Too good to be true?

[Steve Siegel]

Like so many of us with libraries of SD footage, and nothing to do with it in this HD-ified world, I have been searching for a solution (read: I can't afford an HD cam). There seem to be several software products on the market with names like Instant HD, Terenex Mini, and Flip Factory HD that claim to upconvert progressive SD footage to "HD" with "excellent quality".
Is this snake oil for the gullible? Has anyone actually used one of these products? Can the results pass for close to HD quality?

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Siegel

Is this snake oil for the gullible? Has anyone actually used one of these products? Can the results pass for close to HD quality?

I've yet to see any upsampled SD video which looked convincingly like HD source material, and any reports of successfully doing so involve cameras and converters more expensive than most of us can afford. Keep in mind that it's not possible to create detail where none exists in the source footage, so the best an upsampler can do is make really good SD source look like mediocre HD source. And consider that the maximum theoretical resolution of NTSC DV video is about 500 TV lines, while the actual recorded resolution from a $3K HDV camera is almost 700 TV lines, and it's not hard to figure out that the best way to get HD output is to start with HD input.