HBO HD & Showtime HD Native Resolution

[spaceman_spiff]

What is the resolution that HBO HD and Showtime HD are offered in ?
is it 720P or 1080i.
Sometimes the movies on HBO HD and Showtime HD look good, but it feels like CSN sportsnet HD and Jay Leno HD looks much better in resolution.
What is the resolution that movies are filmed with ? Do they use HD or High Res cameras with different aspect ratios ? Or is it SD ?

[57U]

I believe that everything but ABC is 1080i. ABC is 720P and Fox is 480P. ESPN HD may be 720P - can't remember.

Some shows look better than others because of what I call "production values". I've commented on production values several times in the past if you wish to do a search.

Movies are usually "filmed" on, well, - film, :rolleyes: so their resolution is vastly superior to anything HD. Even very old movies, if well-preserved, look great on HD because film is an excellent resolution medium.

Very recent "made for TV/HBO" movies may be shot differently, but they would be shot in a resolution that is superior or equal to HD, unless someone was really being cheap.

[scanman]

just an add on to that. the hbo movies that are in "HD" are just converted to hd so they really just look the same as a dvd, which is great, but its not hd. six feet under and the soprano's are shot in hd , so they look far superior to the converted movies.
i'm new, so im sorry if this has already been stated many times before.

[sillygoose]

Originally posted by scanman
just an add on to that. the hbo movies that are in "HD" are just converted to hd so they really just look the same as a dvd, which is great, but its not hd. six feet under and the soprano's are shot in hd , so they look far superior to the converted movies.
i'm new, so im sorry if this has already been stated many times before.
This is not correct. If the mastering is done from film to HD it will look a ton better than DVD and should essentially be of the same quality as something shot with HD cameras. Film is still better than HD, there are many more grains on film than there are pixels in HD. The digital equipment Lucas has been using on the recent Star Wars movies is supposed to rival film but it's resolution is much higher than the ATSC HD standards

[scanman]

sillygoose,
i know that what you are saying is true, but every single thing i've seen on hdnet and on ota hd broadcasts looks far superior to anything i've seen on hbo. with exception to six feet under and the soprano's. maybe it's just a subjective thing, and what looks far superior to me , might not to you. or maybe you have more info as to why i might think this way. mind is wide open, always looking for more info

[sillygoose]

My only guess at why you might perceive a difference in resolution or clarity between HD from HD cameras and HD from film would be depth of field issues and a more "artistic" look of film. From what I've seen most everything shot with HD cameras always has a real crisp appearance and often a lot of depth of field like at sporting events often both the action on the field and the crowd are both in focus in many shots. Things shot on film could look this way but often times the directors don't want that much depth of field in their shots. They want to focus more on the main subject of the shot so they set their cameras to reduce the depth of field and soften the background elements. Sometimes even the primary elements of shots are softened with filters and such because the director wants a softer look. That's what I meant by artistic. Just because you can make every shot crystal clear with lots in focus doesn't mean you should. That said I have seen plenty of film based HD that look just as crisp, clear and focused as any HD camera based material. A favorite movie of mine is A Knight's Tale which I think Showtime was showing in HD about a month ago. I thought it looked spectacular.

[scanman]

im glad you mentioned those things because ive been going back and forth trying to compare. i never took into consideration the directors hand in all of this. i ghess i was just so focused on the crispness of the picture. i forgot that i am dealing with movies here. i have found some movies since last time i posted that i thought looked amazing, for example, see spot run. kind of a dumb movie, but it looked great. but im excited as all get out to witness my first nhl game in hd this saturday night on abc. sports and bright background stuff like the pbs demo loops are unbelievable. thanks for the extra insight sillygoose. i appreciate it

[MickeyGee]

Sillygoose is correct. Different filmmakers use different styles. The Wow Effect that we sometimes get with HD oftens comes from the brightly lit programs. But with a horror movie, noir film, or other darkly lit production, you will not be getting much Wow. I think we all have to adjust our perception to allow for the enjoyment of the smoother, more subtle productions.

[Snowman314]

Watched SW Episode II last night on HBO HD and was very dissapointed. I'm not sure what the deal was. I know Lucas shot 100% digital with this flick, but I wouldn't think that to be a factor. Some of the scenes with (mostly low lit) had horrible compression. Example... when Sen. Amidala first walks in to speak with the Chancelor and Jedi after arriving at Corsicant the red walls in the room were very block. I wasn't expecting much detail but surely not blockiness in a HD flick. Most bright scenes looked great and the digital creatures/effects looked HD but some looked better on my DVD. Not sure if the prob. is the movie, the transfer, the compression, HBO or Cableone. Anyone else notice?

[laveller]

SW-2 is an interesting topic...the DVD is certainly one fo the best transfers to date BUT...what was the resolution of the original digital master? and what affect does that limitation (filming in digital, since it has to have a lower endemic resolution than film) have on a HD transfer .. in fact, an even better question, how did they get from a digital master to HD? the mind boggles.....

[TenShoes]

I just watched AOTC on HBO-HD last night. I have to agree with Snowman on some of the early scenes. At first I wasn't sure if the HD version was going to be any better than my DVD, but the more I watched the better it looked. And I don't think its necessarily a darkness issue either. For example the scene where Obi-wan and Anakin are chasing the bounty hunter looked pretty spectacular. It was also interesting how noticeable the difference was between the "filmed" material and the CGI stuff was in HD vs the DVD. All-in-all I was pretty impressed.

[Brewer4]

I saw it on HBOHD last night and I was pretty impressed. I guess its perspective but I thought it was a very impressive version.

[Snowman314]

I'm not convinced that it was the transfer at all. I fear it might be my cable companies signal. They are coming out today to check it. I was getting some tiling earlier in the day and a couple times during AOTC. It looked like video that was highly compressed at times. Supposedly the CableOne did something out my way today which might have fixed the signal. I'm not sure what was the cause. Picture did seem better in the later parts of the movie. Digital effect shots were great.

So far Spiderman, The Color Purple, Cats vs Dogs have looked the best.

[sillygoose]

Originally posted by laveller
SW-2 is an interesting topic...the DVD is certainly one fo the best transfers to date BUT...what was the resolution of the original digital master? and what affect does that limitation (filming in digital, since it has to have a lower endemic resolution than film) have on a HD transfer .. in fact, an even better question, how did they get from a digital master to HD? the mind boggles.....

The digital cameras Lucas used for AOTC are supposed rival the resolution of film. They have many times more resolution than the HDTV standard.

[laveller]

sillygoose,

no disrespect intended but but what you said really surprises me. I do a LOT of digital photography...the amount of "information" on a single frame of film quality 70mm movie film is between 300 and 500 meg ... even Sony's latest digital cinema camera the HDC-F950, captures only 1920 x 1080 (albiet with exceptional dynamic range)...the cameras Lucas used for SW-2 were a generation behind that...the question I guess is: what is perception v reality for the viewers? thoughts?

bob

[57U]

Film has the highest resolution still, yes, but sillygoose was correct when he said that the cameras that Mr. Lucas used were superior to HD. They were probably at least 1080P24. (1080P, 24 frames per second) See one link I found below:

http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/news/2002/06/news20020610.html

"The Sony 24p camera that we used for Clones had a resolution of 2.2 million pixels," explains McCallum, "but Sony is developing and working on a 10 million pixel camera. We're really hoping they'll get that together in time for us, even if it's just a prototype."

Lots of links on the web - type "star wars, digital cameras".

[Snowman314]

I'm not sure on the resolution but the extras on the DVD had something about them being 30fps and he had to convert it to 24fps for the film.

[laveller]

I think we're in violent agreement here ...It's my understanding the "clones" was filmed using the Sony 900 which has the same resolution as the 950 (1920 x 1080 x 24 fps) which is, in fact, superior to HDTV, but much inferior to the amount of info a frame of film ... the key point is the perception to the end viewer ... i didn't see "clones" in a theater, film or digital, but the dvd is excellent... Maybe we could get the word from someone who saw it in the theater in either or both formats ... how did it look?

[laveller]

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2001/03/msg00097.html

http://www.cinealta.com/


enjoy...

[sillygoose]

Sorry, you are correct that is no where near film quality. Essentially that is 1080p which is obviously better than 1080i but not by all that much. I was under the mistaken impression that the cameras were a much higher resolution than that. That's what I get for believing the platitudes in press releases are somewhat accurate even when then don't include real numbers.

[laveller]

sillygoose ... i would love to hear from someone who saw "clones" in a digital theater ... in the area of still photography, digital (in terms of perception to the end-viewer) is probably superior to film up to about 11x14 (unless you get in to REAL high dollar equipment)...Superior in what way you ask?
- lower medium costs
- no darkroom
- almost unlimited tinkering ... even of poorly exposed images
- perception of "clearness" and color to the human eye.

I have "A-B ed" the same image taken with 35mm print film, slide film and digital (the digital images came from either a Canon D30 or an Olymus E10) and at 8x10, with a lot of darkroom work for the film and a little photoshop work for the digital, the digital image is (IMHO) superior. at 11x14 they are about the same, and anything larger than that, the vastly greater amount of information on the conventional films starts to shine.

Now this (to me) is interesting .... when I compare projected images, using a traditional slide projector for traditional slides and my HT projector (Sony HS10) for digital images, its too close to call....10 foot diagnol image viewed from about 15 feet .... they both look damn good.

I guess it's just an "eye" thing.

[Snowman314]

I keep watching AOTC to see if anything changes in the presentation indicating that it's a signal problem but it looks the same every time. In the very opening the explosion that blows up the plane is a great example. Normally HD is never as apparent as it is in explosions. The greater detail is obvious in HD. However in AOTC when the camera does a close up on the princess coming down the ramp and then the explosion coming right at the camera it is horrible. It looks like it is terribly compressed and you can see blocks. Another time I saw this was when Anakin was on the conveyer belt at the droid factory and was killing the "bugs". One of the bugs comes flying at the camera and again big blocks of pixels. I wonder if it's a limitation within the camera with fast moving images that take up most of the screen. It looks like a MPEG compression problem. I'm going to have to look at the DVD again and see if it is the same. Otherwise if you get a chance see for yourselves and let me know what you see.

[SephirothX]

SW Episode 2 was shot in 1080p. DVD is 480i so much of original data has been lost. 1080p is twice as good as 1080i similar to 480p compared to 480i. Some people mentioned here blockiness but I don't think that is caused by poor resolution. I watched DVD and HBO broadcast and picture was superb for 480i and 480p, didn't watch SW 2 on HBO HDTV channel though. In my opinion there were many poorly done special effects and that is the reason why some scenes look blocky. Don't look at particular objects, especially those computer generated but look at open scenes shot in real world and picture in general. Merging computer graphics and live shots is not easy as it seems. Try to cut someone's face and then paste it in another picture. Notice all those jaggies, wrong shadows. SW 2 DVD is one of the best there is for 480.

[Eyedox]

720p - ABC, ESPN-HD, and soon ... FOX and FOX Sports.
1080i - all the others.