Firefly on Universal HD - reactions and observations by DonCoat

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Firefly on Universal HD - reactions and observations

POSTED BY: DONCOAT
UPDATED: Monday, September 25, 2006 07:39
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Monday, September 25, 2006 3:51 AM

Some of my fellow 'Coats and I watched the pilot episode on UniHD last night. I've had HDTV for some time now, so I was able to make some informed observations.

First, my overall impression was that the improvement in resolution was not as dramatic as that between analog TV and HDTV. The show had a somewhat "softer" look than the high-contrast direct-to-HD video broadcasts (like football games). That may be due to the fact that it was a conversion from film, rather than shot-on-HD, or it may have been because we're already used to seeing Firefly in DVD resolution so the incremental improvement is less.

Still, several things did "pop" in the HD format. I noticed an amazing difference in the detail of items like costumes. Inara's crimson-and-gold robe looked stunning, and we noticed that Kaylee's print top had pagodas on it, not just an abstract pattern. Book's embroidered shoulder strap was another remarkable revelation, with every detail of the pattern showing up clearly. And the teddy bear on Kaylee's coveralls looked positively 3-D in the closeup shot (when she's in the infirmary).

I didn't really notice a vast difference in audio quality from the DVD version. HD broadcasts include Dolby Digital sound tracks, but in this case these were (of necessity) derived from the original stereo tracks. There were no awesome new surround effects or anything. Still, there was nothing to gripe about. The sound was clear and clean.

One thing that got me wondering was the special effects sequences. They looked as good as I've ever seen them, which isn't unexpected. But it made me wonder: what resolution were they originally created in? This transfer was made from the master film, of course, but Zoic would have had to choose some level of resolution when doing the graphics crunching. Was that set extremely high, say, at the level of the grain of the film stock? Or was it done at lower resolution to save cost? If the latter, how does that choice compare with the resolution of HDTV?

By the way, even though Universal HD sometimes shows movies and such commercial-free, there were ads in the Firefly broadcast. A major sponsor was Bose, which had an ad in every break (I think). They were pushing their noise-canceling headphones and small home audio systems. Other ads were for things like kitchen gadgets and air purifiers.

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I'm pointin' right at it!

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Monday, September 25, 2006 6:32 AM

MYCROFTXXX

I, too, watched the show last night on UHD. I agree that a LOT more of the show's textures came through in HD. The one thing that jumped out at me, though, was the quality of the CGI work. For instance, just before the scene where Mal tells the new passengers the onboard rules ("bridge, engine room, cargo bay are off limits"), there is an upclose beauty shot of Serenity. What was amazing in this shot was as the ship passed by and you looked in through the "skylight" window in the dining area you could actually see Mal and the others in proper 3D! The DVD shows a blurry shot into the dining room by comparison. It was like that throughout the entire "movie" (it sure felt like one!)

Regarding Zoic and the output resolution, my guess is they rendered the output with 1024i HD in mind because the rest of the show was being shot in the HD format. And, I'm sure Joss has something to do with this as well.

BTW, I have one of the HD DirecTivo units which captured the show beautifully. The problem is it can only hold 30 hours of HD on this system so as the new HD eps come out I'm gonna have to sacrifice more and more of that precious space for my BDHs! Small price to pay, I guess, until I can cough up the money for the HD DVD player(s).

--

Given a choice between the earth-that-is and the 'verse-that-will-be I'll take the latter.

宁静

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Monday, September 25, 2006 7:39 AM

DONCOAT

As I understand it, Firefly was shot on motion picture film in HD aspect ratio. It wasn't shot as HDTV. The resolution of film is not directly translatable into video resolution because it varies according to film type, "ASA" speed (don't know if that's the term used in cinema film), and the details of the scene (which can change the "graininess" of the resulting image). However, typical movie film has MUCH higher resolution than even HDTV -- not surprising given the size of the screen.

I would hope, but have no hard info to back up, that the effects were done to at least HDTV resolution. I'd really like to know for sure. Also, are there any details about the CGI-to-movie-film transfer process that enhance or degrade that original resolution?

Re: HD storage -- well, at least you have the TiVo! (You bum!) Not only are the HD players still super expensive, they suffer from 1st-generation firmware bugs. Then, there's the fact that there are two incompatible formats, each supported exclusively by various media companies -- and Fox and Universal are on opposite sides of the format war! So you might have to have two insanely costly players to handle Firefly and Serenity high-def discs. (Unless we get lucky and Universal issues the HD set of Firefly on HD-DVD, like the BDM, instead of Fox releasing it on Blu-Ray.)

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