Originally posted by: skyjedi2005

The biggest roadblock i see for either of the two competing HD formats is earlier and classic movies needing to be scanned at HD resolutions and have cleaned up prints or go back to the camera o-negs.

The only viable films I see at the moment would be the recent lowry/dts digital 4k scan of the bond movies that is only on dvd, the 2k scan they did of both the indiana jones movies and the 2004 edition of star wars trilogy.

Most telecines since 2004 have been in HD masters. And it wasnt really until that time that we started getting newly remastered SE's of classic films--Casablanca, Searchers, Ben Hur, Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, etc--so most of them are already done and sitting around. Additionally, an O-neg is not required for HD--very few films go back to the O-neg for a new master, and a 2k or 4k telecine is not necessary since HD can't hold that much info (although purists will argue it makes a difference)--Star Wars OT and Indy, IIRC were only scanned at an HD resolution.

Regarding the previous discussion of anamorphic 16x9--that just refers to stretching an image to fit a certain aspect ratio. Although it is true that there is no stretching in a 16x9 image on a 16x9 screen, because it fills it exactly it would not be considered letterboxed since there is no letterboxing--in that sense its not really anamorphic either since there is no re-sizing but its a better way to describe filling a screen of the same size without any loss. As I said, letterboxing is always necessary since tvs are fixed size and films come in all sorts of shapes--in theaters, the projectionist has to letterbox films too, even though 35mm prints are anamorphic; thats how the same size screen fits a 1.85 film and a 2.35 film without changing the screen, there are drawn curtains that mask the shape of the screen to fit the images, even though the silver screen is "widescreen" and "anamorphic."

And while we're on Superman, I have to reinforce my love and preference for the 2000 cut. The expanded smallville scenes add so much and there is a totally kick-ass action moment where Superman breaks into Lex's lair that is classic Superman; they don't slow down the film, they enrich characters and kick up the pace IMO. The biggest drawback is that the soundtrack is remixed in 5.1 and has a lot of new sound effects--to people who have the film memorized the new sounds seem jarring but actually considered objectively they are excellent additions to the sometimes-dated sound mix. Terminator had a similar remix in 5.1 wherein a few sound effects were replaced--people who know the film might be thrown off, but a lot of the times they add an appropriate punch.