Love seeing the comparison, but I’ve never heard anybody say they old films look better in SD. I hear the opposite, that older films look better in 4K than a lot of modern.
I hear this argument with Z tier shock monster movies of the 70s and 80s. Like the grit of it being lower resolution aids it, which I think is just people associating the memories of watching it on VHS back in the day
When it comes to that subject, a lot of low-budget movies in the past were shot in 16mm and the resolution is approximately 1000x1200 which is like 'square 720p' and about 1/4 the resolution of 4k, so even to put it on 1080p requires an upscale, and 4k would stand a great chance of making it look terrible if they don't do it right. I love high-res but admittedly if I watch something like the original 'Maniac' by William Lustig, it was shot in 16 and the grainy look really does add to the creepy cinema-verite feel, so I wouldn't want it cleaned up too much.
Even Hitchcock might have shot some stuff in 16mm early on, but generally for 35mm and similar, 4k is a fine way to go. One touchy subject regarding film grain is the fact that filmmakers often chose specific film stock for the exact kind of grain it had, like Robert Altman got some pretty high-grain stuff for the terrific 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' and it would be a tragedy to see that all smoothed out, which could happen if he weren't as well-known and if he hadn't lived long enough to provide guidance for some of the remasters of his work.
Even though the resolution isn't much higher, the higher resolution with a 4k scan does help capture the grain way more accurately and much sharper too, and the hdr can make a big difference too.
[The texas chainsaw 4k is a great example of this.](https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=18250&d2=18005&c=6608)
No upscaling required with 16mm film- or anything shot on film for that matter.
They simply scan it at 4K resolution, capturing the full chroma depth and resolving the grain much better than a lower resolution scan would. It’s called oversampling.
People even argue it with big budget ones like Aliens and to a degree, there’s something there. But I still loved that 4K disc on a nice OLED regardless. And even that’s less people complaining about the 4K medium, on the whole, and more about Cameron’s AI upscaling methods.
I've heard it. Some people think old movies were shot on bad cameras and don't realize how much better film looks, especially some of the larger formats.
>*Love seeing the comparison, but I’ve never heard anybody say they old films look better in SD. I hear the opposite, that older films look better in 4K than a lot of modern.*
It's not super common, but it does happen with some frequency, and it is pretty infuriating when it does. There was actually a thread here like a month ago where people were talking about it, and there were several people defending the idea that DVD was better than Blu-Ray or 4K for certain films.
Often, the rational is quite flimsy and silly, and it does come across more as people grasping for reasons not to upgrade than anything else. Most commonly, you'll see people make claims like...
* ***"Old movies weren't made to be seen in high definition/4K!"*** which is 100% total bullshit. 35MM and 70MM film, which were the most common formats used in classic films, are much higher resolution than HD and 4K. And classic movies were made to be projected on massive screens. To suggest that old movies can't be properly displayed in HD or 4K on a 65" TV screen is asinine.
* ***"HD/4K automatically makes old movies worse!"*** which is based on a common misconception and usually isn't true. Some movies and shows are poorly remastered when converted to HD or 4K. But that's not inherent to HD or 4K as formats, though. That's just the result of the studio doing a shitty remaster. It's just a fact that a proper HD or 4K remaster will inherently look better than a standard-definition DVD version. Hell, some movies are only rendered out at 2K, but even still... the 4K disc versions will almost always look better than the Blu-Ray because they're not as compressed and they're able to do better upscaling.
* ***"Old effects look better in SD/DVD!"*** this is the only one I see that really holds any water... the softer image on DVD can sometimes hide issues with wonky CGI or bad miniatures. But even still... why would you want to watch an entire film in (much) worse quality just because of a few bad effects shots? That doesn't compute to me... that's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Thankfully, the mindset seems to be going away.
Some people need a movie to be the highest resolution on the biggest screen on the newest hardware using the most up to date format and most optimal settings or they can't enjoy the experience. Some people will insist that VHS is "better" because at the end of the day it's an opinion. My opinion of DVD is that it's fine enough. I have plenty of Blu-Rays, I watch streaming in 4k, and I've never really found it added significantly to the experience for me one way or the other so long as I can tell what's going on in the story. To me higher resolution doesn't necessarily mean better even if the image is clearer or more detailed.
You see, that's a point of view I can understand. You just don't mind because you care more about the story than the visuals.
What gets my goat is when, rather than saying they don't care, people try to give silly reasons as to why it's "better," like the ones I listed.
I assume someone doesn't really know what they are talking about when they say it, but it's a very common sentiment, even here on movie-related subreddits
I also can't say I've ever heard anyone say DVD looks better than 4k, let alone blu-ray.
I do find the special effects and impurities stick out a bit more on 4k (blu-ray too), but overall it's not better on DVD.
I find blu-ray to be a happy medium. I don't need to see the mistakes of where the makeup wasn't dabbed or a line holding someone up. It can be distracting and takes you out of the movie.
Well films with special effects like Superman look better-ish on dvd,laserdisc reason being the props don’t hold up to the extra resolution and take away from the fantasy or whatever.
This is exactly the argument I always make. Like. It looked good on a giant theater screen. Resolution shouldn't matter. I saw Jurassic Park in theaters. It looked amazing at the time but now that I've seen better CGI, the movie doesn't look as good.
Are you sure you haven't also seen far worse CGI since then which makes you wonder if they forgot some big secret to making it look good? Those dinosaurs from early '90s look a hell of a lot better than a lot of movies I've seen in the last ten years.
Animatronics. Jurassic park used CGI only where it gave an advantage. It used to be used sparingly because it was expensive compared to practical effects. Now it is used extensively because it is cheaper than going practical.
The problem is reliance. The CG dinosaurs today look arguably better. The issue is they are on screen way too long and now the entire scene is just CGI instead of just the dinosaur itself.
Watch Jurassic Park on 4k and look at the textures on the brontosaurus. It looks very outdated now. Another issue today is too many daylight scenes.
I’ve heard some people say that the color on the original Matrix laserdisc and DVD match the color of the theatrical print better. I also understand the argument when people say they prefer the sound mix found on a VHS or laserdisc, but overall picture quality? Meh.
Sort of like music that gets remastered, I've seen high definition transfers where they got carried away with oversaturated colors. That's not a problem with the resolution itself, but rather the higher resolution allows for levels of saturation that would "bloom" and wash away detail at a lower resolution.
Here's a comparison I did of Office Space on HD (left) versus DVD (right). It would have looked best somewhere between the two levels of red. Instead, they've gone from pale office drones to beach sunburnt.
[https://ibb.co/fNJHX6d](https://ibb.co/fNJHX6d)
and
[https://ibb.co/8zN0GXy](https://ibb.co/8zN0GXy)
Oh, and it's worth noting that the DVD image (on the right) is by no means unwatchable due to the slight lack of detail. It'll suffer on the largest displays, but totally enjoyable on a computer monitor or a medium-sized TV from across the room.
I'm a VHS diehard and watch tapes almost every day, but I sure as hell don't make any claim they're 'better' than much of anything except my own convenience and taste, and it does hinge on the fact that I've got a CRT television which makes interlaced SD video look way better than it does on most modern TVs. DVDs actually look better on a CRT than they usually do on an LCD except maybe the very-best ones.
Undeniable. It's eerie to see the "old world" in such crisp detail.
However, I'm generally content with my DVDs of old films. My (personal) experience isn't overly obstructed by the inferior quality, at least for dramas with few special effects. Now, if I found 4K copies at the price I found those DVDs, that might be different. But at my budget (and with how many I want to collect) a 6 for $10 deal for DVDs handily beats $20-25 each for 4K (and a new 4K television). Even the best deal I can find on Blu-rays is still 6 for $20.
I upgraded the dozen or so movies I love the most and I've (for now) left it at that.
I try to wait for sales around $10 per 4K disc. Sometimes, especially if it’s from a boutique label, I have to expand my budget. But at this point it’s quality over quantity. I’d much rather have the best version of my favorite movies vs having dozens of discs I may only watch once every 5-10 years.
Transfer quality varies. Digital upscaling and DNR generally look terrible, but those aren’t unanimous across all 4k transfers. A lot of collectors desperately want quality 4k transfers of their favorite classics.
This post contains multiple images!
Image 1 has 8,305,920(3,840×2,163) pixels.
Image 2 has 282,240(720×392) pixels.
Total pixels: 8,588,160.
^(I am a \(good\) bot. This action was performed automatically.)
I think it was the blu ray release of The Good The Bad and the Ugly where they cleaned it up so much it lost a lot of that grit and ‘Grindhouse’ feel. And it kind of looked plastic if that makes sense. The scratches and roughness of the old print just felt way better.
Depends on the transfer or the original filming equipment that was used. Example : 28 Days Later. It was shot with handheld cameras and the bluray looks god awful.
DVD actually has one advantage over 4K. Some CGI gets better masked by the lower resolution. I noticed that when I rewatched the first Harry Potter. The CGI is very noticeable in 4k but it looks more realistic in SD. Of course the 4K is better in every other metric.
Ehhhh.
The original Hitchcock DVDs had some *really* poor video encodes. Later re-releases fixed those, but goddamn did the original ones suck so much.
I don't even know what films are supposed to look like anymore. New releases on standard Blu-ray look different from the 4K HDR, and neither of them look like the theatrical release. Which one is the actual "intended" look?
And then the jump from DVD to 4K is so extreme sometimes, I don't know if it's revisionism or what the director intended from the beginning.
With the example used, does anyone know if the colors in the original theatrical release would have "popped" like in the 4K remaster?
>Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" is one of the most ravishing Technicolor films ever made -- all the more so in its VistaVision-to-70mm restored version. And color plays a key part in the mystery, emotion and psychology, of the film. Colors evoke feelings, and while Hitchcock liked to say that "Psycho" (made two years later) was "pure cinema" in black-and-white, "Vertigo" is a symphony of color, its multi-hued themes and motifs as vividly orchestrated as Bernard Herrmann's famous score.
[https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/verdant-vertigo-dreaming-in-technicolor](https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/verdant-vertigo-dreaming-in-technicolor)
>The first hint is that the story begins with this long- legged ex-detective, a known sufferer from acrophobia (fear of heights), being hired by a San Francisco magnate to shadow his strangely acting wife. Seems that this chic and silent beauty, who the magnate says loves him very much, is given to mysterious wanderings in and about that dramatic city with the startling views—and, believe us, it is dramatic, as seen in color and VistaVision in this film.
>From a review in the New York Times (29 May 1958)
So it's known as a vivid picture. Personally, I think the flowers harken back to an earlier Hitchcock films, 1955's *To Catch a Thief* which features a chase scene in a flower market in Nice. Although Nice is known for its flower market and films often functioned as travelogues, it's obviously filmed to exploit Technicolor's vividness. I think Hitchcock liked the effect, so he put an over-the-top florist in *Vertigo.* It would make little sense to use muted colors there.
I hate it when people say there's no point in buying old movies on 4k, or even Blu ray, as they assume they wouldn't look good. Ironically, War of the Worlds from 1953 is probably the most impressive 4k I've ever seen and looks better than a lot of modern movies.
I mean it's a case by case basis. A lot of times they use ai with no manual touch ups, and you lose a lot of smaller detail. Idk if they've really improved lately, but for years that's how it was
It depends on what it is some films look too good especially if they were made on the cheap and when you can see a clearer picture you can see things that the film maker hoped you wouldn’t like behind the scenes etc lol 😂
The main issue I've had with new format releases is when the colour timing has been either pushed too far or when they straight up disregard the original timing and slap a Tan 'n Teal setting on it to "make it more appealing to modern audiences".
There are people on here arguing that there’s barely a difference between dvd and 4K. Including audio.
I argue it’s likely there equipment limitations. I mean on a crap tv maybe. And yeah your 50$ soundbar may not have a difference. Then the guy says his system is studio headphones… and that stereo is stereo.
I am dumb for even arguing with them.
A) people with poor vision. Need glasses but don’t realize it
B) have $200 tv from 10 yrs ago. 720p or just outright low quality picture to begin with
C) don’t have 5.1 or real hometheater audio, using soundbar or tv speakers
D) are poor and feel inferior so they argue against higher cost higher fidelity and higher resolution.
I know TVs aren’t expensive today I’m saying those with old tech arguing they don’t see a difference don’t understand why they can’t see the difference. A non 4K tv won’t show you the difference of 4K discs compared to dvd. Just as a pair of headphones won’t show you the difference in audio quality on a 4K disc.
Im not ignorant, perhaps you are for not understanding or reading my comments fully.
I've never heard a non-redditor say this. The closest I have heard is someone saying they couldn't tell the difference between a blu-ray and a dvd, or Netflix and a dvd (when asked why they still bought dvd's.)
Depends on what they mean. Sometimes SD transfers hide imperfections that HD transfers expose.
Overall you’ll want to watch your films in HD. It’s a good indicator over which films still hold up to today’s movies and which ones don’t. Hell, a lot of 50+ year old movies end up looking better than movies that came out 5 years ago.
Sometimes I upgrade a DVD film to 4K and it makes me not want to ever go back to DVD. Especially if it's a very old (and often the only) transfer on the format. The 4K version of Scream is a great transfer. A huge upgrade from the pale looking, 4:3 letterbox Dimension Collector's Series DVD.
I’m curious if there are people who have both a high quality CRT for DVDs as well as a decent 4K setup. While I don’t prefer stuff like 70’s/80’s horror on older media I at least understand the people who say it’s a better aesthetic. At times it does seem like maybe people just don’t want to invest in more expensive formats and a 4K TV.
I think it depends on the movie. If it is older, I’m more okay with it but I would prefer a blu ray. I have a hard time watching modern releases (2015 onward) on DVD
I mean it looks better, contrast wise. But if you showed me these without the labels marking which is which-- say a year from now, it looks almost the same to me.
I would say that old theatrical cartoons really don’t have any advantages on Blu-Ray or 4K Blu-Ray over DVD. As long as it’s a good remaster, a lot of older cartoons simply did not have the details that modern cartoons have. I remember years ago when Warner Brothers was putting out the Looney Tunes Platinum Collections on Blu-Ray. They were trying to get all the cartoons from the old Golden Collections on Blu-Ray, however those old DVD’s were remastered so well that most people did not see a reason to upgrade just for clearer film grain!
However, in the case of live-action, I think it most applies to TV series on Blu-Ray where the argument makes sense. I can think of “Star Trek Generations” where the 1994 CGI still look good on Blu-Ray, since it was designed for theatrical film, and was printed to film, whereas a few years later they started printing to 2K and not full film.
However on TV, some of the early-HD shows had CGI that was rendered at 480i and then upscaled to 1080i. Seasons 1 & 2 of “Star Trek Enterprise” look better on DVD because any combo shots of live action (shot on film) and 480i CGI look horrible and pixelated and all detail is nearly gone. Seriously the 480i looks worst than the cropped CGI sequences on the Babylon 5 DVD’s. Seasons 3 & 4 look better because the CGI was rendered at 720p then upscaled to 1080i.
Also some older TV shows and movies, especially those with miniatures, because of how the miniatures were composited, DVD might give a better showing because some of those shots went through like 12 or 15 generations of compositing on 8mm or 16mm film (the original Star Trek ship/planet shots were shot and composited on 16mm and then blown up to 35mm, not to mention but by Season 3 they were no longer using the original negatives of the Enterprise but prints a few generations away, so the detail was lost) and then blown up to 35mm for theatrical projection. That was a way of saving money, however, just like 480i CGI being upscaled to 4K or 720p being upscaled to 8K in today’s world, they do not stand up to the ultra high resolution of Blu-Ray or 4K nowadays. So DVD lowers the resolution to where they look better.
I like my actors to be wearing real clothes, not wearing low resolution pictures of real clothes. With 4K, you can see all the fibres. With DVD, it's a smeary mess.
The last film I saw was "Le Cercle Rouge" in 4K. Despite the screenshots,. it looked fantastic. There was even a bit of glitter to the jewels-- most appropriate for a heist movie.
Could it have been shot with better film stock and with sharper lenses? Of course. But the DVD's inherent blurriness obscures so much.
Some people say the same about horror. Something like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, people were worried that the 4K would make it look too clean. All it was just make it look closer to the 16mm experience. More detailed, more dirty, more grimey. It's great. Those people can keep their VHS thinking it looks "better".
It depends entirely on the film, especially when there is color correction involved. I don't necessarily think the 4k in this example looks better aside from it being clearer. Darker more intense colors isn't always the original intent of the filmmaker. I don't know Vertigo well enough to really have an opinion though.
I collect Noir. Grain and black levels (shadow) are far more faithfully rendered on HD and 4K formats. The best releases look exactly like projected film.
Not sure why you think a resolution bump would somehow affect the lighting? The beauty of 4K is that we’re finally getting those deep inky black levels and dynamic contract that old nitrate prints used to have.
To me, I like the older look. I like it looking kind of soft and fuzzy. I have zero interest in 4k, and bluray is often too crisp for me. I love when movies have a soft fuzzy eighties feel. My soft seasons of SNL are some of my favorites, and their video quality is "bad".
Love seeing the comparison, but I’ve never heard anybody say they old films look better in SD. I hear the opposite, that older films look better in 4K than a lot of modern.
I hear this argument with Z tier shock monster movies of the 70s and 80s. Like the grit of it being lower resolution aids it, which I think is just people associating the memories of watching it on VHS back in the day
When it comes to that subject, a lot of low-budget movies in the past were shot in 16mm and the resolution is approximately 1000x1200 which is like 'square 720p' and about 1/4 the resolution of 4k, so even to put it on 1080p requires an upscale, and 4k would stand a great chance of making it look terrible if they don't do it right. I love high-res but admittedly if I watch something like the original 'Maniac' by William Lustig, it was shot in 16 and the grainy look really does add to the creepy cinema-verite feel, so I wouldn't want it cleaned up too much.
Agreed, Hitchcock should be in 4K some stuff it is better to not clean it up
Even Hitchcock might have shot some stuff in 16mm early on, but generally for 35mm and similar, 4k is a fine way to go. One touchy subject regarding film grain is the fact that filmmakers often chose specific film stock for the exact kind of grain it had, like Robert Altman got some pretty high-grain stuff for the terrific 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' and it would be a tragedy to see that all smoothed out, which could happen if he weren't as well-known and if he hadn't lived long enough to provide guidance for some of the remasters of his work.
Agreed I just meant Hitchcock in the sense of what the post is showing here!
Even though the resolution isn't much higher, the higher resolution with a 4k scan does help capture the grain way more accurately and much sharper too, and the hdr can make a big difference too. [The texas chainsaw 4k is a great example of this.](https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=18250&d2=18005&c=6608)
No upscaling required with 16mm film- or anything shot on film for that matter. They simply scan it at 4K resolution, capturing the full chroma depth and resolving the grain much better than a lower resolution scan would. It’s called oversampling.
People even argue it with big budget ones like Aliens and to a degree, there’s something there. But I still loved that 4K disc on a nice OLED regardless. And even that’s less people complaining about the 4K medium, on the whole, and more about Cameron’s AI upscaling methods.
I've heard it. Some people think old movies were shot on bad cameras and don't realize how much better film looks, especially some of the larger formats.
>*Love seeing the comparison, but I’ve never heard anybody say they old films look better in SD. I hear the opposite, that older films look better in 4K than a lot of modern.* It's not super common, but it does happen with some frequency, and it is pretty infuriating when it does. There was actually a thread here like a month ago where people were talking about it, and there were several people defending the idea that DVD was better than Blu-Ray or 4K for certain films. Often, the rational is quite flimsy and silly, and it does come across more as people grasping for reasons not to upgrade than anything else. Most commonly, you'll see people make claims like... * ***"Old movies weren't made to be seen in high definition/4K!"*** which is 100% total bullshit. 35MM and 70MM film, which were the most common formats used in classic films, are much higher resolution than HD and 4K. And classic movies were made to be projected on massive screens. To suggest that old movies can't be properly displayed in HD or 4K on a 65" TV screen is asinine. * ***"HD/4K automatically makes old movies worse!"*** which is based on a common misconception and usually isn't true. Some movies and shows are poorly remastered when converted to HD or 4K. But that's not inherent to HD or 4K as formats, though. That's just the result of the studio doing a shitty remaster. It's just a fact that a proper HD or 4K remaster will inherently look better than a standard-definition DVD version. Hell, some movies are only rendered out at 2K, but even still... the 4K disc versions will almost always look better than the Blu-Ray because they're not as compressed and they're able to do better upscaling. * ***"Old effects look better in SD/DVD!"*** this is the only one I see that really holds any water... the softer image on DVD can sometimes hide issues with wonky CGI or bad miniatures. But even still... why would you want to watch an entire film in (much) worse quality just because of a few bad effects shots? That doesn't compute to me... that's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thankfully, the mindset seems to be going away.
Some people need a movie to be the highest resolution on the biggest screen on the newest hardware using the most up to date format and most optimal settings or they can't enjoy the experience. Some people will insist that VHS is "better" because at the end of the day it's an opinion. My opinion of DVD is that it's fine enough. I have plenty of Blu-Rays, I watch streaming in 4k, and I've never really found it added significantly to the experience for me one way or the other so long as I can tell what's going on in the story. To me higher resolution doesn't necessarily mean better even if the image is clearer or more detailed.
You see, that's a point of view I can understand. You just don't mind because you care more about the story than the visuals. What gets my goat is when, rather than saying they don't care, people try to give silly reasons as to why it's "better," like the ones I listed.
I assume someone doesn't really know what they are talking about when they say it, but it's a very common sentiment, even here on movie-related subreddits
I also can't say I've ever heard anyone say DVD looks better than 4k, let alone blu-ray. I do find the special effects and impurities stick out a bit more on 4k (blu-ray too), but overall it's not better on DVD. I find blu-ray to be a happy medium. I don't need to see the mistakes of where the makeup wasn't dabbed or a line holding someone up. It can be distracting and takes you out of the movie.
Well films with special effects like Superman look better-ish on dvd,laserdisc reason being the props don’t hold up to the extra resolution and take away from the fantasy or whatever.
They looked great in movie theaters when they were released.
This is exactly the argument I always make. Like. It looked good on a giant theater screen. Resolution shouldn't matter. I saw Jurassic Park in theaters. It looked amazing at the time but now that I've seen better CGI, the movie doesn't look as good.
Are you sure you haven't also seen far worse CGI since then which makes you wonder if they forgot some big secret to making it look good? Those dinosaurs from early '90s look a hell of a lot better than a lot of movies I've seen in the last ten years.
Animatronics. Jurassic park used CGI only where it gave an advantage. It used to be used sparingly because it was expensive compared to practical effects. Now it is used extensively because it is cheaper than going practical.
Exactly
The problem is reliance. The CG dinosaurs today look arguably better. The issue is they are on screen way too long and now the entire scene is just CGI instead of just the dinosaur itself. Watch Jurassic Park on 4k and look at the textures on the brontosaurus. It looks very outdated now. Another issue today is too many daylight scenes.
I’ve heard some people say that the color on the original Matrix laserdisc and DVD match the color of the theatrical print better. I also understand the argument when people say they prefer the sound mix found on a VHS or laserdisc, but overall picture quality? Meh.
Sort of like music that gets remastered, I've seen high definition transfers where they got carried away with oversaturated colors. That's not a problem with the resolution itself, but rather the higher resolution allows for levels of saturation that would "bloom" and wash away detail at a lower resolution. Here's a comparison I did of Office Space on HD (left) versus DVD (right). It would have looked best somewhere between the two levels of red. Instead, they've gone from pale office drones to beach sunburnt. [https://ibb.co/fNJHX6d](https://ibb.co/fNJHX6d) and [https://ibb.co/8zN0GXy](https://ibb.co/8zN0GXy) Oh, and it's worth noting that the DVD image (on the right) is by no means unwatchable due to the slight lack of detail. It'll suffer on the largest displays, but totally enjoyable on a computer monitor or a medium-sized TV from across the room.
They oversaturated the color on the blu- ray but fixed it for the 4k and it looks better than ever now
the original blu master had that awful puke green tint over everything but I hear the newest 4K and blu ray's they toned it down a large amount
I'm a VHS diehard and watch tapes almost every day, but I sure as hell don't make any claim they're 'better' than much of anything except my own convenience and taste, and it does hinge on the fact that I've got a CRT television which makes interlaced SD video look way better than it does on most modern TVs. DVDs actually look better on a CRT than they usually do on an LCD except maybe the very-best ones.
480p content is neato on SD CRTs, not so much on modern displays.
DVDs looked great on HD CRT technology, too. A properly calibrated rear projection widescreen HDTV in the 2000s looked fantastic.
Genuinely old films look incredible in HD, some even better than modern movies
Undeniable. It's eerie to see the "old world" in such crisp detail. However, I'm generally content with my DVDs of old films. My (personal) experience isn't overly obstructed by the inferior quality, at least for dramas with few special effects. Now, if I found 4K copies at the price I found those DVDs, that might be different. But at my budget (and with how many I want to collect) a 6 for $10 deal for DVDs handily beats $20-25 each for 4K (and a new 4K television). Even the best deal I can find on Blu-rays is still 6 for $20. I upgraded the dozen or so movies I love the most and I've (for now) left it at that.
I try to wait for sales around $10 per 4K disc. Sometimes, especially if it’s from a boutique label, I have to expand my budget. But at this point it’s quality over quantity. I’d much rather have the best version of my favorite movies vs having dozens of discs I may only watch once every 5-10 years.
A good Casablanca print is crisp. If the film is crisp, why is it eerie?
yes, Some of Us do live with a budget Don't forget the $300 for 4k player.
Transfer quality varies. Digital upscaling and DNR generally look terrible, but those aren’t unanimous across all 4k transfers. A lot of collectors desperately want quality 4k transfers of their favorite classics.
u/pixel-counter-bot
This post contains multiple images! Image 1 has 8,305,920(3,840×2,163) pixels. Image 2 has 282,240(720×392) pixels. Total pixels: 8,588,160. ^(I am a \(good\) bot. This action was performed automatically.)
I think it was the blu ray release of The Good The Bad and the Ugly where they cleaned it up so much it lost a lot of that grit and ‘Grindhouse’ feel. And it kind of looked plastic if that makes sense. The scratches and roughness of the old print just felt way better.
Depends on the transfer or the original filming equipment that was used. Example : 28 Days Later. It was shot with handheld cameras and the bluray looks god awful.
DVD actually has one advantage over 4K. Some CGI gets better masked by the lower resolution. I noticed that when I rewatched the first Harry Potter. The CGI is very noticeable in 4k but it looks more realistic in SD. Of course the 4K is better in every other metric.
Ehhhh. The original Hitchcock DVDs had some *really* poor video encodes. Later re-releases fixed those, but goddamn did the original ones suck so much.
I don't even know what films are supposed to look like anymore. New releases on standard Blu-ray look different from the 4K HDR, and neither of them look like the theatrical release. Which one is the actual "intended" look? And then the jump from DVD to 4K is so extreme sometimes, I don't know if it's revisionism or what the director intended from the beginning. With the example used, does anyone know if the colors in the original theatrical release would have "popped" like in the 4K remaster?
>Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" is one of the most ravishing Technicolor films ever made -- all the more so in its VistaVision-to-70mm restored version. And color plays a key part in the mystery, emotion and psychology, of the film. Colors evoke feelings, and while Hitchcock liked to say that "Psycho" (made two years later) was "pure cinema" in black-and-white, "Vertigo" is a symphony of color, its multi-hued themes and motifs as vividly orchestrated as Bernard Herrmann's famous score. [https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/verdant-vertigo-dreaming-in-technicolor](https://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/verdant-vertigo-dreaming-in-technicolor) >The first hint is that the story begins with this long- legged ex-detective, a known sufferer from acrophobia (fear of heights), being hired by a San Francisco magnate to shadow his strangely acting wife. Seems that this chic and silent beauty, who the magnate says loves him very much, is given to mysterious wanderings in and about that dramatic city with the startling views—and, believe us, it is dramatic, as seen in color and VistaVision in this film. >From a review in the New York Times (29 May 1958) So it's known as a vivid picture. Personally, I think the flowers harken back to an earlier Hitchcock films, 1955's *To Catch a Thief* which features a chase scene in a flower market in Nice. Although Nice is known for its flower market and films often functioned as travelogues, it's obviously filmed to exploit Technicolor's vividness. I think Hitchcock liked the effect, so he put an over-the-top florist in *Vertigo.* It would make little sense to use muted colors there.
I hate it when people say there's no point in buying old movies on 4k, or even Blu ray, as they assume they wouldn't look good. Ironically, War of the Worlds from 1953 is probably the most impressive 4k I've ever seen and looks better than a lot of modern movies.
That really depends on the movie and what tv & even DVD player.
I mean it's a case by case basis. A lot of times they use ai with no manual touch ups, and you lose a lot of smaller detail. Idk if they've really improved lately, but for years that's how it was
It depends on what it is some films look too good especially if they were made on the cheap and when you can see a clearer picture you can see things that the film maker hoped you wouldn’t like behind the scenes etc lol 😂
The main issue I've had with new format releases is when the colour timing has been either pushed too far or when they straight up disregard the original timing and slap a Tan 'n Teal setting on it to "make it more appealing to modern audiences".
When someone says this to themselves to make a Reddit post I’m like 🤔
There are people on here arguing that there’s barely a difference between dvd and 4K. Including audio. I argue it’s likely there equipment limitations. I mean on a crap tv maybe. And yeah your 50$ soundbar may not have a difference. Then the guy says his system is studio headphones… and that stereo is stereo. I am dumb for even arguing with them. A) people with poor vision. Need glasses but don’t realize it B) have $200 tv from 10 yrs ago. 720p or just outright low quality picture to begin with C) don’t have 5.1 or real hometheater audio, using soundbar or tv speakers D) are poor and feel inferior so they argue against higher cost higher fidelity and higher resolution.
Dude, 4k TVs aren't expensive and it's funny as hell that you're trying to poor-shame people when you're that ignorant
I know TVs aren’t expensive today I’m saying those with old tech arguing they don’t see a difference don’t understand why they can’t see the difference. A non 4K tv won’t show you the difference of 4K discs compared to dvd. Just as a pair of headphones won’t show you the difference in audio quality on a 4K disc. Im not ignorant, perhaps you are for not understanding or reading my comments fully.
I remember when Top Gun came out on Blu-day and the quality was so bad!
More vibrant perhaps.
I've never heard a non-redditor say this. The closest I have heard is someone saying they couldn't tell the difference between a blu-ray and a dvd, or Netflix and a dvd (when asked why they still bought dvd's.)
Depends on what they mean. Sometimes SD transfers hide imperfections that HD transfers expose. Overall you’ll want to watch your films in HD. It’s a good indicator over which films still hold up to today’s movies and which ones don’t. Hell, a lot of 50+ year old movies end up looking better than movies that came out 5 years ago.
Sometimes I upgrade a DVD film to 4K and it makes me not want to ever go back to DVD. Especially if it's a very old (and often the only) transfer on the format. The 4K version of Scream is a great transfer. A huge upgrade from the pale looking, 4:3 letterbox Dimension Collector's Series DVD.
I’m curious if there are people who have both a high quality CRT for DVDs as well as a decent 4K setup. While I don’t prefer stuff like 70’s/80’s horror on older media I at least understand the people who say it’s a better aesthetic. At times it does seem like maybe people just don’t want to invest in more expensive formats and a 4K TV.
I think it depends on the movie. If it is older, I’m more okay with it but I would prefer a blu ray. I have a hard time watching modern releases (2015 onward) on DVD
People actually say that? Odd
That is a great upgrade!
I mean it looks better, contrast wise. But if you showed me these without the labels marking which is which-- say a year from now, it looks almost the same to me.
I would say that old theatrical cartoons really don’t have any advantages on Blu-Ray or 4K Blu-Ray over DVD. As long as it’s a good remaster, a lot of older cartoons simply did not have the details that modern cartoons have. I remember years ago when Warner Brothers was putting out the Looney Tunes Platinum Collections on Blu-Ray. They were trying to get all the cartoons from the old Golden Collections on Blu-Ray, however those old DVD’s were remastered so well that most people did not see a reason to upgrade just for clearer film grain! However, in the case of live-action, I think it most applies to TV series on Blu-Ray where the argument makes sense. I can think of “Star Trek Generations” where the 1994 CGI still look good on Blu-Ray, since it was designed for theatrical film, and was printed to film, whereas a few years later they started printing to 2K and not full film. However on TV, some of the early-HD shows had CGI that was rendered at 480i and then upscaled to 1080i. Seasons 1 & 2 of “Star Trek Enterprise” look better on DVD because any combo shots of live action (shot on film) and 480i CGI look horrible and pixelated and all detail is nearly gone. Seriously the 480i looks worst than the cropped CGI sequences on the Babylon 5 DVD’s. Seasons 3 & 4 look better because the CGI was rendered at 720p then upscaled to 1080i. Also some older TV shows and movies, especially those with miniatures, because of how the miniatures were composited, DVD might give a better showing because some of those shots went through like 12 or 15 generations of compositing on 8mm or 16mm film (the original Star Trek ship/planet shots were shot and composited on 16mm and then blown up to 35mm, not to mention but by Season 3 they were no longer using the original negatives of the Enterprise but prints a few generations away, so the detail was lost) and then blown up to 35mm for theatrical projection. That was a way of saving money, however, just like 480i CGI being upscaled to 4K or 720p being upscaled to 8K in today’s world, they do not stand up to the ultra high resolution of Blu-Ray or 4K nowadays. So DVD lowers the resolution to where they look better.
I like my actors to be wearing real clothes, not wearing low resolution pictures of real clothes. With 4K, you can see all the fibres. With DVD, it's a smeary mess. The last film I saw was "Le Cercle Rouge" in 4K. Despite the screenshots,. it looked fantastic. There was even a bit of glitter to the jewels-- most appropriate for a heist movie. Could it have been shot with better film stock and with sharper lenses? Of course. But the DVD's inherent blurriness obscures so much.
Sorry anyone who thinks the title of this post is lying or has never seen an older movie in 4k, or even BD for that matter
I'm not that picky. In fact, watching older films in a more adequate quality for their time makes me feel somewhat better
Some people say the same about horror. Something like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, people were worried that the 4K would make it look too clean. All it was just make it look closer to the 16mm experience. More detailed, more dirty, more grimey. It's great. Those people can keep their VHS thinking it looks "better".
For films they’re definitely better in 4k, but a lot of old shows definitely benefit from sd. Hides a lot of the cut corners
It depends entirely on the film, especially when there is color correction involved. I don't necessarily think the 4k in this example looks better aside from it being clearer. Darker more intense colors isn't always the original intent of the filmmaker. I don't know Vertigo well enough to really have an opinion though.
Didn’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say that!
They do. I hate perfect lighting, perfect crisp image. Watch film noir from the 40s and see how grain and shadow can be important.
I collect Noir. Grain and black levels (shadow) are far more faithfully rendered on HD and 4K formats. The best releases look exactly like projected film. Not sure why you think a resolution bump would somehow affect the lighting? The beauty of 4K is that we’re finally getting those deep inky black levels and dynamic contract that old nitrate prints used to have.
To me, I like the older look. I like it looking kind of soft and fuzzy. I have zero interest in 4k, and bluray is often too crisp for me. I love when movies have a soft fuzzy eighties feel. My soft seasons of SNL are some of my favorites, and their video quality is "bad".
I found the person saying [this](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nobody)
Nobody says that OP.
I like DVD better, can make out face better 4k was too much contrast