TCM on BellTV ?

I saw TCM in HD. I'm sure they must upconvert but what I saw looked awful.
 
I thought old movies were shot in at least HD, how else could they display a picture on 50'? screens and still keep it watchable?
 
Old movies were shot on film, which has more than enough resolution to be telecined to "HD". See the following post on the topic:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=606973#post606973

There is of course the subject of production values which needs to be dealt with:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=893245#post893245
 
I watched two H.G. Wells classics on TCM Friday evening. Both had been restored.

War of the Worlds (1953) with gene Berry...INCREDIBLE picture!

The Time Machine (1960) with Rod Taylor... again INCREDIBLE...

Both were broadcast in their original widescreen aspect ration. Both reminded me why the so called more sophisticated special effects are crap when you destroy a great story (think Tom Cruise in the War of the Worlds remake).

Thank heavens Dish has TCM!!!!
 
Thanks for the info.

I think the reason that the old movie I saw looked so bad was bad colour.

I thought the one advantage would be the fact that they wouldn't have to adapt the movie's aspect ratio to fit 4x3.
 
Once again it is entirely subjective. Have no idea what your "incredible" would mean........as many have said before ......a crappy movie still remains a crappy movie even in HD. I think that TCM would be pretty low on the majority of wish-lists that viewers have. It is highly unlikely that any more American HD channels will appear until a full slate of Canadian channels have appeared.
 
TCM is very high on our wishlist and is reported to be one of the most requested channels in Canada. Turner has restored a lot of movies so picture quality is excellent. Turner also has exclusive rights to many of their movies so we will never see them on another channel in Canada. (In contrast, we get Silver Screen Classics which airs truly awful prints of most movies. There is absolutely no comparison between most "classic" Canadian movie channels and TCM.) Bell's refusal to carry TCM is doing it's customers an injustice that almost all other BDUs have corrected.
 
In this case incredible meant that someone spent millions restoring these movies frame by frame from the best prints available resulting in a high quality version of the film being shown in a HD (less quality than the print or Blu-Ray) method of delivery. I don't remember which institution (university with many, many others) did the restorations, but these are not the old Turner colourized versions of bad film prints.

War of the Worlds was the first major (A class versus B/C grade) sci-fi movie done by a major studio and a lot of money (for those days) was spend on this film originally. The restoration cleaned up graininess and noise that is present on my DVD version when doing a comparison (PVR vs DVD) of the pre and post restorations.

My discussion was not on the quality of the storyline, but on the high quality print shown in a high quality format. By the way, it was also not changed from the original aspect ratio into some "editor's" version of the film in "pan & scan".
 
Very familiar with the restoration process and digitalizing old films but it still remains subjective and even if 20 posters or more want TCM it still remains a minute number of Bell subscribers. Again just expressing my opinion and not attempting to start a war.
 
Like I said, TCM is reported to be one of the most requested US channels in Canada. It's not just the people on this forum who want it. Bell's reluctance to carry TCM may be due to carriage terms. TCM does not want their channel stuck in some obscure package where most subscribers will not see it. Many recently added channels have been put on the 82 sat that most Bell subscribers without HD don't get. IIRC, Turner originally wanted TCM put on analog cable to attract the most viewers. On Bell, that would mean adding it to main movie package. That's something Bell will not want to do since they look at every new specialty channel as a new source of revenue, not as an added service to their customers.
 
I also want it. Bell needs to add it to be competitive.

Let's phrase it differently: what Bell customers DON'T want TCM? I bet there will be very few answers.
 
I'm actually considering switching simply because Bell doesn't offer TCM - we watch it a lot at our Toronto place where we have simple Rogers cable
 
Which channel would Bell subscribers rather have added than TCM ? Bell has most of the more popular CRTC approved channels except AMC, TCM, Speed HD, Newsworld HD, and CNN HD. I've probably forgotten a few channels, but I would guess that TCM would be a popular choice as there aren't that many channels left to choose from.
 
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but it still remains subjective and even if 20 posters or more want TCM it still remains a minute number of Bell subscribers

It is a minute number of Bell subscribers because most who want TCM and/or AMC have already switched to another provider.

There was a time when Bell was a leader, offering the most and newest channels available. I guess that time has passed and they are no longer the premiere satellite provider.

Can't wait till FreeHD Canada is up and running ! More competition is good for us all, including the present providers to look at their current operations and to improve.
 
I'm moving soon and if Bell TV soon doesnt announce TCM then they lose me as a customer as well.

I think everyone who is interested in seeing TCM on Bell TV should start a mass email campaign to bell tv. Send as many requests as much as possible over the next two days. Lets fill up there email boxes and send a deluge of calls for TCM.

Its time to stop just complaining here and have our voices heard. Please do this today.
 
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