Old movies on blu-ray... Is there ever a point?

I'm looking through blu-rays on the amazon page and I see that they've just released a north by northwest 50th anniversary edition on blu-ray. There aren't any review about the quality of the disc. For those of you with experience with the format, have you ever compared the DVD to the blu-ray for older movies? I'm genuinely curious.

Oh and is anyone else annoyed to hell that studios are doing the same **** as they did with DVD releases? By this I mean releasing stuff like LoTR theatrical editions and making us wait for the extended editions expecting everyone to buy both? No Star Wars yet either but I'm sure Lucas will try and milk it for everything he can and make us wait forever in the meantime.

Depends on the movie. I'd buy Apocalypse Now on BluRay. The restored Godfather I and II would be worthy of upgrade to BluRay. Raging Bull, despite being B&W really looks better in HD.

It's not only old flicks. Who cares if any Adam Sandler or Pauley Shore movie makes it to HD definition? You can make the picture bigger, but you can't make the movie funny.

I don't think anyone really cares about blu-ray. It's a format that will never really catch on unless they drop the price to around $15. I've only had one client release something on Blu-Ray and didn't make any money on it. The big thing my clients are asking for right now is video that will play on Ipod and Itunes. Thats big money right now. No packaging, no distribution, just upload and thats it.

Most movies are shot on film so DVD, Blu-Ray etc don't really apply.

Originally Posted by turboman808

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I don't think anyone really cares about blu-ray. It's a format that will never really catch on unless they drop the price to around $15. I've only had one client release something on Blu-Ray and didn't make any money on it. The big thing my clients are asking for right now is video that will play on Ipod and Itunes. Thats big money right now. No packaging, no distribution, just upload and thats it.

Most movies are shot on film so DVD, Blu-Ray etc don't really apply.

God I hate these types of posts. Yes, people are going to stop buying HDTVs and DVD will be the format king until everyone ditches that in favor of watching movies on their iPhones. Blu-Rays will never drop to $15 because the studios are greedy and don't understand how to price discs optimally!

Have you even looked at the prices on amazon? The Dark Knight is $19 bucks right now. Batman begins is $12. There are movies as low as $10 dollars. There are lots for $15. Blu-ray players are under $200 and Target is releasing a player for $100 bucks soon. Best Buy is increasing floor space to 30% and I'm sure others will be following. Mass-market BR is well on the way and it will completely replace DVD over time. This is not betamax/laserdisc part 3.

And yes, movies are shot on film (thanks for that, I wasn't aware), which has a higher resolution than DVD can present, so the format they are presented on does kinda matter. Obviously it will always depend a lot on the restoration/transfer process. My question was specifically in relation to old movies that have already been restored for DVD releases and whether there is much benefit to getting them on BR instead of DVD. I'm most interested in responses from people that have done direct comparisons, as opposed to people talking out their asses about itunes and completely unrelated products.

Originally Posted by turboman808

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Most movies are shot on film so DVD, Blu-Ray etc don't really apply.

And what about the movies that are shot with a digital camara? What type of film should I buy to view those?

Originally Posted by binge

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And what about the movies that are shot with a digital camara? What type of film should I buy to view those?

Those movies look like **** so it doesn't really matter.

Don't rob tubroman808 of his banana-moment.

Originally Posted by binge

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Don't rob tubroman808 of his banana-moment.

Imagine what turboman and coldarchon could accomplish together!

Originally Posted by Bird's One View

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Those movies look like **** so it doesn't really matter.

A well shot, tasteful 35mm film stock shot movie CAN look better/worse/indistinguishable from a digitally shot movie. There are plenty of movies being shot digitally that look great, and plenty of movies being shot on film that look like ****. Stop blaming the storage medium. It's the director and cinematographer's fault.

Old films are still higher resolution than DVD can reproduce so if they do a complete rescan of the original reels and then put it on blu ray it will be a noticeable difference in quality.

Originally Posted by ratboycom

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Old films are still higher resolution than DVD can reproduce so if they do a complete rescan of the original reels and then put it on blu ray it will be a noticeable difference in quality.

Higher resolution scanning is not always kind to older movies though. It really depends on the movie, the quality of the master print, and the care done in cleaning up the degradation of the print in post scan.

Film itself doesn't really have a "resolution", by the way. Just to clarify. Not in the same way digital is measured. I know you understand this, but just to clarify that when you say films are higher resolution - what you mean is that when film is scanned, there may be details finer than the scanner can detect, not that film has a somehow "higher" resolution rating. It is entirely possible to produce a clearer, crisper, more true to life image with digital capture than on film, but an image captured on film first will likely lose something when digitally scanned.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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Higher resolution scanning is not always kind to older movies though. It really depends on the movie, the quality of the master print, and the care done in cleaning up the degradation of the print in post scan.

Film itself doesn't really have a "resolution", by the way. Just to clarify. Not in the same way digital is measured. I know you understand this, but just to clarify that when you say films are higher resolution - what you mean is that when film is scanned, there may be details finer than the scanner can detect, not that film has a somehow "higher" resolution rating. It is entirely possible to produce a clearer, crisper, more true to life image with digital capture than on film, but an image captured on film first will likely lose something when digitally scanned.

Here you go, dude:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/North-...ay-Review/762/

I just finished The Longest Day on blueray, it has less noise and is sharper. At some points you can really pick out what has been edited and what not.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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A well shot, tasteful 35mm film stock shot movie CAN look better/worse/indistinguishable from a digitally shot movie. There are plenty of movies being shot digitally that look great, and plenty of movies being shot on film that look like ****. Stop blaming the storage medium. It's the director and cinematographer's fault.
I was mostly being sarcastic, but not completely. There are certainly movies shot on film that look like **** as well. Much of the shittiness lately seems to be introduced during the digital color grading that has become almost ubiquitous (and is often done at 2K resolution which is scarcely any better than 1080p). Digital aquisition is improving, has significant cost and convenience advantages over film, and can be done more or less artfully; but I have yet to see anything that is indistinguishable from film.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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Higher resolution scanning is not always kind to older movies though. It really depends on the movie, the quality of the master print, and the care done in cleaning up the degradation of the print in post scan.

Film itself doesn't really have a "resolution", by the way. Just to clarify. Not in the same way digital is measured. I know you understand this, but just to clarify that when you say films are higher resolution - what you mean is that when film is scanned, there may be details finer than the scanner can detect, not that film has a somehow "higher" resolution rating. It is entirely possible to produce a clearer, crisper, more true to life image with digital capture than on film, but an image captured on film first will likely lose something when digitally scanned.

Well, technically: aspect ratio / size / grain is to film what resolution / aspect ratio is digital.

Regarding scanning film, it all depends HOW the film is scanned. I have scanned 35mm photos with a fairly good flatbed scanner at max resolution available on the scanner and then printed it on a pro 3 ft wide plotter and it looked just as good as when I developed the same picture the old fashion way in a photo lab / enlarger.

If I had access to a drum scanner and an industrial printer I could have probably gotten a better quality image then I could have using an enlarger.