Standard Def (SD) titles….

[Darth_LFE]

So I was attracted to the $7.99 price tag (and the fact I had never seen The Rainmaker) so I bought it. SD version So that’s regular DVD. OMG- are all SD movies this bad resolution . it’s so so so bad! I have a JVC NZ8 with MadVR Envy.

It’s almost unwatchable.

I knew my expectations needed to be low …it’s a DVD… but holy moly! It’s laughable.

Are ALL SD movies on Kscape this awful?

 

[jarp81]

Not sure about all SD movies, but I watched Lost Souls in SD on K and the transfer was pretty bad. I’ve been reluctant to try another SD title on K because of that. I have a NX7 and a Lumagen

 

[JohnA]

Only SD title I have is Jeremiah Johnson. Unwatchable, really bad. I actually deleted it and downloaded it again thinking I must have gotten a "bad" file. So bad I'm wondering if my Lumagen setup is incorrect for SD as I don't think K would let a file out looking like this. I have a Sony VW5000ES and Lumagen. This is keeping me away from SD's as well.

 

[StanfieldNC]

Just download a few copies of movies you own and bluray and 4k at no additional cost and make a direct comparison. There's plenty of 4k conversions that are trash too, so it may be more specific to the movie and when/how it was filmed or converted.

 

[Darth_LFE]

Just download a few copies of movies you own and bluray and 4k at no additional cost and make a direct comparison. There's plenty of 4k conversions that are trash too, so it may be more specific to the movie and when/how it was filmed or converted.

There are not other versions of The Rainmaker. And I guarantee you there are zero HD or 4K movies in Kscape that look this bad. Not a chance.

Truly if this is really what the average SD movie looks like on Kscape there should be a warning pop up before you purchase.

 

[StanfieldNC]

There are not other versions of The Rainmaker. And I guarantee you there are zero HD or 4K movies in Kscape that look this bad. Not a chance.

Truly if this is really what the average SD movie looks like on Kscape there should be a warning pop up before you purchase.

Understood, but your question was are all SD movies this awful. My suggestion is to take another movie in your library that is available in all formats, download all formats and compare them. Not app conversions are created equal.

It could be that Rainmaker is an unlucky casualty as opposed to being the standard...or for testing purposes, purchase the physical DVD for $1.00 on ebay and do a comparison.

 

[cinelife]

I still have about 100 Store downloaded SD titles and find playback quality to be varied among those I've actually viewed. Considering they're SD, some look fine, some are less so but certainly watchable.

The differences in quality are more obvious when we've been watching HD or 4K content and then select an SD movie, but that's expected.

Jim

 

[AlanG]

FYI there is a remastered Blu-ray of The Rainmaker:

The Rainmaker Blu-ray

The Rainmaker Blu-ray Release Date October 25, 2022. Blu-ray reviews, news, specs, ratings, screenshots. Cheap Blu-ray movies and deals.

www.blu-ray.com

Hopefully the HD of this will eventually become available in the Kaleidescape Store.

Here is a review of the Blu-ray:

Rainmaker, The (1956) (Blu-ray Review)

Katharine Hepburn infuses Lizzy with vulnerability while Burt Lancaster draws upon his impressive physical presence, creating a Starbuck that seems a whirlwind force of nature. These two complete opposites are thrown together as a result of a con that turns out to be far more. The Rainmaker...

thedigitalbits.com

The Rainmaker was shot by director of photography Charles Lang on 35 mm film using Mitchell VistaVision cameras, finished photochemically, and released in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray presentation comes from a new 6K scan of the original 35 mm VistaVision camera negative, which was performed by Paramount Pictures. Overall, this is a beautiful looking film. The Technicolor is vibrant and rich, with flesh tones especially well reproduced. (Note: excerpted from the above review)

 

[Darth_LFE]

FYI there is a remastered Blu-ray of The Rainmaker:

The Rainmaker Blu-ray

The Rainmaker Blu-ray Release Date October 25, 2022. Blu-ray reviews, news, specs, ratings, screenshots. Cheap Blu-ray movies and deals.

www.blu-ray.com

Hopefully the HD of this will eventually become available in the Kaleidescape Store.

Here is a review of the Blu-ray:

Rainmaker, The (1956) (Blu-ray Review)

Katharine Hepburn infuses Lizzy with vulnerability while Burt Lancaster draws upon his impressive physical presence, creating a Starbuck that seems a whirlwind force of nature. These two complete opposites are thrown together as a result of a con that turns out to be far more. The Rainmaker...

thedigitalbits.com

The Rainmaker was shot by director of photography Charles Lang on 35 mm film using Mitchell VistaVision cameras, finished photochemically, and released in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray presentation comes from a new 6K scan of the original 35 mm VistaVision camera negative, which was performed by Paramount Pictures. Overall, this is a beautiful looking film. The Technicolor is vibrant and rich, with flesh tones especially well reproduced. (Note: excerpted from the above review)

Thanks! I was actually referring to the Matt Damon one but definitely appreciated your input! The Burt Lancaster one is definitely available in HD on Kscape

 

[Rengozu]

While always 4k when possible in my own set-up, I've recently repurposed an old 6tb Alto for my technology impaired dad and loaded it up with every SD movie I could. Not knowing what a 4K picture even is, he freakin loves it.

 

[Substance]

SD is 480 Lines of vertical resolution and 720 lines of horizontal resolution. That’s about 0.35 megapixels for each frame (but not really, more on this later).

HD is 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels which is about 2 megapixels. 4K is 3840 by 2160 which is about 8.3 megapixels.

SD frame is not 16:9 scope ratio (it’s more like 13:9). They squeeze the 16:9 image into 13:9 and then the player anamorphically enhances back to 16:9 during playback. It is not finished yet. Because it is designed to mimic the good old analog NTSC format, each frame is split into 2 fields, one containing odd horizontal lines and the other containing even lines. The player needs to progressively scan these lines and combine them on the fly.

This may seem very primitive but it is brilliant for its time. Far more engineering went into this than 4K HDR. NTSC carrier had about 7 or 8 Mhz bandwidth which is about 500 (horizontal) lines of resolution. It had to be backwards compatible with B&W TVs so they kept chroma (peak white) and luminance (color) bands separate (where the names composite and component comes from). They needed a master clock to align the scan lines perfectly. No femto clocks back then so they picked the wall outlet as the master clock (120V 60Hz). When DVDs came around, most TVs were still analog tube TVs and the main broadcast was still NTSC. They specified the SD DVD standard very close to NTSC so you connect it to an analog TV with a composite cable.

To summarize it all, 0.35 megapixels of resolution blown onto 8.3 megapixel display isn’t going to look good. There is only so much MadVR and Lumagen can do for the 8 megapixels of absent information. They do bunch of interpolations, contrast enhancing near edges and many other techniques. SD was magnificent level of engineering for its time for compressing huge amount of video information in both time and field to fit it onto the very narrow NTSC carrier. It allowed over 50 years of television, the first successful home media format VHS (and Beta and Laserdiscs) and paved the way to later formats HD and 4K HDR. It has no purpose and no reason to live anymore. It boggles my mind to see new SD releases.

 

[Substance]

FYI there is a remastered Blu-ray of The Rainmaker:

The Rainmaker Blu-ray

The Rainmaker Blu-ray Release Date October 25, 2022. Blu-ray reviews, news, specs, ratings, screenshots. Cheap Blu-ray movies and deals.

www.blu-ray.com

Hopefully the HD of this will eventually become available in the Kaleidescape Store.

Here is a review of the Blu-ray:

Rainmaker, The (1956) (Blu-ray Review)

Katharine Hepburn infuses Lizzy with vulnerability while Burt Lancaster draws upon his impressive physical presence, creating a Starbuck that seems a whirlwind force of nature. These two complete opposites are thrown together as a result of a con that turns out to be far more. The Rainmaker...

thedigitalbits.com

The Rainmaker was shot by director of photography Charles Lang on 35 mm film using Mitchell VistaVision cameras, finished photochemically, and released in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray presentation comes from a new 6K scan of the original 35 mm VistaVision camera negative, which was performed by Paramount Pictures. Overall, this is a beautiful looking film. The Technicolor is vibrant and rich, with flesh tones especially well reproduced. (Note: excerpted from the above review)

The Rainmaker

A young lawyer takes on a corrupt insurance company over a young man denied treatment for leukemia. Drama, Suspense. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, and Mary Kay Place. Purchase and download today in DVD quality.

www.kaleidescape.com

I believe the OP is talking about this Rainmaker (1997) with Matt Damon.

We have the Rainmaker (1956) with Burt Lancaster in HD on the store. Kino used Paramount's 6K scan to produce the Blu-ray disc version which takes up 38..8GB. The Kaleidescape download is a smaller file at 32.5GB. The difference isn't huge. They should be visually indistinguishable from a typical viewing distance on a large screen.

The Rainmaker

A scam artist works his magic in the dry Southwest by giving a rancher's spinster daughter the confidence to get a man. Comedy, Romance. Directed by Joseph Anthony. Starring Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Wendell Corey, and Lloyd Bridges. Purchase and download today in Blu-ray quality.

www.kaleidescape.com

 

[Transepoch]

I would have to second Jim's opinion that SD titles are hit or miss. That's also why I threw a few SD titles (or more correctly, SD copies of titles, so I could compare how they looked in HDR/UHD/HD/SD) in the mix when lugging my Strato/Terra for projector demos to test their ability to upscale (really helped differentiate those that could technically accept the lower resolutions as input versus those that took the effort to play them as well as they could.)

 

[Hunter67]

In this case it would have been better to purchase the HD streaming version for $4.99 from Vudu etc. It's a shame that K doesn't have the HD version for purchase.

 

[Darth_LFE]

In this case it would have been better to purchase the HD streaming version for $4.99 from Vudu etc. It's a shame that K doesn't have the HD version for purchase.

Oh I agree! Don’t see the SD until I owned it. A streaming 720p would be WAY better than this.