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Every time a new home video format comes out, Disney jumps on the bandwagon and begins to release their animated films in that format claiming the image quality is 'restored' and 'better than ever'. I don't doubt Blu-Ray looks better than VHS, DVD, Laserdisc and all the other formats, but how much better can the image clarity and color vibrancy get from there?

With live action, I can see how it can get to look better. They keep trying to up the quality so that it's closer and closer to how our eyes view reality.

But with animation, it seems like the quality would be locked into place eventually - that it'd max out – because it’s hand-drawn so it can’t ever move beyond a certain point.

How many times can movies like Snow White be restored and re-mastered before there's really no improvement?

They are already at work on the successor to Blu-Ray.

Basically I'm wondering, after Blu-Ray, will the next home video format's Disney releases look any better? Can they? Is it possible for the quality, clarity, coloring and vibrancy to finally hit a ceiling?

Thanks.

Yeah, the ceiling would be whatever the film was shot in.

There's a limit to how detailed a 35mm film reel can be scanned before it won't look any better. I don't know what that limit is, but believe me... there is one.

It all depends on the age of the film... newer movies are now being made digitally and could probably go way more than 1080p. Older movies are already looking grainy at 1080p and any higher would just look the same.

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Howard Ashman:
He gave a mermaid her voice, a beast his soul, and Arabs something to complain about
Arabian Nights (Unedited)
Savages (Uncensored)
If it ain't OTV, it ain't worth anything!

Yeah, I heard the Blu-Ray sleeping beauty looks good but I mean how much further can Disney push it?

Eventually they'll have to top out.

What'll they say then? "Looks as good as ever" as supposed to "Looks better than ever"?

I totally agree. I asked this question about DACs on DVD and Blu-Ray a few years back on some other forum and they pretty much told me that I was SO dumb for asking such a question. But I mean, like you said, there's got to be a point where the quality absolutely can't get any better or any more remastered. I think as long as new formats keep getting introduced, new technology will, therefore, they will find new ways to remaster the films.

The Snow White 2001 PE STILL looks amazing today, and I can't wait to see what Disney will do with it for next year's DVD and Blu-Ray rerelease. I know it will look just amazing and it's already my most anticipated DVD/Blu-Ray release of 2009 (I know, I'm such a dork!)

On the other hand, the 2002 Beauty and the Beast PE was "over-remastered" and although the PE was released 6 years ago, even today it still looks like it was made within the past 2 - 3 years. I know many fans and I weren't so pleased with that because it has a "pastel-ish" look to it and it was too bright, unlike the theatrical and '92 VHS release, which had a dark and mysterious tone to it, which fit many of the scenes in the film, especially the ones that the Beast was in, before his "makeover" scene. So I have no idea how Disney's going to pull of the remastering of the next release for that, because if they make it any brighter my eyes will go into a shock! Maybe they'll tone it down to make it look more like the theatrical release, because I like it that way.

I'm not sure how many times Disney will try to pull off the remastering of their classic films until it becomes impossible to remaster it more. Until the price of Blu-Ray drops to the price that DVDs are now (generally $19.99), I'm content with buying the remastered DVDs, seeing as Blu-Ray players enhance picture quality on standard DVDs. I'm sure I will be buying the DACs on Blu-Ray for collector's purposes and I'll probably get SB on DVD AND Blu-Ray when it comes out Tuesday, because I intend to get every DAC on Blu-Ray since I don't have them all on DVD, and if I fall behind with the releases it might be too late because of the vault. And since SB will be the first DAC on Blu-Ray it only seems appropriate...

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UDer #3495

The average resolution of 35mm film is 4000 by 2000 pixels. Blu-Rau is 1920 by 1080, so normal film can go with it for a while . You're forgetting that animation has to hold up on the big screen as well (and it still looks good in the theaters) so it already is pretty detailed. Grain structure is different on each film, because of different film stocks and lenses used. It's not a problem per se (unless a second or more generation print was used). You should be worried about the digitally shot movies, though. The early ones couldn't even have the resolution of HD, so they would look worse on future higher resolution formats, I guess.

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Let's see what happens when it's normal to have gigantic monitors covering every inch of wall in our rooms before we hit a "ceiling" of quality.

Sorry, couldn't resist making a Fahrenheit 451 reference.

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they could do HD 3D?

Somehow, I don't doubt that Disney would try to throw it's older hand drawn animated classics in 3D at us someday in the future, but i'm afraid that's one "improvement" i could never follow. I for one think 3D is something that should be reserved for theme park attractions. I just don't like it in the cinema, much less in my home.

Actually, animation (and I mean more 2D stuff, not the Pixar movies or something) is one of the few things that'll look good regardless of what resolution.

Take Cartoon Network, for example. They have an HD station, but like 90% of the stuff is upscaled since it wasn't created in HD. Yet it looks just great. When done right, animated movies will look great on HDTVs, regardless if they're DVD, Blu-Ray, 480 or 1080... whatever. I mean sure you can have one that's poorly encoded, but that's different.

Am I saying that getting Blu-Rays of animated movies is pointless? Of course not... but what I'm saying is that unlike live action, it won't look terrible if you don't have it on Blu-Ray either.

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Howard Ashman:
He gave a mermaid her voice, a beast his soul, and Arabs something to complain about
Arabian Nights (Unedited)
Savages (Uncensored)
If it ain't OTV, it ain't worth anything!

your talkin making 2d into 3d right? or just 3d 3d? both can be done. but I dont like the concept of seeing 2d in 3d. based on the chip and dale short I saw, the result just looks like animated cardboard cutvouts. sure, theres depth, but why bother?

anyway current HD resplution is pretty much the best we can expect for hand drawn stuff. the meduim isnt meant to be super detailed anyway. sure, you occasionally get gorgeous paintings like in the Lion King, but the animation itself is indended to be simpified. most movies just dont have that much consistent detail to bring out.

but I do think most animated films will look great in HD. being able to see the sketchy detail in the pencil lines is just awesome.

I actually would like the idea of having traditional animation on 3D, why would it be a problem if they looked like pop-up books ? I can't remember how many times I've seen Aladdin or BATB, I would want nothing more than to see them again like i've never seen them before.

HD3D will definitely be the next format, the technology is already available by Panasonic and all the other companies are experimenting with it. We'll just have to wait and see how Hollywood can make use of this new technology.

I was at the mall once and I went to an electronics store, I couldn't believe what I saw, I felt like I was in 2020.

There was a CGI Pinocchio (not the Disney version) scene on the T.V, and his nose appeared to go out of the screen as it got longer, and I wasn't even wearing glasses !

I think Disney is going to stick with Bluray, I think it will have enough capacity to store the movie in 3D, I guess you'd just need double the capacity of what you need for the space stored only for the actual film and not the special features, and the special features will have there own disk, which means that if Disney ever decided to release films like BATB etc., they'd probably need to have 2 or 3 disks for each of their releases.
But I guess even if BD is still going to be the format it would still push people to buy a new T.V or/and a new Bluray Player.
Life Sucks ? I know !!

This will probably have to do until VR (Virtual Reality) would be the next format !

The problem is, every time they think they have the best knowledge in hands, because they don't know any better.

People are unable to see beyond the technology and evolution of today.

Years ago, when Sleeping Beauty on dvd was presented on dvd as the "restored to it's orignal brilliance" "looking exactly like it did when it came out", I told people, "Just wait, in many years it will come out again, looking completely different and then they will say again that it looked like it was when it came out, and that the earlier version was a mistake".

They told me I was crazy, but it turned out I was right.

And I'm saying it again. In 2016 there will be a version of Sleeping Beauty released that will look completely different than the recent version, restored and looking "just like it was when it first came out" thanks to the (yet to discover) technology they simply didn't have back then in 2008.

That the films are constantly adjusted to modern times and in the end don't look like the original version anymore at all doesn't really matter to them.

Why would we believe that this is the best it can get? Just because it's 2008?
I think they have a long way to go to make it look like "when it first came out" and get it right.

I guess it all depends on what "quality" means.

If you just think it means, extremely sharp, artificially, super bright, crisp and clean, flat pictures, I suppose it can't get any better.

If you think "quality" means more than that, giving the film an atmosphere, a warmth, an original look like it was made in the year it actually came out, depth, lighting of photographye, etc, I suppose there is room for a lot of improvement.

For the consumer, nothing will come along to replace 1080 HD for a while; the studios and the manufacturers are heavily invested in the standard and it has long way to go to reach adoption by a simple majority.

The next step up from 1080 would be a 2k format---"2k" referring to the 2000 lines of resolution measured along the horizontal dimension. Cinemas that have moved away from film-based presentation use 2k formats for digital distribution. But 2k isn't a huge resolution increase over 1080 (which has 1920 lines of resolution on the same dimension). Last year at Panasonic Hollywood labs an unwitting audience was presented with a splitscreen viewing of part of the 2nd Fantastic Four movie; half the screen was in 2k, half was from the Blu-ray master. On a 100' screen, attendees couldn't tell the difference.

The next step up from 2k would be 4k (4000 lines along the horizontal). That's the current standard for digital archiving and restoration of 35mm negatives, and the infrastructure for its use has only been in place for the past couple years. Without even discussing the cost (or size necessary to appreciate the resolution) of 4k consumer displays if and when they become available, studios are not about to begin offering their masters for sale to the general public.

I'm not trying to argue with you, but you seem to be contradicting yourself in this statement. How could the earlier digital movies not have HD resolution? I would think that these movies were also meant to hold up on the big screen, so I don't see why they couldn't be HD.

Thanks for noticing that. I don't know why I wrote that, I probably meant that it didn't hold up to film. It definitely wouldn't make sense for those digital cameras to not be HD.

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