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Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

A ton of movies were reissued on Blu-ray, re-scanned from film. DVD has garbage resolution and compression, while film is made to be projected on gigantic theater canvas. Surely you don't believe movie theaters were effectively displaying 720x480 or 720x576 at the size of canvas?

Consult this video, for example: https://youtu.be/sCv-dIFGcd0

Personally I find that even BD-rips made in SD resolution look better than DVD—if only for contrast enhancements made for reissues, and due to better compression formats.

Moreover, if the source was shot on 70mm film then people might still keep re-digitizing it in the 22nd century into fresh HD formats of the day.

View on HN

For anyone watching that video, and are interested in watching more classic racing in incredibly high fidelity, I recommend this collection of clips from the 1966 movie "Grand Prix". It's a proper old-school Hollywood movie.

They entered actual Formula 1 cars into a grand prix, strapped it with cameras, and recorded the whole thing. Other times they added new bodywork to a Formula 2 car and had the actors driving around on track - again with cameras strapped to the car. Being recorded in 70mm it's some of the best footage of on-board Formula 1 racing until well into the 2010s, and the advent of small 4k on-board cameras in modern races.

https://youtu.be/7HA71tYl640

IIRC (having trouble finding my source), MAS*H was shot on film but in 4:3 AR. It's been released in HD/Blu-ray now by being re-digitized but each scene has been cropped to be 16:9.

There's going to be a dead spot of TV/Movies where things were shot in SD on Video where they will be forever SD but older things, shot on film, can be brought to HD and newer things are either shot on Film or HD video.

I'm curious to see how quickly the things shot in HD Video become outdated by superior resolutions of 4k, 8k and whatever comes after and if there's a plateau of consumer/home resolution.

Star Trek tng was shot on 16:9 film, transferred to 4:3 video to be cut and turned into a final 4:3 video. When they did the blu ray remaster, they had to match and rescan every shot from the source film, re-edit each episode and recreate the special effects (when not produced on film). There was the thought to maybe scan the material in 16:9, but the scenes and crew only considered the 4:3 frame - in 16:9 there would often be crew or mics in the frame or even perhaps sets missing. So they kept the show in 4:3.

Apparently for later trek shows (ds9, voy) the film crews were more careful to respect the 16:9 frame, but those shows aren’t as popular and may never get the expensive blu ray makeover.

TNG has such careful framing too, even if they didn't have crew in the shot I bet it'd look off in 16:9 anyways.

What would any of these shots look like in 16:9 [0][1][2]? They really liked filling the frame to the brim with TNG, and any side-areas would just look empty.

[0] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/3/37/We... [1] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/3/36/Sa... [2] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/9/90/Tr...

FYI, those images don't seem to open.

They don't allow hotlinking. Copy the URL and paste it in a new tab, and it works :)

The quality is impressive, and I've seen this before with older footage which has been re-scanned in higher quality. Still, there's some characteristic about old footage which sort of tells me it was shot a long time ago.

I want to say it's that the footage seems darker, and you can obviously make a case for classic brand logos being a giveaway.

The darker edges seem to be due to ‘natural vignetting’, as I learned from this article recently posted on HN: https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/

In the comments on YouTube, people discuss some other race-related aspects that reveal the age of the video. Such as lack of protective barriers, and people standing right next to the race track.

> lack of protective barriers, and people standing right next to the race track

Makes me wonder what kind of risks we are obliviously taking today that will seem kind of crazy in the future.

I don't know that "oblivious" is the word I'd use. People standing next to the racetrack are well aware of the risks involved. They aren't there because they don't perceive the risk; they're there because they think it's worth it.

Would you describe rock climbers as "oblivious to the risks involved", or just as people who are sometimes killed by their hobby?

Cars, perhaps.

For another recent historical example see: smoking.

Personally I'm waiting for when sitting at the desk all day long is found out to be Very Bad. But that's probably just a modern ‘proletariat vs capitalist’ issue—I guess factory assembly lines weren't and aren't too popular either.

Makes sense. With respect to the environment, I don't pay much attention to racing so I don't know if that would stick out as much to me personally.

I think shadows are more prevalent and even color is not as vivid as many videos we see today either. The image is sharp though!

I hope by 2100 that technology will exist using ML or similar to upcode digital video.

Do a quick search of YouTube. You’ll find it already does.

Upcoding was done for ages, conceivably your TV might have some more clever algorithm than cubic.

But never in a million years will upcoding recreate the picture that was there in the original. It can create some new detail of its own, yes.

This is what I meant

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