Underworld HD

I notice that “Underworld” Extended Cut is mastered in High Definition. Strange because whenever I play it on my Sony HD TV KVHR36M31 it still somehow grainy. What is meant to be implied when a DVD such as this is stated to be mastered in HD?

The original film print was probably transferred to the digital domain at 4000 or even 5000 horizontal scan lines, just as was the "Star Wars Trilogy" and others. However, when the digital copy is transferred to standard-definition DVDs, the line resolution must be limited to 480 because that's all a standard-definition DVD will play.

Incidentally, a higher definition transfer will not necessarily eliminate any grain inherent in a film print; indeed, it may even intensify it, making it more visible.

John

At first I thought maybe because the movie was exclusively filmed in the dark therefore the need to master it in HD was imperative to make the sconces clearly visible. Michael Mann used this method for Collateral using HD cameras.

HDDVD's will only look as good as the source material allows them. It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference there is.

At the moment, high-definition cameras cannot match the resolution of the best convention film photography. As I said earlier, it takes at least 4,000-5,000 lines of horizontal resolution to match a good film print, and today's digital HD cameras can only take pictues at about 1,000-2,000 lines.

John

Most DVDs from the major studios are now mastered in high-def--meaning, a digital master with between 720 and 1080 lines of resolution is created from the source (a film print, a high-definition digital file if one uses HD digital cameras, or maybe even analog video tape). The digital master is then downconverted to 480p for the current DVD spec.

Incidentally, movies shot on film still look better than movies shot on HD video because film has a native resolution between 4000 and 5000 lines. This means that your source is better than your end product (whereas movies shot with HD digital video, like "Collateral" and "Star Wars 3", will one day look like utter crap when we have TVs that have more than 1080i lines of res).

Thanks alot guys. Cleared up a few things

Underworld is corny, and what's up with that girl playing in 2 movies the same year that deals with vampires and werewolves. Anyway, I got the movie from worststore.com, and got 75% off on it. If anyone has tried worststore, you know what I'm talking about.