Comedy Central to air Friends in true HD

ITV1 showed an episode of Columbo in HD earlier this year. It was one of the later not-very-Columbo-y ones though, and seemed an odd choice to get remastered.

David

Oh boy, I bet you could really see how much his eye boggled.

Haha, even so, I have to say he started to look a bit bloated by the end though.

I presume you have in the past replaced some of your VHS collection with DVDs? Same principle. We've got used to crisp, clear pictures. Everything under 720p looks like mud nowadays, especially on large, sluggish LCD screens. Yes we've seen it all before, but it's nice to see it as it was supposed to be / in the best possible light.

In other news, Jurassic Park has been remastered in HD for a cinema release. Yum.

I tried watching my old series 4 VHS's the other week and they're worn out completely. Black screen and all I can hear is the audio and adjusting the tracking didn't help either.

Isn't "in HD" a bit redundant? I would have thought it would have had a resolution at least comparable to and likely better than HD the first time round.

Apparently Hollywood can't even be bothered to reboot films now - I heard there's a 3D Ghostbusters conversion in the works

David

Actually, I haven't. The only thing I own on DVD which I had before on VHS was a couple of Doctor Who stories (The Trial of a Timelord and The War Games), and one of those I only replaced since the VHS cassettes were totally knackered. I didn't own that many VHS' though, it has to be said. In the case of The War Games I have it on DVD since I fancied rewatching it and I don't actually have access to a video recorder anymore, and procuring one seemed a bit over the top for a product which cost a tenner to replace.

I certainly couldn't justify rebuying DVDs as Blu-rays since the hardware is backwards compatible, and the original media hasn't degraded.

I'm perhaps not the norm though; I had an HD telly for a year but when it came to replacing it I chose a fairly recent but second hand Toshiba widescreen CRT off ebay for a tenner. It really doesn't enhance how much I enjoy what I'm watching and I don't understand how anybody can feel differently - I think there's a very large dose of placebo going on! In fact, I sort of think if anything it possibly reduces people's enjoyment of certain programming as they spend the whole time gawping at the clarity of the background.

Of course not but we are seeing what the director intended, with a little more picture and hopefully x4 detail if it really is true HD.

Not to mention the fact that 'Friends' and other US shows made in the same way (shot on film, edited on videotape) will particularly benefit from an HD remaster from the original film, as we were always seeing PAL conversions of the NTSC tapes. In the days of VHS it looked so-so, but once released on DVD the flaws became a lot more evident.

I'd assume they remastered at 24p and then converted to 60i for broadcast copies. Have to see where the 50i ones come from- a straight conversion of the 60i masters would be my guess, but 24p to 50i would look better, even if it needed pitch correcting or was left with everyone speaking slightly higher.

It looked like 24p sped up to 50i to me (or 60i ITVCd back to 24p, then to 50i) - voices were squeaky, but it's been so long since I saw it on any of the 4s that I can't remember if they were sped up as well - a quick run through AVIdemux got it all back to 24p.

David

Any valuable US show shot 24p or remastered from 24p material is likely to be remastered initially in the 24p domain. This would be the source used for Blu-ray release.

50Hz and 60Hz broadcast versions would then be produced from the 24p master using 2:2 pulldown and 4% speedup, or 3:2 pulldown with no speedup respectively.

All UK broadcasters would require a DEFT-style conversion of the 60Hz version otherwise (with the 60i master with 3:2 in it converted to a 48i master with 2:2 - aka Slow PAL - for replay at 50i with 2:2 and 4% speedup).

Regular real-time 60i to 50i conversions of 3:2 24p content are not acceptable by the mainstream broadcasters (BBC, ITV, C4, Five, Sky) these days - the 3:2 motion artefacts cause major issues with digital compression.

(However 25p shot 2:2 European drama is often mastered directly to 50i, and this can mean that a 50i to 60i conversion IS used for 50Hz stuff shown in 60Hz territories. The 2:2 cadence causes fewer problems than the 3:2 cadence, and is generally deemed OK. Some shows have done a 25p to 24p slowdown for Blu-ray release - Planet Earth and Downton Abbey for example)

Comedy Central are showing them in order from 20:00 on Monday 3rd October, repeats at 9:00 and 14:00 the next day. They are also showing other random episodes at 15:00-19:00 all week and all day at weekends.