In the past few weeks I've been uploading HD quality screen grabs on here and I'm very surprised that there are so many well-known, big budget movies on here that have low quality, often P&S (4:3) or even VHS/broadcast quality screen grabs. Most of these movies have been out on bluray for 4-5 years now, and it's somewhat annoying that because nobody has bothered doing this yet, I now have to (luckily I don't see it as a chore as I enjoy it, but it is time-consuming). I realize that it's somewhat difficult for the "average joe" to capture shots from bluray, since most software won't let you do screen grabs. Is this the main issue people are facing? Just wondering why it's not progressing along faster than snail pace.

I assume you are Davez621 on the regular site. Anyways, I believe the main reasons are:
1) Blu-rays are more expensive than DVDs
2) Not everyone has computers with Blu-ray drives
3) As you mentioned, not all software lets you capture Blu-ray images.

Still, we appreciate you have been contributing a lot of HD movies lately. Also, for the past year or so, the number of HD contributions has gone up, but even so, we still have a long way to go in upgrading more movies in HD. It's a process, and with time, we are getting there.

This is true - I didn't obtain a bluray drive until this week, actually. However, there are many other ways to obtain HD copies, such as downloading them. Plenty of 720p/1080p TV shows and movies available for download on the web.

Most famous movies were initially uploaded in mid-late 2000s when HD versions were not available to everyone and HD is not really considered a priority on the website.

It takes spaces and bandwidth, for example I download HD only for a few movies for which I find it useful, for most of the movies and TV-series the usual 640px or 720px-wide image is enough.

And indeed as Kegare said, do not forget that the site exists since around 2005, at that time downloaded version of movies were usually low quality, and the best possible source was DVD.

Yes, but 2005 was nearly 10 years ago. That's a *long* time to replace images with better quality ones. As far as HD not being available in 2005 - not true. 1080i TV broadcasts began in 1998 in the USA, and in 2001 in Australia. As far as recorded media goes, D-VHS was introduced in 2002 which provided either 720p or 1080i picture quality. Several dozen movies were released on this short-lasting format, years before HD-DVD or Blu-ray even hit the market.

These weren't easily accessible, unlike DVDs or divx.
I do not see what is your point here.
There are a few hundreds of thousands of pictures on the site. Replacing movie captures by HD versions take a lot of time.
And since many of us add pictures in non-HD, that's an endless task.
Also, in many cases the current non-HD pictures are already good enough, it is not like if all pics on the site were from VHS tapes.

Some current pictures are fine, namely those that are 720 pixels wide (from PAL DVD sources). The 640 pixel wide photos (from NTSC DVD) are sub-standard, though, and I come across plenty that are even less than this - such as 550-560 (not sure of source?).

Most of the pictures below 720px come from divx, some lower ones from Youtube or even from VHS.
Long time ago I added a few pics from VideoCD, that gives a small and bad result compared to divx or DVD but it is still better than not having the pics at all.

yep, good job!!

IMCDB's a user-driven site, considering how many movies we have on here (popular and obscure alike), it will take a while to update everything to the highest current quality, and by the time that happens we may be very well talking about why the pictures aren't in 4K resolution. That's why it's always good to have users like you (and others) chipping in whenever possible.

some movies haven't even got a DVD release, nevermind Blu Ray...