How Can Star Wars REALLY Be in HD?

Cinema resolution is much higher than HD.

to project a image onto a huge screen it has to be at a high resolution, Film picks up a lot of detail and the film used in movie camera's can pick up a lot.

The original prints were probably digitally redone to be 1080p and any blurriness improved through software.

To put it simply, when star wars was shot, it was shout natively in 1080P and scaled down to fit the needs of the consumer market. The higher resolution version was given to theatres, thats why if you see Star Wars in a theatre today, it doesn't look much different than it did years ago. Because they shot in digital format they are stuck in 1080P. Fact of the matter is when another "HD" format comes out, thats larger than 1080P, they won't be able to upscale it at all.

Now, other movies, that are shot using FILM don't have much of a limitation. In fact, a lot of current movies are still shot in film because it is able to be scaled up in the near future. FILM has virtually no resolution, since it is physical, the quality of film depends on the scanner that is scanning it into a computer. You can exceed 16 times the area of current 1080P resolution with some scanners, and this is why you see older films being remastered for HD.

Unfortunately films like Star Wars were filmed with digital formats in the first place, and so past blu-ray HD, star wars will never get any better than it is now.

It is called remastering.

Frame by frame they edit each one made 50% better.

Hard work but worth it...

The original film (yes- actual film) is capable of producing resolutions over 1920x1080 so they re digitize the film and remaster the sound. 35mm film can produce digital video around 8k.

The original film is in higher than the home market ever got, it was always better than 480i/p. 1080P is still not the maximum resolution. I can add some more details in a little while, however someone may get to it before I can.

This site talks about it - http://www.filmjunk.com/2010/05/31/blu-ray-myths-old-movies-do-not-benefit-from-hd/

Star Wars will be able to look better than the prequels one day.

2001 looks amazing on Blu-Ray and I don't expect the original trilogy to be any different.

The star wars movie was shot onto film, and usually kept in a safe area (with specific temp and humidity and light) to prevent degradation. When they made it in HD, they went back to the source video and recorded the film and did tedious remastering and cleaning to make it good.

The whole point is, it wasn't filmed in 480i like SD TV shows. It wasn't filmed in 720 or 1080p either, it was filmed on film, with detail beyond even 1080p. The remastering is scanning that original film digitally for the 1080 resolution, and removing scratches, dust etc.

didn't know 35mm film was 1080p exactly....

Simply put, old films can be re-mastered, because film can resolve up to 6,000 lines of resolution per 35mm scan. Yes, that is almost six times the resolution of todays current HiDef TVs. Film, unbeknown to people at the time, is future-proof by nature. Comparably, IMAX HD and OMNIMAX is ran at 10,000 x 7,000 lines.

Just for fun, there is a camera that is capable of digitally recording 8K, as of 2009. This is higher resolution than most 35mm film strips.

LINK: 8K Camera