This is getting *waY* off-topic, but for about 6-7 years now, many American
TV shows (and many Ausie/NZ, too) have been shot with 16mm and converted to
video. It's a stretch to say that PAL is so vastly superior to NTSC, since
they both do about the same thing with different line counts. If the 16mm is
formatted to one format or the other and then converted to the second, it's
bound to suffer. Blame the idiots who "count the beans" in the head office,
not the cameramen and directors, or one format or the other.
Best regards--LRA
>From: "B.Rumary" <brian.rumary@virgin.net>
>Reply-To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
>To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
>Subject: Re: filmscanners: what defines this quality?
>Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 15:46:46 +0100
>
>In <B75592CC.2A81%soho@eircom.net>, Richard wrote:
>
> > I seem to remember watching American Football for the first time in the
>UK
> > some time back and thinking how fantastic the image quality was. I then
> > found out that its shot on film. Is this still the case?
> >
>TV series used to be shot on 35mm cine film, while sports and news was done
>on 16mm, unless they had direct outside broadcast via landline. These were
>then converted to TV signals via Telecine equipment when actually
>broadcasting. However news then went over the ENG (Electronic News
>Gathering), using high quality video camcorders. Later TV studio work went
>to video, basically to save money.
>
>One problem with this video approach is that much of the world's output
>comes from the US, where they use the inferior NTSC system, at 525 lines.
>Europe uses the better PAL system, at 625 lines, so the video tape signal
>has to be converted, giving further loss of quality over here. This was not
>a problem with 35mm film. I remember a news report about this when the TV
>series "Dynasty" changed from film to video halfway through the run, and
>there was a noticeable loss of picture quality.
>
>Brian Rumary, England
>
>
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
