[QUOTE="jkocher"]A motion picture does not have to be digitally filmed to look good in HD. Most motion pictures these days are still shot on 35mm film, and good HD transfers can show the high level of detail that 35mm film is capable of. 35mm film is actually capable of higher resolutions than 1080p images are, and has been in use for most of the history of motion pictures. So in some cases an older title is capable of looking just as sharp as recent films do. For a brief period some older films were even shot on 70mm or in VistaVision (35mm running sideways), which increased the available film area by about four times to get even sharper images (Lawrence of Arabia, To Catch a Thief).
The problem with getting a good HD transfer is when a decent film master can't be located. By the time a movie reaches the screen, it has been duplicated many times during production. They do not cut the original film for editing, they make a copy and edit that. Process shots (effects) also involve additional duplication. Some detail can be lost through all of this duplication, so the closer they can get to locating the original film source, the better. But in some cases the masters are missing, or damaged when used to create the many copies for nationwide release.
There are some good, average, and bad transfers out there. So it's a good idea to rent before you buy an HD movie, or read reviews on sites like this: http://www.highdefdigest.com/ .
It's interesting that you mention T2. James Cameron preferred to shoot that movie using the Super35 process. Normally, widescreen movie images are compressed horizontally into a square 35mm film frame, and then expanded back to widescreen during projection. They use the entire film frame to store the image. Super35 does not compress the image that way during filming. To make it appear widescreen, they just crop off the top and bottom of the film frame for theater projection. So while it appears to be widescreen, they aren't actually using the entire film frame. Some people believe this results in an image with more visible film grain (you are "zoomed in" more on the film). When you watch T2 broadcast as a 4:3 square image on TV, you actually see more of the image than in the widescreen version, because they don't need to crop the top and bottom.
Wow, thanks a ton. I just purchased body of lies online, will get it by weekend. I was avoiding buying old movies but now i think i will give them a shot. Thanks again. 
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