As the number of HD channels and their growing content become ubiquitous in America, it's increasingly more difficult to impress viewers with HD images. Yet anyone who may have caught the recent telecast of the documentary "WWII in HD," an A&E production that aired on the History Channel, might note how uncanny (almost eerie) it was to see both newly recovered and newly restored footage of events in HD that TV and movie viewers have been seeing (in lesser technical form) for seven decades.
Depicting a global conflict that, despite its widespread hardships and enormous death toll, enjoyed the near-unanimous support of the American people, "WWII in HD" has been released in 1080p quality via Blu-ray Disc. Most of the footage that was gleaned from thousands of feet of sometimes newly-unearthed film is presented with its original colorization and in anamorphic HD. (And color film of any kind for newsgathering or documentary purposes was hardly routine in the early 1940s.)
Until its American cable airing in 2009, A&E said much of the footage — the result of a two-year global search — had never before been seen by the public. While various reviewers during its History Channel telecast noted the HD footage culled from hundreds of sources sometimes varies noticeably across the 10-episode, 455-minute series, much of the film footage's thematic content and original color bring to life many of the events of WWII in a way not possible prior to HD.
