Question regarding HD movies on TV. (Like HBO HD, etc..)

When channels show a movie in HD (like HBO HD), exactly what is the process they go through to get that film into 1080i?

I assume they are just up-scaling them somehow, right?
They don't ever actually transfer anything directly from film do they?

Doesn't that essentially make the quality of them equal to a SD disk through an upconverting player?
I ask because I was reading an article talking about how both HD formats are "doomed" because HD movies are becoming so readily available over networks...

Isn't it apples and oranges?

When channels show a movie in HD (like HBO HD), exactly what is the process they go through to get that film into 1080i?

I assume they are just up-scaling them somehow, right?
They don't ever actually transfer anything directly from film do they?

Doesn't that essentially make the quality of them equal to a SD disk through an upconverting player?
I ask because I was reading an article talking about how both HD formats are "doomed" because HD movies are becoming so readily available over networks...

Isn't it apples and oranges?


Believe they actually downscale it. Read somewhere films are of a higher resolution than HD.

Nearly ALL movie studios "digitize" a film's image-- and many are actually shot with digital cameras and then the image is transferred to film. . . Many cinemas/theaters are digital now and have to have a digital version even, when the movie was originally shot on conventional film.

I would guess that most broadcasters and networks have digital versions on (digital/data) tape. And brianwat is correct they are DOWNscaling . . .

digital theater is 4096x2160
and i've read differences between 35mm film and digital scans stop being discernable around 20MP @ 24-bit color. So techniaclly, everything is 'downscaled' to dvd/tv

I think you guys are misunderstanding my question...
I know that HD is lower in resolution then actual film is, thats the point...

I'm asking what those channels use to produce the movies they show? Are they dats created from dvds, are they actual transfers of the original film stock, etc...

If they are actually using prints of the original film then they could obviously downscale them to HD resolution, if they are using some digital transfer of a DVD or laser disk or something then they would have to upscale it...

they're probably just playing a hd-dvd/blu-ray or a dvd...

i don't think they get their own special transfers, if that's what you're getting at.

Heh, I don't think that they are playing BDs or HDs...
Apart from the fact that they show thousands of movies that have never been released on either format, I'm pretty sure TV stations use digital copies of movies, not actual spinning disks...
For that matter, from time to time you can see movies on television that have never been released to any home format at all.

And I'm not trying to get at anything man, I'm asking if anyone knows exactly how movies are displayed on television in HD...

they're probably just playing a hd-dvd/blu-ray or a dvd...

i don't think they get their own special transfers, if that's what you're getting at.

Yeah, right. They rent a DVD at netflix play it on a 26" LCD and point a TV camera at it . . .

good one, dude!

Playback by networks use VTR's that are quite a bit more expensive and complicated that a HD-DVD or Blu Ray player.

Start by searching for HDCAM and HDCAM SR. You should find a ton of information and an explanation. The studios routinely either transfer film to tape or use digital tape for production.

what you are watchin on HBO probably originates on something that looks like this:

http://www.expandore.com/product/Sony/Proav/model/XDCAM_SR/SRW-5800.htm

Interesting, thanks for the info. That clears up how they are displaying it, but I still haven't seen any hard facts about their source material which is really what I was after...

As I said, I assumed they used some kind of digital medium for displaying them, I want to know what the actual source is.

I know you said "The studios routinely either transfer film to tape or use digital tape for production.", but what does that mean exactly?

A TV station actually gets a hold of original film prints of every movie they broadcast and transfer them to digital format, or do they like buy them from the studio in that format, or is it like a third party company that does the conversions?

You would think this information would be easy to come by, but I have searched around and I haven't found much...

The last station I worked at would get video tape copies of movies. They came on tape from a distributor already transferred from film to video. Few TV stations, network centers included, have telecines in their media rooms. (They used to be called tape rooms.) Whether HBO or Showtime has a telecine I don't know but years back Showtime ran movies off of Ampex 1" type C VTRs. I do not think that the movie distributors send out actual films to be used.

For Discovery Channel, they get a video tape in, they QC it and then send it to the master control center. Then it gets played off a tape machine and recorded onto a video server. It may be archived onto a computer tape or it may sit on the server.

It's a good question. I worked in radio way back and things were much simpler in those days. We went from vinyl to CD. Same stuff you bought in your local record store.

Heh, I don't think that they are playing BDs or HDs...
Apart from the fact that they show thousands of movies that have never been released on either format, I'm pretty sure TV stations use digital copies of movies, not actual spinning disks...
For that matter, from time to time you can see movies on television that have never been released to any home format at all.

And I'm not trying to get at anything man, I'm asking if anyone knows exactly how movies are displayed on television in HD...For HBO SD we send them a Digital Betacam for HD we send them either a Panasonic HD-D5 or a Sony HD-cam SR and that is up to the studio paying for the dub. The Digital Betacam has 4 channels of digital audio and we put stereo English on channels 1&2 and stereo Spanish on channels 3&4. We also put English & Spanish closed captioning on the tape and the tape is always 525/59.94. Now on the HD side there are so many different flavors of the HD signal but for HBO we always send them a 1080i/59.94 tape. They request that the tape has closed captioning but the studios don’t always provide it. The tape that we send them is a dub of a master and that master is either a HD-D5 or HD-cam SR and it is a 1080PsF/23.98 color corrected, DRS’ed videotape. We do a cross conversion to 1080i/59.94 to put in a 3:2 so it can be seen on your TV at home. I other posts I have explained how the telecine process works and everything else that we do to it while transferring the film to videotape. But if you would like I would be more than happy to tell you here in this thread also (just ask). We send them the dub a few months in advance of the air date so they can QC it to make sure the tape is okay for air, now if they find a problem with the dub we have to make another copy and send it to them to replace the bad one.