Originally Posted by
livedarklions
I have no idea what you are talking about with old movies. Optical sound was actually fairly high quality and has transferred to digital quite nicely. As for "poor picture" , that's absurd unless you're one of those "black & white is automatically bad" people. Seriously, learn something about cinematography before you'd say anything as silly as they'd lose their appeal if remastered. Watch TCM for a day and tell us those prints haven't been restored to pristine through remastering and are a hell of a lot more fun to watch than the worn-out prints that used to tour theatres and get shown on TV.
I have worded it misleadingly, actually I do watch TCM and I am quite a fan of B&W movies (although I am not a 'moviephile' (as in audiophile
)) and still have to say, some of the old movies have atrocious quality, picture and sound. Some are virtually borderline bad (I think mostly 1930s era). There was a fashion at some time or a genre of dark picture when nowadays you can just about only make out the shapes moving on screen and some movies have strong hiss in the sound and again, there was an era in those days when movie actors spoke slang and half mousing it just as people speak on streets in real life, which, coupled with low quality sound, makes it hard for even native English speakers to catch all that is spoken.
Generally I fear re-mastering efforts, except in cases like rescuing film from a dustbin like My Fair Lady and probably many others. But again, I don't count myself as a movie historian or moviephile since my life priorities are elsewhere, I just enjoy those early movies.