Mar
28
Older Movies in HD
Filed Under HDTV
This one has rocketed to the top of the most asked list in the last two weeks, so without further delay: yes older (and just plain old) films can be “HD”. Not only can older films be HD, they can actually surpass the highest resolution HD format (1080p) several times over. In short the actual resolution of film far exceeds any consumer display technology in-use today. Note: I said today because the Japanese are hurriedly working on super HD resolutions as we speak.
Film, being an analog medium isn’t bound by digitals hard limit of x by y resolution, but that’s not to say analog film, or rather the equipment used to capture and project it doesn’t have limitations. A Group of ISO engineers measured the nominal resolution of film at around 800 lines of resolution by going into working theaters and projecting images of a resolution chart, and then measuring the results.
Those 800-900 lines of resolution were increased to well over 1600 lines of comparable resolution with newer projection equipment, but even this doesn’t accurately reflect the amount of resolution film can capture. Using digital scanners (skipping the entire projection process) it’s not unheard of the get over 3500 lines of resolution or more from a single frame of 35mm film. So as you can see “film” isn’t the weak link here, it’s our ability to retrieve the information from the film.
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