SpiceWare's Blog

In the opening scene there seems to be a vertical pan between the SD and HD. In the SD more of the calendar and window are visible, but in the HD the bottom of the chair legs are visible. Maybe a different frame.

 

For an SD to HD conversion horror story look at Babylon 5. The live action sequences were shot on film in widescreen (although I think at 30 fps), but all of the CGI work (including green screen) was rendered in 4:3 480i (for NTSC broadcast). The film survived but all of the CGI files were lost. When SciFi got it they retelecined the film in 16:9 HD. But rather than preserve the 4:3 framing all of the scenes with CGI were cropped to 16:9 (360i) then upconverted to a blurry mess. Unfortunately, that's the version which was put on DVD rather than the OAR.

Looks like I did grab different frames - the gap between the bottom-right of the Toy Drive box and the lawn chair looks to be a little larger in the SD version. Not surprised as I just hit SPACE on the keyboard to pause it on one recording and attempted to get close on the other. I don't know if it's possible to step frame-by-frame when watching it via EyeTV - it's not something I'd normally use, so I've not bothered to look for it.

 

Title sequence shot looks like different frames too - the highlight in Donna's hair is slightly different (look midscreen, above the two Rs in Starring).

 

 

B5 was one of my favorite shows when it aired. I'd picked up seasons 1 and 2 on DVD to watch it over again from the beginning, but the quality was so bad I couldn't make it thru season 1. I didn't bother picking up the rest of the series.

Man, I'm glad to not be that much of a purist. We just finished re-watching the entire series, movies, Crusade and all, starting on the 20th anniversary of the pilot broadcast, completely by accident, it was just when I'd finished ripping the first season to our Plex server. While there was a lot that hadn't aged well (mostly cheap costumes, props, some soap-opera-level acting and terrible fight choreography), I didn't think it looked any worse on our 46" screen than any other SD-only content. Certainly it's a hell of a lot better looking than my Star Blazers DVDs.

Purist? Not really - if I were I wouldn't want to watch the HD version of That '70s show as "it wasn't what was originally broadcast".

 

Not wanting to watch the B5 DVDs is along the lines of not wanting to listen to a record with a scratch in it - sure most of what you hear is fine, but that reoccurring "click" is quite detrimental to the experience.

 

Screen size could also be a factor, I know if I watch an older show in a window it looks a lot better than it does when blown up to 65".