How are movies rdone in high def that were released before high def cameras existed?

Question

There are a lot of movies out on blu-ray and HD-DVD that were released long before there was such as thing as high definition How do the studious make them look as good as high def movies shot today?

Do they use video scalers? If so can you buy a scaler to make everything look as good as that?.

Answer 1

If you don't understand what the guy above me is saying, it means that almost all movies are originally shot at very high resolution (like 35mm film). Off the top of my head I think it's something like 3000 x 2200 pixels, which is much higher than 1080p at 1920x1080.

There are some very good scalers out there but they are very expinsive. Cheap (but good) ones like the DVDO iScan VP50 are still more expensive than most enthusiasts want to spend, let alone average consumers.
http://www.avrev.com/equip/dvdo_iscan_vp50/
http://www.projectorcentral.com/dvdo_iscan_vp50.htm

You would also want a display that can do 1:1 pixel mapping.

This is why alot of people go the HTPC (home theater PC) route. With the right software a decent PC can scale very well.

Answer 2

Most films are created in good old-fashioned analog photographic film.
If done properly, the studio has to rescan the whole film using an HD film scanner (called telecine).
One can certainly use scalers and scale the films digitally captured in the past, but the quality will never be as good as the films you rescan in HD.

Answer 3

If the image exists on 35mm film, it is already high definition; in fact it is higher definition than HDTV. The only difference in producing the video for HD vs standard is that HD-level scanners must be used. The issue with older movies is that many were not wide screen, so they must either be cropped or pillarboxed to fit the HDTV widescreen format. Newer movies are all widescreen (even wider than HDTV--they must be letterboxed to fit).

Even old TV shows that were filmed can now be broadcast in HDTV. HDnet broadcast the series "Hogan's Heroes" in HDTV (even the black and white episodes) and they looked excellent.