[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suzu

I think I've seen it on tumblr a while ago. But honestly, I don't think it really makes a difference considering how old the show is. BDs only get interesting from Kuuga onwards as that is when they started filming in HD.

This is not accurate.

All of the Showa Rider shows (and all Super Sentai shows until Boukenger) were shot on 16mm film. As long as the original prints exist, anything shot on 16mm film has the potential to look great in HD. It's just a matter of transferring the original film to HD video (and 16mm film can be transferred to 1080p resolution quite easily). This is exactly what Black did for the blu-rays, and the improvement in video quality from the DVD release is dramatic. It's the best HD picture we can expect from a Showa toku show, which is actually pretty amazing.

Regarding the early-Heisei shows, the blu-ray situation is interesting, but not in a good way.

While it's true that Kuuga was shot on 1080i HD video (not on 16mm film), it was broadcast in 480i SD video. It's possible that Kuuga could one day be released on Blu-Ray with true-HD video, but that hasn't happened yet.

After Kuuga, technological and budgetary limitations forced Agito, Ryuki, Faiz, and Blade to be shot on 480i SD video. This means that only SD video masters exist for Agito-through-Blade. As such, it's not possible to release a true-HD version of any of these shows because neither HD video masters, nor film prints exist. All of these shows' blu-ray releases are upscaled SD video. Toei did the best they could with these releases, but given the sources available, the up-converted video looks pretty bad.

In actuality, all of the Showa shows have the potential -- as long as the film prints haven't been destroyed or neglected to the point of decay -- to look far, far better than Agito-through-Blade could ever hope to look.

Everything from Hibiki onward is shot on -- and mastered to -- 1080p HD video. I believe they switched to a RED camera set-up for these series, but don't quote me on that. Those blu-ray releases should look great. Whether they look better than the HD 16mm film transfers of older shows depends on your personal taste (i.e., whether you like film grain or whether you like super clean, sharp HD video). I, personally, prefer the HD remasters from film, as they look more cinematic.