Can someone explain to me in simple terms what to look for and what my expectations should be?

I fully understand my screen resolution specs.

What I do not fully understand is where’s the difference when watching an old movie.
My current TV goes only as far as 1080p and if I try to watch a 80s movie or earlier, the better resolution will only make it look worse, not better. Therefore I wonder about those 4k Star Wars (1977) special editions and such.

There’s no point in upgrading to an 8k TV to watch “Debbie does Dallas” Director’s Cut, is there?

How far back does it still make sense to look for an UHD or better source?

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All about the transfer from film to digital and when it was done I would assume.

(and what was done or not done to it afterwards)

4K TVs also upconvert lower resolution video to 4K.

I Think it's a mixed bag, but for myself I've upgraded to a 4k TV. If you're watching a release designed for 4k, (like that Star Wars you mentioned) it should look terrific. If you're watching an old standard def DVD, I might expect some speckling as the TV does what it does to fill all of the missing pixels in with what I assume are approximated pixels based on the content that does exist.

4k is pretty beutiful though when it'll all there from the start!

Is there a relatively simple conversion rule to tell me what to expext from a 35mm or 70mm frame conventional movie brought to digital?

Is the current movie standard production all digital or are they still using film?

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Something to consider is the size of the screen.
The larger the screen the more beneficial the higher resolution screens will help.
As far as the old shows many that are not originally HD 2K or better still will see an improvement generally.
They are upscaled to fit your screen.
Still the real benefit comes from the advanced audio and the ones that are actually shot with 4K cams not just upscaled HD.
My biggest complaint is that there is no reason that all sports events are not real 4K - they could be easily if the networks would just implement it.
It costs money and they are penny pinchers.

quote:

Is the current movie standard production all digital or are they still using film?

All digital now days.
Usually HD 720 or 1024 but some of the very newest are 4K.
Old stuff is just upscaled and digitally processed to work.

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Is there a relatively simple conversion rule to tell me what to expext from a 35mm or 70mm frame conventional movie brought to digital?

Is the current movie standard production all digital or are they still using film?

0-0

Some directors use film still as a personal preference. It yields a different look.

There is no direct "equivalent" from film to digital. Film has grains of chemicals in it, but the grains are randomly dispersed rather than arranged in grids, which gives a different appearance. The size of the grains varies from film to film and by film speed adapted to the shooting conditions. Generally speaking, 4k digital looks about the same as 35mm film. In any case, theaters are typically projecting in 4k digital as it's simply cheaper than handling reels of film anymore.

Back to your personal situation regarding your TV. Your TV is a fixed grid of pixels. If your source material is less than the full resolution of your TV, then one or more of your devices must "upconvert" the source material to the correct number of pixels.

Some devices are better at this than others. In many cheap devices, upconversion is just an afterthought, and the results are pretty bad--it literally just looks like the small resolution video zoomed-in or enlarged to fit your screen.

Some other devices, with better processing power, can do a better job of interpreting the lower resolution video and making a more faithful representation of the image as it is enlarged.

Never expect an upconverted video to exceed or look better than the source material, but I've previously had some high end DVD players which could display a 480i or 480p DVD onto a 1080p screen without making the image worse. It didn't make the image better, mind you, you it also didn't make it look worse--which is all you can hope for. A faithful representation of a 480p image blown up to a screen much too big for it.


Now, to answer your direct question:

How far back does it make sense to look back for UHD or better source? As far back as you want, so long as the UHD video is made from the film master and isn't just an upconversion. Some movies do a phenominal job (Braveheart), others not so much. The best way to determine if a movie will look good in 4k is to read reviews. here's an example:

https://thedigitalbits.com/item/braveheart-4k-uhd

Ultimately, if it was shot on film, and if the studio still has the master and wants to spend the money to do a digital transfer to 4k (which often requires much digital post processing work), then you can benefit from the high resolution.