Black & White vs. Color

[John Holmes]

Last night, my wife and I watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon via cable. The picture was so good that I felt like I was in the 60's (7 or 8 yrs of age) seeing it for the first time! I swear it looked as good as I remember first seeing it.

Anyway, this lead me to wonder "why" to dvd issues. Like, If a film this old can look this good on cable, Why do great releases from the 70's and 80's that are in color not hold up the same? I would think that on the dvd this would not be a problem in most cases.

Just for instance: The Wrath of Khan. Though better than it's vhs brother doesn't hold a candle to my recent viewing of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Any thoughts?




"I came here, to chew bubble gum and kickass. And I'm all out of bubble gum!!!" My DVD's

[JonMarsh]

Black and white is a snap compared to color for working with old prints. I've got a recent DVD issue of an old Bridgette Bardot film, B&W, 16X9 enhanced widescreen, looks great. Better than B&W over cable, for sure. Problems with color film are legion; the dyes deteriorate, cleaning steps they use when finishing internegatives strip different parts of the emulsion (and different colors) at different rates, and finding an old print that is clean, or restoration worthy, is much harder. Remember, a black and white picture can be represented fairly well with a 256 bit gray scale (only 256 distinct values), whereas equivalent color reproduction accuracy requires 16.7 million colors to be accurately reproduced.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[KennyG]

Just so you know, the DVD of Creature looks very good also, I would think even better than on cable.

[John Holmes]

Jonmarsh,
Okay. I can live with that

KennyG
Thanks for the tip!




"I came here, to chew bubble gum and kickass. And I'm all out of bubble gum!!!" My DVD's