Dean and Frank Christmas

[old_tv_nut]

I just watched this, and I rate it tops in all ways:

Performances and production - 5 stars
Sets were elaborate or simple as appropriate for each number.
Dean and Frank's medley of hits - outstanding.
Real camera work with dolly and crane shots, not just lazy zooms from wherever the camera happens to be.

Original technical quality - 5 stars
The Burbank crew had really tamed those TK-41's. There is a very slight edge ringing (a VTR characteristic) on full black to white and white to black edges. Camera shading is perfect other than some normal corner vignetting. Some slight H scan ringing is visible on the left side of one camera, on the blue background for the medley. The early scene with Dean and Frank has their white shirts overexposed to the point of clipping the detail. In one scene, I thought I saw a lttle blue misregistration near the top of the image. All in all, superior quality to what sometimes got on the air from other live studios.

Digital conversion - 5 stars
Wish I knew the details of how the conversion was done. Not a trace of chroma dots, but at the same time no visible noise and no motion artifacts from the process. At one time, only one brand of NTSC decoder could come close (Faroudja), and I suspect this was done with much more sophisticated hardware/software than that, perhaps with some sort of full motion-compensated field/frame conversion.
Color quality - perfect. No idea how much adjustment was made in the conversion, but the original must have been excellent to get this result.

I am really pissed they haven't released a DVD. It really would be prime material for demonstrating what a vintage TV could do, as composite output from a DVD player.

EDIT: Note that I watched it as recorded on my DISH Network satellite DVR, but I didn't notice any digital artifacts from a viewing distance of 4-5 picture heights or during the few times I stepped closer to pick out artifacts of any kind.