Was SD 16:9 ever tried in America?

I've just started watching season 6 on this box set and i'm still impressed with the quality. I don't know if they upgraded the cameras during the shows run but episodes from season 6 look even better in HD than the first five series have for some reason.

Maybe it's my eyes adjusting to the new TV so i am seeing things i've not seen before.

I see you got my little joke about red dwarf remastered The only thing I liked about it was the shape of the new ship. Course that was on VHS, soon as you saw remastered on proper telly it fell apart. The interesting thing is they did make a massive 12' model for remastered but didn't use it. This was then cut down and used for series 10.

As for their odd colour changes, the pointless 14:9 crop, the exceptionally poor blue screen scutters, only being able to make the stars move on static shots, poor poor poor.




I'm really hopeful about DS9 getting the green light for blu ray. By far my favourite series and I'm fascinated to see the detail in both the model and the prominade set. The very very last shot of the series, with Jake looking out the window, was the only time the station was done in CGI and it looks poor. It's a shame. It'd be nice to see a better version of that as it always slightly throws my liking for that scene.

Also I'd love to see both Far Beyond The Stars and Trials and Tribbleations in HD. Just because.

Yes - though relatively few US scripted shows were shot on SD video (low-end 80s sitcoms like Family Ties and Kate and Allie spring to mind as taped shows). Most US stuff - drama and multi-camera sitcom - stayed with film. Only relatively recently did some (but not all) leave film and start shooting on HD electronic cameras.

Some US shows shot on film switched to videotape for post-production (Dallas notably) - and in these cases HD remastering can be a bit trickier (also the case with STTNG where effects were done in the video domain) as you have to re-transfer rushes and re-edit to match the SD video edits (assuming the film rushes still exist) However most US shows stayed with film as their acquisition format until HD shooting became possible at a similar quality, so at least it was possible.

The UK industry didn't have the multi-take single-camera Hollywood movie influences (we initially shot far more theatrically as-live in mulit-camera video studios) nor did we have the US budgets, so when we switched from B&W to Colour most of our domestic shows used 16mm for location film shooting not 35mm, and many of the interiors were shot to tape. Whilst some 16mm can stand-up well when transferred in HD (the Blu-ray of the Doctor Who story "Spearhead from Space" for instance - shot entirely on film as a result of a studio strike) - some of the stuff shot on fast stock doesn't. And the video is SD. If you can get the 2" masters and run them through a PAL Transform decoder you can maximise the quality of the SD video - reducing the composite analogue artefacts significantly - you can't make it HD...

Apart from shows shot for US colour markets (The ITC series for instance) - most UK production is less well suited to HD remastering sadly. We switched to shooting far more using video cameras on location (lots of 80s UK drama - from costume to contemporary - was shot on SD tape) On the other hand this stuff often has a far more 'realistic' feel as much was shot on location rather than in studio, and lit in a more natural manner in some (but not all cases).

Compare "Murder She Wrote" with "Life and Loves of a She Devil"... Sure, Murder She Wrote looks great in HD technically, but it's lit to within an inch of its life and so obviously studio shot.

Though there is something quite odd seeing 80s costume drama like By The Sword Divided, The Barchester Chronicles etc. shot on video not film. Personally I quite like the 50Hz motion and more realistic 'look' - it stopped it feeling like something archaic. But the production values are undoubtedly lower in some areas (though lots of UK TV film production on location was often very 'tripod-bound' and static, whereas location video stuff was often a lot more dynamic with tracking cameras and handheld stuff)

I remember when Who Shot JR was in the news, they showed the film reels being delivered to the UK under heavy security.

In that era Dallas was shot and edited on film, and the final film master was then telecined. Whether the distributor telecined and delivered 2" or 1" VT copies, or the broadcaster received a film copy and telecined themselves varied ISTR.

Interesting. I wonder why the 4:3 version made it onto the DVD. I guess we'll never see the 16:9 copy now!

Bit of an aside, but I seem to remember Scrubs was framed and broadcast in 4:3 - though the person shooting it protected for 16:9 from the start and did it all on Super 16 with the idea of every episode would be able to be eventually remastered for HD later.

Yep, if you watch the final episode (of series 8 ) they use clips from earlier episodes in HD. Much like Seinfeld, there's more picture on the left and right but less on top and bottom.

ISTR that Scrubs staying 4:3 was an artistic decision - and only very late in the day did they give in and switch to 16:9 delivery. I believe their reasoning was that shows shot 4:3 were always seen by the entire audience in 4:3 as intended, but shows shot 16:9 could be seen 4:3 centre-cut (with mangled framing) or 16:9 letterboxed depending on what the network and affiliate routing was, and what facilities were in use, and whether time-shifting was done locally (as is the case in some US timezones)

The US network / affiliate model really made things tricky, particularly when the 4:3 SD network feeds were retired, and when networks didn't use AFDs.

How did multi-camera film for something like Friends work? Is it just like multi-camera video, but with no vision mixing and every camera is an ISO?

I would think so yeah. Sound added separately.

X-Files remaster in widescreen is meant to be broadcast soon, I think it's already got a German outing.

Scrubs being 4:3 long into NBC going HD was financial.