Film has no pixel count there is no orderly arrangement of little red, blue, and green markers into any sort of grid.įilm instead has grains. We enclose resolution in quotations in the previous sentence because film doesn’t technically have a resolution in the sense that a digital display or capture device does. The thing about film is that it’s incredibly high “resolution”.
The reference image below, courtesy of the Australian National Film & Sound Archive, shows the relative scale of common film standards: Very low budget television shows and movies were shot on 8mm film. Television shows were typically shot on 16mm film. Major motion pictures were shot on 35mm film (and some big budget films were shot on 65-70mm film). Throughout the 20th century movies and television shows were recorded on a variety of film mediums.
#Where to watch new movies hd movie#
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane and the history of movie and television production to illuminate how our beloved movies and shows from decades past can look so amazing today. While we enjoy answering questions of all stripes, be they about simple hardware problems or abstract concepts, we really enjoy fun little questions like the one you’ve posed today because it’s a geeky inquiry for the sake of geeky inquiry. So what’s the deal? How is it that technology from decades ago (and even a half century ago) can yield such a high quality video for today’s modern televisions? The movie looks stunning on a nice big HDTV set, the colors are crisp, it’s like it was filmed yesterday. Same thing with really old movies like Ben-Hur it came out in 1959 but you can get a beautiful HD Blu-ray copy today. The HD version of the show was fantastic looking and, to boot, was in 16:9 widescreen format! You could actually see more on the screen than when you watched the show back in the day. The show first aired back in 1982 which was practically thirty years before HDTV sets got a majority share in the U.S. With that in mind though, I’m really curious about all the newly released content over the last few years that features HD quality footage of very old material.įor example I was looking for a Cheers box-set on Amazon and saw that they have plenty of standard definition DVDs, but they also have all the original seasons in HD. But how exactly are they producing HD content 20+ years after the fact?įirst, let me open by saying I’m not a very clever man, and I’m sure the answer to my question is readily apparent to everyone but me. One of the benefits of the widespread adoption of high-definition television sets and HD capable media players like Blu Ray players and HD-capable streaming boxes has been a push for film and television studios to re-release old content in beautiful HD.