread.

HD- in all its' forms- is a breakthrough and a revolutionary product.

HD is why I, and other poor filmmakers like me,
will be able to break in and find an audience for my films-
in fact, HD is why I will be able to make professional films
who no money.

HD IS NOT A SCAM.

HD the evolution of the image.

HD in the convergence of film and video.

HD is, in a word, amazing.


Merry Christmas, Jedi.

If you give me your address, I will mail you an Xmas gift...

A Blu-Ray DVD!

Sorry for jumping in late.

This post is more for jedi than anybody else and a lot of what I'm going to say goes along the same lines of what you've already said, so you can skip right over it.

Originally posted by jedimiller

Originally posted by HighDefinitionFilms
With all due respect to Mr Jedi,
as a filmmaker,
I must say you could not be more mistaken...

So legalizer get's 15 stars for calling me a fool?

Sorry, but what you said in your OP really was foolish and ignorant. I won’t make the same judgment about your character, but it’s definitely true of your post.

And Highdefinition gets another 15 for debating the subject and including nothing but his own beliefs on digital film.

“His own beliefs”??? Highdefinition gave you the facts, and summed them up very well at that. Better than I could have hoped to.

Look, I am all for digital film, but it will never replace real film, never.

Just like cars would never replace horse drawn carriages.…

but I take Highdefinitionfilms comments are somewhat bias, with a username like that.

And that’s fair enough. You’re right to be skeptic. Now go do your homework. You’ll find out that highdefinitionfilms is right.

You guys make good points, but most of you validity comes from comparing the DVD bits with the TV resolutions..and that has absolutely nothing to do with what i'm talking about. I am talking about selling a product as HD film. lets make things clearer, So, I wont get personally attacked anymore. Having taken 5 film courses, I think gives my points more valid? I think so.

What is the name of the course of studies you’re taking?

From your comments so far, it sounds as if you still don’t have any technical grounding. You sound like someone coming from the artistic side of things with dangerous little technical knowledge.

1. lets not label the films as HD films. Lets label then as. "This movie was shot using 35mm film, then it was tranferred into a computer and the grains were filled in with computer pixels". This is not an HD film whatsoever.

But it is HD. It just wasn’t filmed with digital equipment.

2. if the film was shot entirely in HD, like Revenge of the Sith. then we can say. "this film was shot in HD and is meant to be seen in HD"
those should be the rules.

But RotS wasn’t filmed in HD. It was filmed in digital, as far as I know, at even higher-than-HD resolution.

So no, those shouldn’t be the rules, because they’re just flat-out wrong.

Now think about this, you take a photograph from 1980 on film. you scan it on your computer and show it to your friends. is the photo now a digital photograph? no. that's my point. you cannot make an old photo print new and show it off as digital. that's what's happening with film.

Um yes, it is now a digital photograph. The distinction is just that it wasn’t made with a digital camera.

you are fooling the viewer and the consumer.

No, you aren’t. A true analog film mastered to HD is now an HD film. It might not necessarily be a good one, but it’s true HD.

when you get that 1980 photograph and make it digital and tell people it's an original digital print you are lying to them.

“Original digital print” is an oxymoron. But yeah, to say that it was originally digital would be a lie. But you’re not doing it. You’re just selling it as a digital product. Which it now IS!

I am a purist.

No, you’re beyond purist.

I am not talking about what HD TV you have and how good it looks. of course it's going to look good, the original film has been violated and transformed into something that's not. so please, let the personal attacks end there.

It has not been violated in any way. Please, stop the alarmist BS. Nothing is being violated or destroyed.

If George Lucas makes the empire strikes back into an HD film, then those purists better be pissed, because filling in those grains is like painting over the original film and you don't do that to art.

It’s not “filling in those grains”. It’s taking the original film and giving the customer a better digital copy than they had before. To use highdefinitionfilm’s numbers, it could be 1,920×1,080 vs 720×480.

I'm just saving people money here, so they don't have to go out and buy their favorite movies all over again..and in two versions.

No. You’re spreading your own harsh and uneducated opinion as fact. You’re spreading disinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt.

I already have the movie "The thing" in 3 versions. VHS, DVD collectors edition, DVD special edition. And now I have to get the HD and Blue ray editions because the studios are pushing for it.

No, you don’t. It’s your choice.

I don't see why people get so irritated with a subject like this.

It isn’t the subject that they’re getting irritated with. It’s you and your ignorance they’re getting irrirated with. They’re giving you the cold hard facts and showing you how you’re wrong, and you’re just deriding them and ignoring it all.

it's just a film choice and what kind of technology you want to use..I for one prefer film and Tube televisions. Sorry, can't get into all the LCD hype.

And that’s your choice.

But when you try to tell us that the newer formats aren’t technically superior, which in plain fact they are, and continue to try to tell us that when you’ve been given the numbers… well that’s just asinine.

I just purchased the depeche mode remastered CD's. lol. they are basically cleaned up and filled in with sound to make them sound better on CD. but of course I know that they never sounded that good to begin with, so it's a fraud. but I got them anyways, because I love depeche mode.

Wow, that’s really harsh. You really have a thing against remastering, don’t you?

Did Depeche Mode work alongside the sound engineer(s) who remastered their work? If they did, then it’s still all their work. And even if they didn’t, it’s a long way from being fraud.

If you weren’t a longstanding member here, I would definitely have pegged you as a TROLL at this point.

you could try to make blade runner look like HD..and trust me they have..they are selling an HD, blue ray version for 100 each. But of course I know it's not really HD. it's all fake.

You are of course WRONG. This isn’t even the least bit subjective. You are in plain point of fact, objectively, 100% flat-out dead wrong.

and a rip off if you ask me.

That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. Some people might not like the movie. Those people would say that buying it on any media, no matter how good, is a rip off.

because people are ignorant on the subject.

Sweet irony!

and you could tell the difference..if blade runner was shot entirely with sony hd cams..you could absolutely without a doubt, know it's HD.

You’ve alread been told that this is wrong enough. It’s just absolutely amazing that you’re still repeating it.

Originally posted by jedimiller

Originally posted by scientist
All that being said, yes HD and Blu-Ray are scams, but so was DVD. The truth is, any type of tangible media that forces you to play it in specific hardware is a scam.

Yes, but DVD was not trying to sell itself as this magical format.

♫ Oh yes it was! ♫

You must be young. The movie companies did (and still do!) push us to replace our old VHS copies of movies with DVD versions.

The problem I have is in being true to the consumer..telling people out there that movies like bladerunner are in HD when it's not 100% true.

It is 100% true.

I'd rather watch the original version of blade runner on DVD, without the special effects added and all the cleanups. And I saw the final cut at the movies and they changed the entire film, added more blue colors and effects and things...that's wrong from my point of view.

So? That’s not the DVD’s fault. That’s the fault of the producers for wanting to change things.

Maybe I should be working in a studio like you to get some sense into those pesky marketers.

And hopefully someone else at the studio will get some sense into you.…

I'd rather watch a beta tape than watch a movie on an Ipod, Mp3 player or on a computer using digital storage. there is no way a movie will ever look good using a microchip memory type device.

Wow. Are you for real?

Digital is digital. It doesn’t care about the medium. Watching a digital movie off of a hard drive is exactly the same as watching it off of a DVD.

Downloading movies on the internet should be illegal and punishable by law.

Don’t be ridiculous.

I've seen video clips over my cellphone and they look like crap.

That’s because to stream a movie to a cell phone, a ridiculously low bitrate has to be used. That means a low resolution (which you would want to use, since the screen has such a low resolution anyway) and heavy compression.

I think the reason that is, because the digital memory can never hold that organic feel about film.

What. The. Hell?

I think you have a lot to learn. Analog vs digital, media, resolution, bitrate… you seem to be equally ignorant of all of them.

it can also get lost in all the times and loose relativity and overtime not lasting.

??????????

Okay, could you repeat that? In ENGLISH this time?

I think you have have about 4GB's and still not fit the entire star wars film in the appropiate size relating to the original. you would have to digitize it down and dumb it down for the player.

The old DVD format happens to be just a little over 4GB. Go figure.

Edit; and they tried that in the 70's with atari games..you know when you slided the cartridge in? later you started having the connectors fading and the connections didn't work.

Tried what with atari games?

ATARI and NES games had problems with the loading mechanisms and the edge connectors getting abraded or corroded. And they had totally worked out the issue by the 1990s. The SNES, Sega Genesis and N64 were all cartridge-based systems that rarely had such problems.

But I don’t see how that’s relevant to the subject of video quality on a digital medium.…

reply to post by HighDefinitionFilms


Good posts, HD is the future, and ofcourse it will lead the way to even better formats in the future. It seems jedimiller doesnt like change.

And I dont see the problem even if they are a scam(which they are not) A blueray movie on a blueray player on a HDTV looks AMAZING!! compared to the normal dvd on normal tv,thats proof enough to go ahead and buy HD technology.





[edit on 24-12-2007 by _Phoenix_]

From what I have read/heard 1080progressive scan is superior to 1080interlaced scan. P is faster, high speed action tends to blur on interlaced.

Originally posted by jpm1602
From what I have read/heard 1080progressive scan is superior to 1080interlaced scan. P is faster, high speed action tends to blur on interlaced.

Yeah, undoubtedly, progressive is better than interlaced.

I’m not even sure why, technically, interlacing would even be desirable these days.

May be unrelated, but Ive got XBOX360, and Im confused as to which is better, 1080i or 720P I think 720P has faster framerate, but whats so great about 1080i is it better quality? Probably offtopic.