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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently rewatching the Las Vegas (2003) NBC TV series (the one with James Caan, Josh Duhamel, James Lesure, Molly Sims, Nikki Cox, Vanessa Marcil etc). Feels on-brand; like every second ep is about some fantastic heist.

It's worth rewatching as a guilty pleasure, IMO. Feels quite alien compared to current fare. It's dumb but well-crafted, fun and glitzy and never takes itself too seriously. I miss that kind of show.

Surprisingly high production values for the time. It's available in 1080p with decent quality, somehow.

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HDTV (ATSC) was available in 1998 in the US[1]; consumer uptake wasn't much until close to the shutdown of analog broadcasting, but it was out there. NBC broadcasts in 1080i, so it's not terribly surprising that they recorded it in a way that would look good on 1080p. I can't find anything saying exactly how it was recorded, but it wasn't uncommon to film in 1080p/24 and broadcast with 3:2 pulldown. That kind of content will look great as 1080p obviously; but if it was recorded at 1080i, a professional deinterlacing will look pretty good too.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140924040947/http://www.highbe...

I think I started watching that show because it was in HD

HDTV (ATSC) is a technology that has influenced my life in pretty serious ways. My first tuner was a Sony SAT-HD100[0] in 2001. Witnessing the transition into digital TV through my VGA port, in retrospect, taught me tons about how technology adoption, development, and standardization actually works in the real world.

[0] https://www.crutchfield.com/S-9Pd3SuUnpX0/p_158STHD100/Sony-...

I don't know anything about this particular show, but lots of programs were shot on film, and could just be scanned at higher resolution once HD video standards existed.

> just

Unfortunately there's a lot of post-production steps that take place between the original film and the finished show. Since the 90s/noughties many of those steps take place in digital systems after the film has been scanned at the chosen resolution. Here's some detail specific to Babylon 5 and HD conversion, for example:

https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-22-babylon-5-digital-video-...

Oh, yeah, I'm sure it's more complicated than I made it sound, especially if you had early CGI added later like Babylon 5. What I wanted to convey was that the source material for many programs had much higher resolution than the original NTSC broadcast or VHS versions, and that's what makes it possible to produce an HD version of a show that was filmed before HD was invented.

Ed Deline would never allow such as thing. Mike would most certainly be on it.

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