Classic TV Programs (originally on film) converted to HDTV

Any show that was recorded on 16 mm film or higher can be shown in hd. Doesn't necessarily mean they will though.

Twin Peaks airs regularly on C&I in 4:3 HD.

UHD has shown Knight Rider and Hack.

Universal HD Fall 2010 Schedule Has Charlie's Angels, TJ Hooker; Remembering Bernie West - Legendary Producer

Today we continue our fall schedule barrage with a lesser known network, but they are adding two classic series! The network is Universal HD and we last covered them a few months ago when we announced they have acquired The Unit. We also mentioned that they air short-lived series on Friday nights, and come this October, they will be changing up the line-up again. Universal HD's Fall 2010 schedule begins Friday, October 1 with the additions of classic Sony Pictures series Charlie's Angels and T.J. Hooker. They both will air weekdays and also in stack blocks. Charlie's Angels will air weekdays at 6am and 3am with a stack on Mondays from 9am-7pm. Meanwhile, T.J. Hooker will air weekdays at 7pm and 2am with a stack on Tuesdays from 9am-7pm.

As for the short-lived series, joining the line-up on Fridays starting Oct. 1 will be medical drama 3 lbs at 9pm, followed by sitcoms Out of Practice at 10 and Andy Richter Controls the Universe at 10:30. These will be replacing the current batch of Cuts, Love Inc., Sex Love & Secrets and Love Monkey. Leaving the schedule completely will be Six Feet Under, Nash Bridges and That's Life, while Becker will only air Fridays now from 11:30am-2pm & 4:30pm-7pm with Hogan's Heroes from 9:30am-11:30am & 2pm-4:30pm.

Marathon wise, there will be a Six Feet Under 48-hour marathon during Labor Day weekend (Sept. 5-6), a Charlie Angel's 24-hour marathon on Columbus Day (Oct. 11), and a 24-hour marathon of short-lived drama Haunted starring Matthew Fox on Halloween (Oct. 31)

View the FULL Universal HD Fall 2010 schedule that starts Oct. 1!

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...d.php?t=270733

http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2010/0...edule-has.html

I remember seeing a few episodes of Northern Exposure in HD a few years ago, presented in 4:3. TBS has been airing Seinfeld in HD, cropped to 16:9 for a while now.

Hawaii 5-0 was on Spike all last week in HD.

I Love Lucy was filmed on full frame 35mm (4:3 ratio)*. It can be shown in 16:9 but only by cropping or stretching it.

The majority of US TV shows with outdoor scenes were, and still are (though digital is becoming more prevalent) filmed on 35mm. Sitcoms and such with only studio work are a mixed bag, some filmed and some are videotaped. 16mm was common in the UK up until the mid 90's.

IMDB lists, on their tech specs page, what process was used in making a film or TV show.

ie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043208/technical

* In 1951, the year I Love Lucy began, widescreen movies, let alone TV shows, were virtually unheard of. The 1.37:1 "Academy" ratio was the standard.


I believe its available in HD for syndication. However, in my market the CW station does not show it in HD (which isn't a surprise).

Some of the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials were remastered in HD last year.

The Amazing Race.

JAG on HDNet

Waitaminnit. It's not HD. In fact, there's another thread here (older) where it was discussed prior to last season. The producers even acknowledged that it's not likely to be HD anytime soon because they use local crews and equipment around the globe, and many places don't have HD equipment.

I saw a promo for the upcoming season last week. It was 16:9, and the logo/animation shots were fullscreen, but the live shots were 4:3 SD with animation in the borders.

Doug

Star Trek: The Original Series is out of syndication now. The remastered episodes aired in SD during 2006-09. Last fall it was replaced by Star Trek: The Next Generation which is currently airing five nights a week on many stations, also in SD. This series has not been remastered for HD.

One thing to mention though. While many shows were shot on film, many in the late 80s and 90s were edited on video (Star Trek:TNG, DS9, and Voyager being examples) and any special effects work was done in the video realm.

So, in some ways, re mastering TNG for HD could be quite a big harder than TOS (beyond the increase in number of episodes.)

Now, they did in fact go back to the original film elements and re-edit TOS for the restorations, but the replacement FX were only designed to mimic the model work at the time and therefore simplistic. There was also very little live footage compositing that they had to worry about (and the stuff that was there was VERY simple.)

With TNG, they would have to go back to the original film elements, re-edit them, then redo ALL the post special effects work (at a level of quality that would match a show today since the originals weren't too bad) which would be much more extensive than TOS. I really don't have much hope in this happening.

I compared the DVD and CI HD and they are about the same. I think Itunes has better quality

As long as the negative is 35mm then its possible to use them for HD re-masters. And as bull3964 said if a show was edited on tape, especially common for special effects work, then the task becomes much more difficult.

Episodes of The Three Stooges on AMC HD appear to be 4:3 HD. Or pretty close.

Old television shows are a mixed bag. Few people thought audiences would care about these shows after they were syndicated and certainly no one thought they needed preservation like films.

Some old shows were shot on film but only exist on video tape now. Combat! is one example. These will never be available in HD.

Some shows still exist on film but some episodes were only found on video tape. The original film masters went missing or were deteriorated. One example of that is the Fugitive. Most episodes were still on film but a few were only found on video tapes. For some series they could simply skip the video tape episodes and HD audiences would not miss much.

In some rare cases individual episodes were reconstructed from both film and video tape elements for DVD release. The opening of the Invaders episode "The Saucer" had to be pulled from video tape because the first can was ruined. The rest of the episodes look great which is amazing for a short-lived series.

Another issue is, in the early days, TV was done live - or as live and the only recording was a kinescope, which was essentially created by filming the TV control room output.

In rare cases, some episodes (or even entire seasons) of shows have been lost except for low quality copies, either made as backups by the production or collected from fans. Quite a few Doctor Who episodes from years ago were simply recorded over with newer shows. Essentially the same thing happened to some early episodes of Carson's Tonight Show. Granted, neither were shot at a quality that could allow HD transfers anyway, but I'm sure plenty of good candidates from other series have been lost in similar ways over the years.

Finally, speaking of the BBC, one issue with some of those shows is the mixing of recording formats. With a lot of shows, it was common to use film for location shooting and video for studio shoots. So, a show with a lot of location work might have a lot of film material, anything shot in a studio would be video tape - or worse, like kinescopes.

I bought some of those latest, remastered, SD- DVD sets of theirs not long ago, and that could be what they're from.

They're almost HD-like, and look and sound superb. Did a heck of a bang-up job on them. Any big fan of them should own them, because of the improvement. Like seeing them for the first time again (even after seeing them probably thousands of times each in my lifetime).

The Stooges shorts are actually presented in HD on AMC. They are not upconverts. All of their shorts were remastered in HD for DVD.

As long as you can find a 35mm original negative or workprint, remastering in HD (provided all the audio tracks and effects footage is still around) is a possibility and if its been taken care of it's going to look pretty good. There's also the question of aspect ratio. However as mentioned many shows went through hybrid processes either like British double acquisition method or the American shoot-on-film edit on tape method which is why its doubtful shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation will ever see the light of day on blu-ray unless Paramount did a superb job of maintaining all the orignal elements. All of the effects would have to be recreated and on that show that's a huge, expensive undertaking.

I'm pretty sure I've read more than once now that HD transfers for Star Trek TNG are in development. First test run would probably be a best of collection though, since TNG is a much greater undertaking than TOS. One way to defer some of the cost would be to write it off as promotional material for the next Star Trek film and subsequent BD/DVD.

The syndication value is too high to just let it languish, especially since an HD transfer can be done. The syndication landscape is filling up with HD material, and SD material is declining rapidly. Why do you think they re-did Seinfeld or Star Trek: TOS, or any of these series? Protect the investment by better preserving the original elements. Protecting long term value via syndication, digital distribution, Blu Ray.

It's a huge difference between Seinfeld and ST:TOS both of which had film masters and TNG which only has a SD video master. The costs to redo the entire series will be astronomical, far more than you would probably make off the blu-ray sales, though maybe you could make a case of syndication, but I don't know who is going to shelve out that much money to re-air a 23 year old show unless a Mark Cuban or someone got involved. Easily tens of millions of dollars though. Some of those episodes have upwards of 30 or more FX shots, not to mention all the split screen work on episodes where there are two Picards, Data/Lore, two Rikers, etc and Okudagrams and console displays and new matte paintings and Enterprise shots (they were composited on video).

I think the best we can hope for like you said would be a 'best of' deal, but unless Paramount is feeling adventurous it's hard to imagine the cost/benefit ratio working out for the entire series unless they really skimped on the FX and Digital Intermediate budget. Remember EVERYTHING has to be rebuilt including the opening titles because the entire workflow past filming was standard definition video.

That would sure burn me up if they went ahead and released them on Blu-ray now.

I have all 8 volumes of The Three Stooges collection on DVD. They have all 190 shorts. The picture quality is amazing.

Last September a local channel started showing Star Trek The Next Generation M-F in my town and I've been watching it every night. They have shown all 7 seasons. Its great to watch the series again.

A classic example of this is the First AFL-NFL World Championship Game, now known as Super Bowl I. It was covered by both CBS and NBC, yet neither network gave enough importance to it to save the video tapes from their coverage of the game.

It should be pointed out that, up until (I believe) Voyager, the computer displays were actually backlit hard stencils, not digital. There was a metal layer under the console with cutouts to let light show through to create buttons. Even some of the computer displays were created this way, with only animated displays being composited.

The star fields outside the windows (when not at warp speed) were actually created with a moving black curtain with reflective dots on it. The main viewer, however, was a digital matte shot. When not shown, the green screen for the viewer was removed to allow cameras to shoot the bridge through the opening.

If I remember correctly, Voyager was the first to have flat touch displays that actually responded to touch (lighting up or turning off, for example).

I believe Enterprise used digital effects to create the closeup interaction shots of the displays.

Likewise, DS9 was the last ST series to use physical models for many of the ships. Voyager and Enterprise used CGI.