
Are there any reason to buy Blu Ray versions of TV series that were shot in standard video tape (not film) and "up-scaled" to Blu Ray?
Is it even legal to do this? I think it is fooling the public if it’s done.
It should look no better than on regular DVD.
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Good point, and I agree for the most part. I would not like them to fool the public like that. For instance I save a National Geographic Blu-ray disc selling on Amazon for cheap this week that reviewers said was nothing more than an upconverted version of its standard definition source.
In answer to the question I would say there is a chance one would see some benefit from a blu-ray recording over dvd, as long as they re-recorded from the original source.
I believe older television programs were filmed on a higher quality tape than what they were actually broadcast at. So the luminance information and perhaps even the color depth is higher etc. One thing Blu-ray has over DVD, in addition to lines of resolution, is a higher color depth – richer reds and flesh tones. Therefore if a studio were to record straight from the original tape to Blu-ray there may be some color and contrast benefits, even thought the lines of resolution would not reach the 1080 lines of full high definition.
So the Blu-ray version of the old TV series may look better than the DVD version, but perhaps only slightly better.