| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Aug | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
Thanks to HBO-HD, I’ve completed the entire Star Wars franchise (all 6 movies) in HDTV. Presented beautifully in OAR, these screenshots show how well LucasFilm restored these 70’s and 80’s classics. I was never a huge Star Wars fan… I’ve seen all the movies, but you’ll never see me attend one of those conventions dressed up as Darth Vader. In fact, it was playing Lego Star Wars that got me interested again.
More pics below from the series.
The french version of F1-Live.com reports that French channel TF1 will be broadcasting the entire 2007 season in 16:9 aspect ratio. I don’t understand french, but using Google translation tools to get as much info as I can, the article reveals that HDTV owners will get a 16:9 image (not sure if it’s 480i SD or actual HDTV) while SD viewers will get a slightly cropped 14:9 image.
Does that mean SD viewers worldwide will get the 14:9 image? In the US, SpeedTV holds the rights for F1 (along with Fox), and SpeedTV doesn’t have a HD channel yet (DirecTV will carry SpeedHD in fall ‘07)… will they get the 14:9 image? And the few races broadcast on Fox (which does have a HD channel), is it 16:9? In Canada, TSN has the rights, and they have a full time HDTV channel, do we get 16:9 for us up north? I’ll start praying to the F1 gods now for some HDTV goodness.
An update to an earlier post, I downloaded the episode as soon as I got home from work yesterday. Thanks to my 10mbps internet connection, as well as fast Microsoft servers, the episode took about 20 minutes to download. We played a few games of Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting on XBOX Live Arcade while it was downloading to pass time, and was surprised that it was done so quick (I was 5-0, if anyone cares).
All I have to say is… WOW. Most cartoons don’t look much better in HD compared to ghettovision, but this episode looked amazing. Well, sorta… it looked amazing when they switched to the anime style of animation as shown in the screenshot above. When they were back to the classic style of animation, it was noticably better than the SD counterpart, much more so than other cartoons. I think this has to do with the fact that the later part of the series is done in Maya, so they can pretty much output in *any* resolution they want.
Everyone at my house agreed that it was much more enjoyable in HDTV, crisp sharp images, and best of all… it filled up the entire 16:9 screen real estate. No black bars, no stretchy superfat Cartman. Hopefully, the positive feedback that I’ve seen around the net will strike a deal between Microsoft and Comedy Central, so we can buy episodes on XBOX Live Marketplace. IÂ for one wouldn’t mind paying $5 an episode in HDTV.
DirecTV subscribers like myself noticed this weekend a new channel in the lineup called NGHC. Nothing listed in the guide yet except for some episodes of In the Womb: Multiples, hopefully they get this channel up and running quickly so I can watch Cesar Millan whisper to those disobedient dogs in HD.
Joystiq is reporting that tomorrow on XBOX Live Marketplace, a 2004 episode of South Park titled “Good Times With Weapons” will be available in HDTV for FREE. Great news for SP fans, hopefully we’ll see more episodes in HD in the near future!
Note to Comedy Central: If all the old SP’s can be mastered in HD, bring it out in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray format. I would be the first in line to buy the whole set!
