Re: MOONWALKER on Blu-ray 7 July (France)
lol. they think fans are stupid? moonwalker will never be available in true HD. not possible. sure, hd in the 80's. haha. good joke!
thats only upscalling. nothing more. i dont want to have a second dvd quality disc at home for 50 or 60 euros. ^^
Wow, not to be a prick, but do some research on what HD is my friend.
Anything that was shot on film has more resolution than HD. 16mm film will look it's best, and 35mm film will look amazing, even in HD 35mm has lots more rez to offer. If they have indeed struck a new HD transfer from the film source, then we are in for a treat.
For Moonwalker or any future HD video releases, Only segments that include videos filmed on video will be upscaled. Examples being DSTYGE, Billie Jean I think was shot on film, but the editing effects were obviously done in early 80's quality video effects. Not sure how they would handle that. They may have to go in a find the original neg, rescan it and reedit it, and create the effects again. (This is currently being done for the Star Trek The Next Generation Blu Ray sets, the series was filmed on film, but edited on video along with the special effects.) As long as they keep the original edit in tact, and the "new" versions of the video edits look the same but in higher quality I'll all up for them doing this. Give into me is another video that may have some issues, the video was shot on film, but the lightening effects were 480p video. So those would have to be recreated, The CGI face in Who is it would probably be prone to this as well.
Since Moonwalker and Ghosts were created for the big screen, the film was edited for film resolution as well as the effects, they should look amazing. But for anything else it may be awhile before we get proper HD versions of Michaels Special Effect extravaganza short films, because the effects (unless they were smart enough to think HD, but honestly anything before History era I doubt anyone was thinking HD) will need heavy remastering. I seem to remember Scream being screened in theaters in 1995, if so thank god. That means the effects were produced for film, because that video would be a bitch to recreate in HD. Possible, but expensive.
Video editing of film didn't become common place until the mid 90's. The from what I have seen the Thriller-Bad era videos were probably edited on film. The only exception I can see is Bille Jean, (Another part of me was shot on video as a part of a concert, so that will be forever 480P unfortunately). So all that needs to be done is finding the original neg and striking a new master. I am not sure about Dangerous era videos, But the visual effects in some of the later videos look to be 480P, which leads me to believe they were edited on video. Not sure about Black or White. But I am pretty sure anything from History was edited on a video system like Avid. (Final cut pro wasn't around until the late 90's). If they kept the EDL lists for these, scanning in the original film in high rez would be all they need to do. The computer would take care of the rest.
Any concert footage from Bad I have seen was shot on 1980's video, so while the original source can be remastered, your never going to get anything but 480P from that. Same goes with any Dangerous concert. I don't think there were any concerts of Michaels Filmed on film, with the exception of MITM, which was used for Moonwalker.
I heard a rumor that some of the History concerts were filmed using early HD cams.
1080i (which won't look as good as modern HD, but will look really nice). It would be something if this were true!
The 2001 concerts looked nice on TV, but I'm not sure if they were shot in HD. Pretty sure it was standard 2001 era video, and it looks great but probably not HD. Anything claiming to be HD is most likely a upscale transfer. It is possible the concert was shot in HD, I guess it depends on who shot the concert. I know CBS aired the footage, but were they responsible for the filming and editing? If this ever comes to DVD, I would love to see a re-edit that treated this more as a concert and less of a tv special.
Now, as far as Moonwalker in 16x9 goes. You guys may see cropping from what you have been used to on video and tv. It all depends on how the full frame transfer was conducted. Most 1.85:1 films (16x9) are shot full frame and matted off at 1.85:1 as the intended ratio for the theater, and now for widescreen tvs. A common practice in home video was to open the matts for home video full frame transfers, which is different than pan & scan which is used for Anamorphic (Widescreen) 2.35:1 films. The pan and scan transfer process has been used in 1.85:1 but not as common, usually when a film is shot hard matted (The matts are filmed onto the film). So it just depends on how the moonwalker transfer was made for home video, Where the sides cut off of the image? Or was the top and bottom opened up?
I myself have only seen the full screen US home video and tv versions, so I'm not sure.
