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Does that potentially present any compatibility issues?

Your player will need to be able to play 50i content and convert and output it at 60i. This thread might be useful.

Sounds like BFI is sadly limiting its worldwide audience on this expensive release

The films were shot at 25fps and should be released that way.

It's not the BFI's fault that America persists with purchasing and distributing equipment that does not even meet basic international standards. Why should they travesty the films to support half-baked equipment?

Maybe they figured that since the BD set is a limited edition, it wasn't worth worrying about maximizing consumer accessibility. If a lot of this material is just going to be upscaled HD, the DVDs won't be as much of a step down, and won't present the same issues with system compatibility.

swo17 wrote:If a lot of this material is just going to be upscaled HD, the DVDs won't be as much of a step down, and won't present the same issues with system compatibility.

As I understand it, the vast majority of the material was shot on film and will be presented in genuine 1080p. Only a small percentage is video sourced stuff. But even when shooting on film, it was standard for British television productions (and still is) to shoot at 25fps rather than 24fps, as the former is how the show would be going out regardless. Therefore, the BFI cannot present this material at the far more common 1080p24 standard without introducing a speed and pitch change, and so instead have opted to avoid one altogether and present at 1080i50 (though in actually fact they may very easily be able to present at 1080p25, they just won't be able to call it that, though that doesn't change anything for American customers either way).

This practice is quite common in the UK and Europe and you can find other examples in this thread (a great many of which were shot on film).

One upcoming example being Second Run's Horse Money, which was also shot at 25fps.

The BD is notionally 1080i50, but in practice there's not the tiniest trace of any interlacing and nor would I expect to see any under these circumstances.

They're fully aware that this will shut out many of their US customers, which is why it wasn't an easy decision to take, but since Cinema Guild is bringing out the film as well (presumably slowed down to 24fps), they decided that this was the best option.

So I guess if I have a BD player that's on that list linked above and a Panasonic Viera plasma that can handle 50Hz, I'm okay?

You're using an American player with a European TV?

Nevermind, I guess my TV cannot handle 50Hz. I suppose I'll just buy the Blu-ray set and figure out a way to play it later. I've got a Sherwood BDP-5004 if anyone wants to be helpful and let me know if that will play these discs.

But if your player converts it to 60Hz, there's no longer a compatibility issue with your TV, is there?

RossyG wrote:The films were shot at 25fps and should be released that way.

This was my argument to them. It's a headache for people in the 60hz countries, but it would seem a little nuts for the British Film Institute to degrade the integrity of a British production to suit an American compatibility issue.

The good news is that most (all?) recent American TVs from Samsung and LG, and now also Sony, can play 50hz natively. You'll need to make sure the player can play 50hz also, preferably natively without standards conversion (Oppos can).

swo17 wrote:But if your player converts it to 60Hz, there's no longer a compatibility issue with your TV, is there?

Nope, if the player converts to 60hz, your 60hz TV will show a picture. There may be some motion stutter, though.

MichaelB wrote:OThe BD is notionally 1080i50, but in practice there's not the tiniest trace of any interlacing and nor would I expect to see any under these circumstances.

The fact that it's interlaced is really just a 'carrier'. The underlying image will be progressive.

Just wanted to put in (another) good word for the Seiki SR4KP1 - it plays/converts 50i discs on my American 60hz set beautifully.

The region-free player I had prior to it, a Curtis Mathes modeled on the Momitsu BDP-899, also converted 50i but did a far worse job at it, resulting in visible jaggy artifacts on diagonals and fine detail in general. I mention that just to say that not all players convert signals equally, so even if your player can handle converting 50i, it's worth looking into how good a job it does of it.

Is this 50i/50hz business different from the region coding? If a machine has been modded with a "lifetime guarantee" to play any disc, can I assume the player will handle the material? Also, are we talking about the player not showing any signal or image at all, or just a degraded one?

Also, to thank the BFI for this smart, consumer friendly move (which I consider an international act of war) I will be sending my payment to them in the form of S&H Greenstamps. I hope they enjoy converting them into some form of useful currency... maybe they can trade them in for a kitchen blender or something.

It's different from region coding - region coding is just an artificial system that checks to see if your player's region matches the region assigned on the disc you're playing (so you don't end up playing titles that aren't licensed for sale in your region, or sold by some other distributor).

60hz and 50hz are two different refresh rates that are at the hardware level of your equipment. And not all region-free players are created equal in how they handle such signal conversions. Some can do it well, some do it poorly, some don't do it at all. Best to look up your player's model number and see if there's any information about it specifically.

Manny Karp wrote:Is this 50i/50hz business different from the region coding? If a machine has been modded with a "lifetime guarantee" to play any disc, can I assume the player will handle the material? Also, are we talking about the player not showing any signal or image at all, or just a degraded one?

50i/50hz is nothing to do with region coding. Your "lifetime guarantee" may play the discs, but whether it plays them as intended / optimally is another matter. The BFI have made the best choice here, I'm very glad David M. was able to advise them. Direct any ire towards the Blu-ray Foundation for not insisting on global standards (and while we're at it, infinite framerate options). Hope you're able to play it properly when it comes out!

The basic problem is that while most European players and TVs have no problem handling either 50Hz or 60Hz material, most US players/TVs can only handle 60Hz.

Most of the time this is fine - I've made a point of ensuring that every scrap of footage on my own projects, even if region-locked, is 60Hz-friendly. But I haven't had to oversee a project like this where everything originated at 25fps and some of the material was from interlaced analogue video - and in such circumstances I think the BFI made the only rational decision that they could have made. It's hard on US importers, obviously, but this is contractually a UK-only release.

I was looking at my old (2004) Blue Underground Alan Clarke boxset recently, and SCUM (BBC), THE FIRM, MADE IN BRITAIN, and ELEPHANT are all encoded progressively at 23.98 NTSC (pretty rare for 2004). So they were slowed down from 25fps. Visually they look great, no interlacing, framedrops, or other framerate conversion issues – but they were slowed down. I haven't been able to work out whether the sound was pitch-shifted up (to original pitch).

When David M and I worked on the Alexander Mackendrick doc (on Arrow's Sweet Smell of Success), which was originally a 25fps Scottish TV production from the mid-1980s, we decided to slow it down to 24fps on the grounds that while this would involve playing the talking heads at the wrong speed, the film clips would revert to the right speed, and we thought on balance that that was more important.

I've seen a few Blu-ray extras over the last few years that have been shot 50i HD and the film clips inserted into it have been mangled from 24fps to 50i. They didn't speed it up, they dropped frames and made a complete hash of it. I wish all Blu-ray producers were as diligent as you and David M.!

According to the above-linked thread my LG BD630 should be able to handle the conversion, which makes me .

This is my player:

http://www.220-electronics.com/sony-bdp ... layer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Possibly relevant specifications:

-Internal Pal/NTSC Conversion
-Video

Noise Reduction
BNR: Yes
MNR: Yes
BD
HD (24Hz) (24p True Cinema): Yes
HD (60Hz): Yes
HD 24Hz to 60Hz conversion: Yes
SD (60Hz): Yes
DVD
DVD 24p output: Yes
HDMI: Yes (480i/ 480p/ 720p/ 1080i/ 1080p (60Hz))
NTSC/PAL (60Hz/50Hz): Yes (NTSC only)
TV Type Default Setting: 16:9
Video Output - DVD R/RW BD R/RE non copy protected
HDMI: Yes (480i/ 480p/ 720p/ 1080i/ 1080p (60Hz))
Video Output - DVD Upscaling
HDMI: Yes (720p/ 1080i/ 1080p)
HDMI: Yes (1080p (24Hz))

Are there other examples of discs already on the market that were produced as this set will be?