SD cartoons on HD TVs

[UniSol GR77]

I didn't know where to post this, frankly.

Well, eons ago I wanted to purchase two FILMATION DVD sets: Blackstar and Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, Hallmark destroyed the original film tapes, so we will get the FILMATION cartoons only on SD. Sadly.

We can say the same for TRANSFORMERS G1 too. The original tapes are lost. Forever. So DVD is all we can get.

So I'm wondering:

Do the SD cartoons - digitized on DVD - look good on HD TVs? Any specific parameters I should set on my TV in order to watch them the best way possible?

Thank you so much.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by UniSol GR77

I didn't know where to post this, frankly.

Well, eons ago I wanted to purchase two FILMATION DVD sets: Blackstar and Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, Hallmark destroyed the original film tapes, so we will get the FILMATION cartoons only on SD. Sadly.

We can say the same for TRANSFORMERS G1 too. The original tapes are lost. Forever. So DVD is all we can get.

So I'm wondering:

Do the SD cartoons - digitized on DVD - look good on HD TVs? Any specific parameters I should set on my TV in order to watch them the best way possible?

Thank you so much.

I have an '80s sci-fi TV show on DVD called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future that came from the VHS since it was never officially released on DVD. Yeah, it looks terrible.

[Vanguard]

Originally Posted by UniSol GR77

I didn't know where to post this, frankly.

Well, eons ago I wanted to purchase two FILMATION DVD sets: Blackstar and Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, Hallmark destroyed the original film tapes, so we will get the FILMATION cartoons only on SD. Sadly.

We can say the same for TRANSFORMERS G1 too. The original tapes are lost. Forever. So DVD is all we can get.

So I'm wondering:

Do the SD cartoons - digitized on DVD - look good on HD TVs? Any specific parameters I should set on my TV in order to watch them the best way possible?

Thank you so much.

Upscaled to 1080P, old cartoons can look pretty good. Just make sure your player and television display them in their original 4:3 aspect ratio.

It depends not only on the condition of the surviving elements, but how well the DVDs are mastered as well. I have a bunch of Scooby Doo sets, which range from 1969 to 78. They look great. Obviously you can really see the limitations of the animation, and whatever dirt/ damage there is. On the flipside, the Dynomutt series looks and sounds awful. The surviving elements they used were in terrible shape.

Also have the complete He-Man set which look really nice. Filmation produced as well. The colors pop on those.

[Buscemi]

My TV has a built-in upscaler and SD material usually looks just fine. I'd be okay with SD-on-BD releases of TV shows (face it, a lot of TV shows will never get HD remasters) but I know many here wouldn't.

[Atreyu]

Originally Posted by Buscemi

My TV has a built-in upscaler and SD material usually looks just fine. I'd be okay with SD-on-BD releases of TV shows (face it, a lot of TV shows will never get HD remasters) but I know many here wouldn't.

SD on Blu ray is fine if the original source is not film or digital. If the original is say videotape than I am ok with it being SD on Blu ray as videotape does not have the same resolution as blu ray does.

[Buscemi]

When I said that, I was referred to things that were either shot on video (All in the Family, Married...with Children, Roseanne) or edited on video (Tales from the Crypt) that people keep requesting but the masters to create HD versions are non-existent or lost forever (Tales from the Crypt's DVD sets use VHS masters). But people seem to believe that everything can be remastered to HD, no matter what.

With film or digital, I'd prefer HD but we must be practical on those that do not have the materials.

[UniSol GR77]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Upscaled to 1080P, old cartoons can look pretty good. Just make sure your player and television display them in their original 4:3 aspect ratio.

It depends not only on the condition of the surviving elements, but how well the DVDs are mastered as well. I have a bunch of Scooby Doo sets, which range from 1969 to 78. They look great. Obviously you can really see the limitations of the animation, and whatever dirt/ damage there is. On the flipside, the Dynomutt series looks and sounds awful. The surviving elements they used were in terrible shape.

Also have the complete He-Man set which look really nice. Filmation produced as well. The colors pop on those.

Thank you so much! Great feedback.

[MattmanAlpha]

One warning about some of the Filmmation titles in SD: The Region 1 DVD releases of "Blackstar", "Masters of the Universe", "Bravestarr", etc. are botched PAL-to-NTSC conversions loaded with frame blending (as well as an abundance of block noise). Might be best to get UK editions until another distributor handles them better.

[UniSol GR77]

Originally Posted by MattmanAlpha

One warning about some of the Filmmation titles in SD: The Region 1 DVD releases of "Blackstar", "Masters of the Universe", "Bravestarr", etc. are botched PAL-to-NTSC conversions loaded with frame blending (as well as an abundance of block noise). Might be best to get UK editions until another distributor handles them better.

I own the USA editions from BCI Eclipse.

EDIT:

https://www.amazon.com/Blackstar-Com.../dp/B000GETUBU

No frame blending or block... trust me.

[darkkrisp]

I have the Ghostbusters firehouse box set and I'm not very technical about video spec stuff but on my HDTV it looks ok but the video does not fill the screen it plays in a smaller square in the middle of my television. I was watching my goddaughter and wanted to show her these cartoons and they have an older big screen crt tv and the video filled the screen and to me the quality looked better than it did on my HDTV.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by darkkrisp

I have the Ghostbusters firehouse box set and I'm not very technical about video spec stuff but on my HDTV it looks ok but the video does not fill the screen it plays in a smaller square in the middle of my television. I was watching my goddaughter and wanted to show her these cartoons and they have an older big screen crt tv and the video filled the screen and to me the quality looked better than it did on my HDTV.

Of course they don't fill the screen - they're not supposed to. An HDTV has an aspect ratio (the relationship of the width of an image to its height) of 1.78:1. Old cartoons made for theatrical distribution made before 1953-1956 or cartoons made for TV have an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 or 1.33:1 respectively. Old CRT SD televisions have an aspect ratio of 4:3 (1.33:1). So they will fill the screen on an old SD TV, but they won't fill the screen on a modern HDTV and they shouldn't. You're still seeing the entire frame. Your TV will have options to stretch the frame horizontally so it will fill the TV frame, but it will look distorted. Or, you can enlarge the picture to fill the TV, but you'll be missing part of the frame. You should do neither.

The same is true for movies. Watch a movie from before 1953-1956 or so and it will have an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 and will not fill the HDTV screen. After that, there were a number of aspect ratios used, but the most common were 1.85:1 (spherical) and 2.35:1 (Cinemascope and Panavision anamorphic). Some films in the 1950's and many foreign films were composed for 1.66:1 or 1.75:1. 1.85:1 movies will either play with tiny black bars at the top and bottom or are slightly "opened up" to exactly fit a 16:9 (1.78:1) HDTV television. 2.35:1 movies will play "letterboxed" with black bars above and below. This is so you can see the entire widescreen image. When widescreen movies used to play on SD TV, they used to "pan and scan" them. They filled your screen, but you were missing substantial parts of the frame. The original frame may have had two heads, but you only saw one and they would pan as each character spoke. That's not the way it played in theaters.

People complain about the black bars ("I paid good money for this TV and I want da image to fill the entire screen!") and as a result, most TV networks don't show most films at the proper aspect ratio and you're not seeing the entire frame, not even on HBO. So 2.35/2.39:1 movies are shown at 1.78:1 and as a result, you're missing the equivalent of about half the height in width. This is idiotic, but the networks were tired of the complaints. This has ruined these movies for TV watching. Personally, if a movie is playing on TV at the wrong aspect ratio, I won't watch it and it's why I won't give any of the premium networks like HBO or Showtime my money. They'll get it when they start showing movies properly.