Rudolph never looked so good!
By Kevin C. Tofel 
posted December 1st 2005 10:05AM
posted December 1st 2005 10:05AM
In case you missed the high-def presentation of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" last night on CBS, one of the forum members over at AVS Forum was kind enough to capture two shots. We're reposting the small size, but if you click 'em, you can view the full size pics, which I recommend for two reasons.First, you can actually count individual hair-like fabrics on Rudolph, something you most defintitely can't do on the SD version and probably not on the DVD version either. Remember, this was digitally remastered for high-def. Second, when you view the full size pictures, you can actually detect the faint presence of wires used in the shot. Look for them in the second screen cap as I can find two. Check out both pics after the jump. Did anybody here catch it and if so, what did you think?
Rudolph has hair!
Check out the wires in this shot.
I never wanted a HD set so bad as I did last night. I couldn't even watch it knowing it was on in HD.
I watched it on My mitsubishi 55 Inch and it looked awesome. I have directv HD and it was such an improvement. I switched back and forth between the SD and HD version and it was no contest, you could actually see wires in one scene that didn't show on the old version! The colors were much more vivid, and I noticed fog coming off the water in another scene that was not visible on the old version quite an improvement.
I attempted to watch it, but it was not presented in HD. I have Comcast HD and the HD feed of CBS only presented it in SD. I was really looking forward to it. It's a classic!
HD RTRR on our 60" Sony SXRD was fantastic. My 3 & 7 yo kids have no idea how lucky they are. Now I just need to save it off my DVR.
I watched it on Comcast and it looked great. Amazing for as old as it is. Let's hope the other Christmas specials that air this month look this good.
They have I think three more "classics" airing in HD.
It was awesome. The Bumble was even scarier in HD!
Another great story, HDBeat.
Does anyone know when CBS will be re-airing this in HD?
I wish I had known it was on, looks awesome.
#3, are you sure? The source material is something close to 4:3, it was not shot in widescreen. Also, it's about 40 years old so there's only so much remastering they can do after telecining it. If you saw the high-def CBS logo overlapping the picture into the black area (just like in the sample pictures in the article), you were getting the remastered hi-def version. I have Comcast HD in the pacific northwest and got exactly what is shown here in the article.
#4, Hear, Hear! on copying it off the DVR. I rarely care enough to take the time (1:1 dubbing via firewire plus transcoding on a 733 G4) to pull things off my Motorola dvr, but in this case I'll be making an exception!
I'm also _really_ looking forward to capturing and encoding a couple hours of the Yule Log broadcast on InHD this Christmas. I wonder how many hours of DivX HD you can fit into 4.4 gigs....
-justinb
This was truly a great showing in HD on Comcast. Now did anyone notice that when Hermy was singing "I'm just a Misfit" at the toy bench that he was crying? Same for Rudolph when he sang this song. Also, Hermy's ears are round, when all other elves had pointy ears. Finally, when Hermy and Rudolph take off together, they sang We're a Couple of Misfits with new lyrics, rather than Fame and Fortune that I was used to. I've been watching this for 40 or so years and it is my favorite. Can anyone else confirm that there were no tears in other showings and the song was changed?
Yep, they will re-air it.
Here is the December schedule. All on CBS, not sure of the times.
Wed, Nov 30 RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER
Sat, Dec 17 FROSTY THE SNOWMAN
Sat, Dec 17 FROSTY RETURNS
Thur, Dec 22 RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER (encore)