Any reason to buy Blu Ray versions of TV series shot in standard video tape format?

One Response to “Any reason to buy Blu Ray versions of TV series shot in standard video tape format?”

1. Chris Knight says:

   December 2, 2009 at 9:41 pm

   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.