Bacon on the teevee

[cyrano]

Somebody who understands televisions may be able to help.
I just saw an ad for the classic Rankin/Bass "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", but it's Now in Hi-Def. But.... if the original material was shot in our glorious granular lo-fi kinescoping that I grew up with, won't Hi-Def just give you glorious granular lo-fi kinescoping with more pixels per inch?

Also, lunch involves the 'heart smart' marinara.... with four strips of bacon.

Comments

[evilmagnus]

Depends.

If it's a new transfer from film it could be HD - film stock is a 'very high def' (kinda-sorta handwavy) analog source.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing it's the same sort of process involved in remastering or colorizing. Intelligent algorithms filling in the gaps, supplemented by human artists' interpretations.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

It depends entirely on the original medium, and how much time/effort/money the studio put into remastering it. If it was shot on film, then (as evilmagnus says) you could see a significant increase in quality, as analog film holds far more information than even a high definition digital picture. (With many older films using puppetry, however, this may or may not be a plus - in much the same way that HD porn is often unappealing because it makes flaws and blemishes on the actors much more noticeable. Similarly, I'd expect that a true high-def remaster of "Rudolph" wouldn't be all that desirable - all you're going to get with a higher definition picture is a much clearer view of the seams and hot glue spots that put together the puppets.)

lil_m_moses' suggestion is also a possibility; that's actually what an upscaling DVD player does when it plays a standard-definition video on a high-def screen. It looks perfectly fine on most displays, and they might have gone that route - it'd be cheaper than a full remaster. However, the difference in quality is noticeable (especially on larger displays), not to mention most people can get the same quality with the aforementioned upscaling DVD player, so if they're charging full Blu-Ray price for it they'd likely have a lot of film buffs crying foul. But then, I'm going to guess that "Rudolph" isn't exactly marketed to the crowd that would know these things, so they might just skimp and release the upscaled version. Point of note - if the original was shot on VHS or some equally low-fi (and cheap) source, this would be the only option available.