You guys have been soaking in misinformation for many years.
The Internet makes misinformation promulgate faster and wider.
The "resolution" myth comes from not understanding that digital video is
lossey.
Up to a certain bitrate, higher resolution just makes the picture quality worse. This is why professional video engineers reduce 1080i to 1440x1080 at lower bitrates - it improves quality
at that low bitrate.
Due to digital still cameras, Joe Sixpack has learned what resolution means. Since resolutions are standardized to a small number of fixed sizes, it is easy for Joe to fixate on wanting the "big size".
Hence, several years ago, when DirecTV needed to drastically limit their bandwidth to their HD channels, and thus their bitrate per channel, they lowered their resolution in order to make the picture quality somewhat less terrible. Joe Sixpacks in the Forums, who knew resolution from their digital still cameras, but had no knowledge of lossey digital video and thus did not grasp bitrate, much less encoding algorithms, declared that the "lowered resolution" was the
cause of the poor quality, rather than the truth that it was a technique used to keep the low bitrate from making the picture totally unwatchable.
Concerning color space, there is an excellent demonstration in 10 seconds of why it matters more than resolution at the following link - in fact, if you look at the pictures honestly, you will acknowledge that color space
really is what you call "resolution":
☆ Shooting for HD: Why Color Space Matters Saturday 24th of January 2009
Notice the difference in detail between the three pillars at the top of the three 480 pictures that are all the same resolution.
Concerning motion, all I can say is "oh please". If there is anything that characterizes TCM movies (and I have seen hundreds of them) it is
talking heads. With no television, verbal skill was all important, and far more appreciated by audiences. I recently watched "From Here to Eternity" on TCM, a "war movie" which had some file footage of planes, one scene with people jumping under tables, and the rest was people talking. Of course, the movie is about what they said to each other. Obviously, there is some motion, but the amount of motion is nothing like either the NBA or Star Wars 2.
Lastly, all three of you who replied, who are all usually thoughtful posters, missed that my first sentence said "
least difference" . It did
not say "no difference".
There is always a difference on satellite and cable between an SD channel and the same channel broadcast an "HD" channel, i.e. upconverted. This is because it gets more bitrate.
But that is true of all channels, and thus does not contradict my assesment of "least difference".
PS One more point is that all those 1930's 40's and 50's 4x3 black-and-white movies were in mono, and thus gain the least from HD's 6 channel higher bandwidth sound quality.
One can certainly make the point that many of TCM's movies are more important than a 1980's John Hughes teen movie, but that is not the point under discussion.
Westerns with all that dust, horses, carriages, bar fights, etc; Gangster movies with car chases, fist fights, gun fights and fast-moving-fast-talking high-pants wearing wise guys, see. Mya...mya...; WW2 movies galore with ga-gore and all those actions scenes on the beaches and forests and John Wayne lumbering across a battlefield with 20 machine guns shooting at him and all missing by inches spraying sand all over his boots. Or those Fred and Ginger movies with all the intricate dance work. The Busby Berkeley movies with those insane dance numbers? Not enough motion? No... don't buy that one.
