I've been curious. With the amount of HD channels showing movies, are these all just sitting and ready to go to Blu-Ray or is it a different mastering process for Broadcast vs. Blu Ray? Reason I asked was the variety of movies i had DVR'd over the last few days: Escape From L.A., Scanners, Private Parts, Frankenstein 1970 and it made me wonder since these were all in HD, they could be ready to go for Blu Ray, they're just waiting for the right time. Or are they broadcast ready only? Anyone know the story?

you might want to change the thread title to get more responses. As soon as people see that they get turned off.

And to answer your question - IDK. But I don't want the HDNET Lawrence.

Where the hell did anyone find an HD copy of 'Simon Sez'? That stain of a movie has pretty freaking good detail.

I've been curious. With the amount of HD channels showing movies, are these all just sitting and ready to go to Blu-Ray or is it a different mastering process for Broadcast vs. Blu Ray? Reason I asked was the variety of movies i had DVR'd over the last few days: Escape From L.A., Scanners, Private Parts, Frankenstein 1970 and it made me wonder since these were all in HD, they could be ready to go for Blu Ray, they're just waiting for the right time. Or are they broadcast ready only? Anyone know the story?

Those master used for broadcasting and the master used for blu-ray could be the same one, but broadcasters use maybe just fast one-pass compression. The same master can be compressed carefully for a few days to a week by a "human being" that carefully watch the encoded video and adjust if necessary for maximum quality. Things of course don't end here, Blu-rays need additional menu design, multiple audio, subtitles, programming the disc, additional bonus materials, and testing for functionality and compatibility. The whole process just takes a much longer period of time then doing maybe a one-pass encode for broadcasting. Therefore, even if the master used are the same, studios don't and can't just release its Blu-ray version as easy as broadcasters. Marketing also need to evaluate home video market for maximum profit over a long period of time.

Mi3 was on Showtime the other day and looked great as long as there was no motion. When there was motion it started to fall apart. Fast motion made it a sea of artifacts. Unwatchable compared to the HD-DVD I have.

Broadcast HD telecasts often are sourced from different masters. Sometimes because the network desires pan-n-scanning a scope movie to 16x9. Other times it's because a "full blown" upgrade isn't available yet. As the previous poster noted, many of these transfers are 'quickies', often riddled with dirt, or an incorrect aspect ratio, poor color rendition for HD, etc.... Once in awhile there's a really good independent HD transfer, but for the most part, the smaller budget cable/TV HD transfers show their shortcomings.

Escape from New York was interesting on UHD. The image for the most part was soft and overall was, IMHO, somewhat lackluster. But the audio was the original 2.0 Surround mix (a good thing for me) vs the 5.1 remix found on the recent DVD, which changed some of the sound effects and actually does away with some of the original directional panning.

sometimes i feel some of the movies shown on HD versions of various channels are actually upscaled SD especially on TBS

Mi3 was on Showtime the other day and looked great as long as there was no motion. When there was motion it started to fall apart. Fast motion made it a sea of artifacts. Unwatchable compared to the HD-DVD I have.


That's why, in general, I am 'underwhelmed' with broadcast HD -even sports events.

BD can be jaw dropping gorgeous and sharp and no motion fall apart (that is a new acronym I coined, btw, HD-MFA .... hehehe).

But broadcast HD looks good when its a glamour shot - put some motion into it and blech...

Erik