How do you prefer to watch your badmovies? HD or SD

[MrMari]

Many of us here have a vast collection of movies that spans several different media types (DVD, VHS, Laserdisc, etc). I am very happy with my Sony HD Widescreen TV. Blu-Ray, and my Comcast HD package keeps me more than entertained but there are times where I dip into my oldies and watch a VHS or Laserdisc. One thing I notice is that I have a hard time watching these films on my HDTV. To me the HD part of it just exposes every flaw that the ole' VHS tapes had. For this reason I kept my old Sony KV-25XBR from the early 80's. Its a very old Standard Def TV but it gives my older movies that "old school" feel. Does anyone else on the forum experience this? Do we all look forward to seeing our crappy gems in HD or is there something nostalgic in watching our movies on a standard definition set?

[LilCerberus]

For me personally, it kinda depends on two things
I really hate it when they take a 4x3 movie & chop off the top & bottom of the screen to achieve the 16x9 ratio, just to give it that HD look. This ruined Easy Rider, The Legend of Hell House & Galaxy of Terror for me.
On the other hand (no pun intended), I really would like to re-do all my screen caps of Nastassja Kinski's nature walk in Cat People.

[Couchtr26]

I really prefer SD.  I tend to watch older movies when I want a bad movie that makes me laugh watching and HD really doesn't improve old films too much. 

[the ghoul]

I like to watch them in SD, and I prefer them to be from beat-up, faded film reel prints rather than restored, pristine copies.  This is especially true when it comes to color films.  The imperfections just add to the charm for me.

[Cthulhu]

SD all the way.

[judge death]

I like to watch mine being broadcast from the satellite of love, being watched and commented on by a guy and a couple wisecracking robots.

Yes, I wish the crew would stop jerking around with half assed imitations and just start doing a new MST3K series.....

[Jack]

My TV is HD, so that's what I watch everything on.  Film has a much higher resolution than standard def can display, so just about everything is gong to look better in HD, no matter how old it is.  Sure, the imperfections are going to be more visible, but you get more detail as well.  And if it was made to be shown in a theater, it's going to have a wider aspect ratio than a standard def 4:3 TV, so you'll either have big black bars, or pan-n-scan.  The only problem with HD comes in when you've got stuff that was made on video, and the low resolution of the source material stands out like a sore thumb, but I got used to that surprisingly quickly.  It might be somewhat charming to view it on the standard def TV, but it's not a big enough deal to bother with.

[JaseSF]

I watch everything on my HD TV too. Mine though has a setting for Pan and Scan and Full Frame films where it will stretch them out to fit the screen and in such a way it really doesn't look too bad at all. It of course also has a setting for true widescreen films too which look phenomenal on it. The flaws on older film prints don't usually bother me too much...

[ChocolateChipCharlie]

Most bad movies I watch aren't shown on HD channels on cable, and I don't have a Blu Ray or HDDVD player.  So I end up watching them in SD anyway.

I think I would prefer HD though, because if a movie is recorded on old, cheap, and/or shabby film, that will still show on the HD track, but HD gives the closest thing to seeing it in the theater and that's something I appreciate.

[dean]

I like watching them in their original format, regardless of the source: the problem with watching videos, for example, as opposed to dvds etc is because they tend to stretch out on a HD tv/plasma/lcd.  The solution is to use the aspect ratio button most tvs have in order to scale the image properly and then BAM you've got the right image.

Done and done!

So yeah, Blu Ray, DVD, Video, Laserdisc, kaleidoscope, it don't matter to me!  As long as it is an unscaled/unstretched image.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I'm an HD whore all the way.  If I have a chance to buy a film on Blu Ray or DVD, I always go for the Blu.  Same thing with the cable.  I love the crispness of HD.  Take Monster Squad , Night Of The Creeps, and City Of The Living Dead as examples.  Sure, the HD does expose some flaws, especially in makeup and in the creature designs.  Still, the films are gorgeous to look at, they feel more alive, and it mirrors the experience of seeing the films in a proper theater.

Basically, HD looks more like FILM.  For the first time, we have a chance to watch these films the exact way they should be seen, at a perfect resolution.  It really makes for a superb viewing experience.

[Flick James]

I have very little experience with HD. I was in a Best Buy once and they were playing Pirates of the Carribbean: Legend of the Black Pearl on Blue Ray on a big HD system. It was the big "You better start believing in ghost stories, because you're in one" scene and I didn't like the experience for two reasons: I could see every pimple and imperfection in Kiera Knightly's face, and the CGI looked even more like CGI. So, based on that one experience I don't know, at least when it comes to films, but perhaps that was a bad example. I've watched sports on HD and really liked it.

[SPazzo]

The only way I watch movies is SD.

On VHS with our P.O.S. VHS player so it's extra fuzzy.  Best thing ever!

[The Gravekeeper]

I tend to prefer SD because I personally think that HD doesn't add much of anything to most movies. Nature documentaries, on the other hand, benefit greatly from HD.

I also like widescreen, but that just stems from the fact that I like to watch movies as they were filmed (old film cameras filmed in widescreen, so movies were later cropped. On rare occassions things onscreen turned into incomprehensible messes as a result).

[MrMari]

Wow, I appreciate everyone's feedback on this topic. I am surprised how many of you still prefer SD over HD. I thought I was alone in this. I tried watching a VHS on my HD set last night and I was again disappointed. Went over to my SD set and the experience was 100% better. On another note, I am finding that even DVD's lossiness are being exposed on these ultra HD sets. My fiance picked up a copy of Avatar on Blu Ray and I compared it with the DVD release on her Samsung 1080p 120hz set and you could see the blockiness of the DVD as clear as day. Could it be that these new HD sets are too HD? I would hate to replace my DVD collection with Blu Ray versions.