RD: DVD, HD DVD, BLU RAY, VCD, VHS, and FTVCF (Future Triangular Video Cassette Format)

[Jonsmad]

With possibly the final RD: DVD coming out in October…
(see various other threads about how fantastic that is going to be!)

I had a few speculative questions about media formats, that I figure
a few people round here have far more detailed and knowledgable opinions
on, mostly more intelligent than the little I know.

Does anyone think at this stage in developement that RD and other
UK TV shows, mainly comedies etc, will ever appear on HD DVD or Blu Ray
Format disc? (correct me if it’s happened already and I aint noticed
for any uk comedy show)

Or any other likely forth coming new media being developed?
I read something about Protein-coated discs recently. Hmm sounds delicious!

Secondly based on recorded show formats and techniques used etc what the
possible benefits might be if it did happen both commercial or technical.

Thirdly outside of VHS and DVD (and UMD briefly) are their any other formats
that Dwarf has ever appeared on commercially worldwide to date thus far?
I have some VCD’s of the remastered shows, I think they were korean.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on the above…

[Jonathan Capps]

The problem with putting old TV shows onto HD-DVD or BluRay is that it would be, in the main, completely pointless. There are too few episodes to justify the space benefits, the extra bitrate just wouldn’t be used by the old video recordings. Stuff like Star Trek can HDised cos it’s all on high quality film stock and so can be re-sampled, so only really the model shots could ever be redone in HD. Which seems like something only 6.7 people would even be remotely interested in.

[Jonsmad]

Additional…

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/casablanca.html

[Mr Flibble]

Yes, Casablanca was shown in cinema like this a couple of years ago.

[mick]

As I posted in another thread…

The quality of original recordings for allot of programs and movies makes HD releases pointless, allot of TV shows were recorded onto analogue Betacam SP or directly onto UMatic SP both of which are around 350 lines (feel free to correct me) some 60?s and 70?s shows that were recorded directly to magnetic tape media are bad enough quality as it is, releasing any of this on new HD formats would produce a picture quality exactly the same or even worse than the DVD release.

In much the same vein?
When DV cameras broke 1MP there was a slew of movies filmed on low budgets using this new digital technology, none of these movies would gain anything from an HD release, if anything digitally upscaling the footage for HD would loose quality rather than make it any better.

Celluloid of course poses no problem and im sure that HD-DVD releases will look very nice indeed.

As for the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD debate, the vast majority of pornography distributors have gone with the cheaper HD-DVD format, as well as Microsoft, Dreamworks, Paramount and Toshiba, nuff said.

On a final note, Laserdisc was a great commercial success and produces a better quality picture on large screens than DVD as they are actually analogue recordings!
I own all 6 Star Wars movies on Laserdisc :D

As for other formats, I too have a few forein VCDs from back in the days when I used my Philips CDi.

Anyone know if there were Betamax releases elsewhere in the world? the format was abandoned in the UK by ’88 but Sony were still making recorders in Japan up until 2003!

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