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**Cats4U** · 10-01-2022, 03:25 PM

If you are looking for historic accuracy I Dream of Jeannie (and all other shows of the era up until 1998) were always broadcast in 480p-SD. Any HD versions you might find are a misguided modification to the original format. The same being the colorized Season 1 (put out later by Sony) which was originally broadcast only in B&W.

**Dog** · 10-02-2022, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by Cats4U View Post

If you are looking for historic accuracy I Dream of Jeannie (and all other shows of the era up until 1998) were always broadcast in 480p-SD. Any HD versions you might find are a misguided modification to the original format. The same being the colorized Season 1 (put out later by Sony) which was originally broadcast only in B&W.

Quick, pedantic clarification: I'm using the term 480p as it's the 'settled upon' term for industry standard, pre-HD video format - not because it's actually an accurate representation of the actual resolution used by TVs in the past. I only say this because when I used to work in the industry, US TV was often referred to as having 576 lines, and I never bothered to do any research in an effort to understand the discrepancy. I'm also using several other terms rather loosely here, so you'll notice I surround some terms with single quotes - this indicates that I'm probably over-simplifying (while trying not to effect overall accuracy) in order to keep this from being even longer. With that said, on to my actual, somewhat rambling reply...

I want to be clear that I'm not saying your take on this is invalid - just that my take is different.

TLDR: Anything not originally shot on film, and/or not originally shot in digital HD/FHD/UHD/etc. would have to be upscaled - but pretty much any material that was originally shot on film (with the film still being available as a mastering source) can be remastered in HD+ without any modification (see below) or upscaling - and that includes most TV shows all the way up to the 90's at least. Colorization is definitely modification, but whether or not it's bad is a matter of opinion - it could be argued that colorization allows the material to viewed as it was originally intended to be, and it was only created in B&W because of the limitations of the time. Clearly this isn't true of all B&W material, but much of it was only in B&W due to technical limitations (early stuff before color came to be) or cost.

Long version:

I'm not sure what you mean by 'historic accuracy', so please forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know and have missed your point entirely. Shows like 'I Dream of Jeannie' were *broadcast* in 480p, but almost none of them were shot in 480p - shows from that era were typically shot on film, which is analog as opposed to digital, so the only resolution limit is defined by the actual physical structure of the film material itself - and even the lowest quality, grainiest film used by the industry is typically capable of producing a picture of much higher resolution than 480p without any kind of upscaling, modification, or visual quality loss. Remastering older shows in HD (or even 4K) is not a 'misguided modification to the original format', it is simply making use of the massive amount of extra picture information that is available via the film (the original format) but not usable via the 480p transmission/viewing format that was standard at the time - no 'modification' necessary. There is a slight caveat - remastering special effects that were created in 480p and composited *after* the filmed material had been downscaled to 480p, such as what was done with the original SD/480p airings and DVDs of Star Trek: TNG, DS9, and Voyager obviously involved 'modification' in that all the special effects had to be redone from scratch. Shows, like Babylon 5, that had all the live action shot on SD/480p video in addition to doing all the effects in SD as well present even more challenges and their HD versions could fairly be called a 'modification' since the material would actually have to be upscaled, resulting in a picture that consists of image data that did not originally exist in the source. As already stated, the standard TV format, prior to HD, was 480p (the 'studio' format was slightly larger, but the extra image information, called over-scan, on the top/bottom/sides was not recorded for broadcast and/or transfer to 'consumer' video tape) - any material not already shot in a 480p (e.g. shot on film) would need to be 'downscaled' to fit the standard 480p video format. The reason things not shot on film were shot at 480p was because that was the standard and when the standards were set there was no consideration of a future with higher resolution (or things like DVDs, BluRays, etc.), so there was no reason to make video equipment capable of shooting at a resolution higher than what TVs could display as it would then have had to be downscaled to 480p anyway. Film is why so many pre-digital movies & TV shows are available in HD, and the difference between the 'final' cut of a film and the 'final' cut of a typical pre-HD TV show explain why HD versions of movies often came to market so quickly and HD versions of SD TV shows took longer. Usually the 'final' cut of a film is just that - a set of reels of film, that when shown in order represent the full film story. Because of that, creating an HD+ version of a film is often trivial compared to doing the same for a TV show. A TV show's 'final' cut (at least from the mid '70's onward, probably earlier) was typically on 480p video, which meant that upscaling involved going back to the original cans of film, finding all the shots that were actually used, converting all that to digital, and re-editing/re-assembling each episode from the cut sheets (if those are even still available). Any special effects not done in/on the film itself were typically done in 480p, so they would all have to be recreated entirely from scratch. Then there's also the audio, but that's an entirely different ball of wax.

So, now having rambled for a while, getting back to what you said - unless you're talking about something I'm totally missing - HD versions of shows like "I Dream of Jeannie" are not modifications, they are actually truer to the original intent than what was shown in pre-HD days (which required them to be 'downscaled'). That could even be said about colorization since subsequent seasons were in color, and if B&W had been part of a show's character, then it probably wouldn't have changed to color for subsequent seasons.

**Cats4U** · 10-02-2022, 05:24 PM

I debated with myself whether to put an asterisk next to the 480p and go into more detail and add a bit of a disclaimer to it. Three factors stopped me - 1) look at how long your message was explaining it and I could see mine to be just as long if not longer. 2) The original poster probably wouldn't have been interested in it. His post really dealt more with his complaint that when doing multiple downloads, the first video's setting dictates how the rest of the downloads are handled. I was the one making the conversation go off on a tangent because it appeared to me like the OP thought a show from the '60s at 480p was an aberration. Having grown up on 480p (actually technically wouldn't it have been 480i?), it was normal to me. 3) I was running out of time before the college football game I wanted to watch was going to start.

Let me explain what I meant by 'historic accuracy" which was my term and not anything you would find in a book somewhere. In my mind it is just a feeling. A feeling of seeing a show as it was first presented at the time it was first aired. Granted, I won't be breaking out a 19-inch B&W RCA with rabbit ears on top to watch these shows but the closer in appearance to the original, the better. That means if it was B&W originally (as Season 1 of IDoJ was) then it should be in B&W. It should fill the screen without any cropping or black bars added. You are absolutely right that most of the shows were produced on film and could be made into HD versions by redigitizing them today but compared to cropping or adding black bars, the cost is prohibitive, if they could even find clean film copies in storage after all this time.

I really don't think we are too far off in our knowledge or our thinking. I agree with most of what you wrote and a lot of it would have followed that asterisk if I had added it. I think you said it best when you wrote...

I want to be clear that I'm not saying your take on this is invalid - just that my take is different.

**Dog** · 10-02-2022, 11:44 PM

Cats4U - Ahhh, I see where I was missing your point - I now get what you meant and where you're coming from. Thanks for putting up with my long and rambling reply. I would appreciate being able to enjoy such an experience. Barring being able to actually get your hands on an old, working 4:3 CRT, modulator, etc., I wonder if you could get close using a projector and a single, tiny speaker...

kenro - apologies for the threadjack. FWIW, I agree with your assessment and would definitely appreciate the ability to differentiate between episodes with different properties and choose download selections based on those properties. Considering that comparison and sorting are two things that binary computers are typically pretty good at (with decent code), I think the real challenge would be figuring out how to represent those differences in the UI in a way that doesn't result in clutter or confusion. Imagine if a single, 20-ish episode season of a show had episodes in 2 or 3 different resolutions, 2 different audio formats, and maybe some with and/or without subtitles. That's a fair number of possible combinations and, while I'm no software engineer or UI designer, it seems like that'd require some kind of tabbed interface (or some other clever method of discreet grouping) that would be able to present the various configurations in a way that would allow for relatively easy and elegant handling by the user. As I think about it, I think it would be good as an option that could be suggested during setup, but must be selected/accepted by the user, rather than being on by default. That way, new users could start with the relatively straight-forward interface we have now, with the option to step it up once they're comfortable with the program and want more granularity in their episode selection.

**kenro** · 10-03-2022, 01:47 AM

I understand that the UI would be more complicated but do users not care about Forced Narrative subtitles? Are users okay with 480p for all episodes (Even though most are 1080p) because that was the best available for Season 1 Episode 1 or whatever StreamFAB used to build the list? I prefer quality and accuracy over easy. I have no problem selecting settings for each and every episode because I get that I want if the program works correctly.

I am a retired software developer and there are several things that can be done. Here are a couple.

1. Slightly difficult, but gather all possible options from ALL episodes then provide a list or all unique options.. If the selected option is not available for a specific episode how you handle it depends on what it is. Forced Narrative subtitle, do nothing. 1080p format, step down to next best. etc. Would not have the most accurate option selection but could be done with the same UI.

2 This is a better and easier option, Place a button next to each episode that allows for selections specific to that episode and when clicked open a dialog with the options for that episode. Some users won't like using it or wont use it and then will complain that the didn't get the subtitles of language that they wanted. If that's the case, the helpdesk answer is easy, Videos are not all the same! Press the darn button!

Given a little thought and effort I think the development team could figure something out that would satisfy most people.

**kenro** · 10-03-2022, 02:16 AM

As for the Cat (Cats4U) and Dog fight... I referenced 480p and 1080p because that's how StreamFAB presented the video quality options. “I Dream of Jeannie” was an example I used because that's the series I'm currently working with. The problem exists with many TV shows, even modern ones.

I'm sorry if I didn't express what I think is a problem very well. Thank you, but I don't need an explanation or fight as to what the video format settings are or should be.

I was hoping to get some support on this and I think you both "kind of" came around but I really feel like I got a butt-kicking in the process.

I hope StreamFAB considers my request but I think I'm done here!

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