April 18, 2004

The New York Times looks at the work of John Lowry of Lowry Digital to produce ultra-high resolution digital copies of nine James Bond films for MGM. Using sophisticated digital scanners that scan each negative of a film 4,000 times a digital master with a resolution of 4,000 horizontal lines of data is created which is considered to fully capture the detail of 35mm film. The digital master than can be downsampled to the 480 line DVD quality standard or the high definition TV standard of 720 or 1080 lines. Ultimately the goal is avoid any further downsampling as current research prototypes of ultra-high definition TVs that have a full 4,000 lines of resolution become commercially available. No word when DVDs or high definition DVDs produced from these new James Bond masters will become available. 2:16:16 PM