The reality of the situation, though, is that the broadcast is an unmitigated triumph for all concerned. Seriously, in some ways it's the most remarkable HD experience I've had to date.

As soon as the first 'proper' shot in the 2.2:1 transfer rolls, showing the countless English dead on an African battlefield, you know you're in for something truly special. Every blade of parched grass is clearly defined; every wear mark on the rolling canon's wheels is as clear as day; every face of every dead soldier can be seen way off into the distance.

And what a distance it is, for the stunning crispness of the film's presentation helps the broadcast deliver a jaw-dropping sense of depth that you just can't get on a standard definition broadcast. The African locations look so fresh, three-dimensional and just plain real that you feel you just want to step right into them. Notwithstanding the fact that there are 4000 pissed off Zulus hanging around the place, of course!

If anything, the immediate wonderment created by the opening few seconds of the HD broadcast is merely enhanced by the scene that follows, in the Zulu camp. Again the amount of detail on show beggars belief, allowing you to pick out the individual strands in the tribespeople's ceremonial head-dresses, all the detailing in the weave of their huts, even every tiny crease in Margareta Witt's lips. The sense that you're actually there watching the action for real rather than just witnessing what a 44-year-old camera filmed is irresistible, and grows stronger the larger the screen you watch it on.

Even at 140in (the size of my projection screen) the picture betrays not a trace of the MPEG blocking noise or general grittiness so often seen with digital broadcasts, even HD ones. Instead its spectacular sharpness and detailing merely gains more impact the larger the image goes. I don't know what bandwidth Sky used for this broadcast, but whatever it was it was clearly enough to accommodate every last digital bit of Paramount's HD 'file'.

It's hard to believe that I said '44-year-old' camera a moment ago. For the image on show here looks so incredibly clean and fresh that you'd swear it had just been shot on a digital HD camera only yesterday. Especially as somehow Paramount has managed to 'magic away' every last trace of the dirt or 'speckling' that surely must have existed somewhere on the original film master the HD image has been created from.

As if everything we've described so far wasn't amazing enough, Paramount has also done a wondrous job of reproducing the colours of the original film. The red jackets of the British soldiers look as radiant as the day the actors first put them on, and the infinite variety of colours in the African landscape are all reproduced with vigour and flawless tones - or at least as flawless as 1960s film stock techniques allowed. Even the film’s dark areas are rendered with pitch perfect black levels stuffed with subtle background details.

I’m not especially fond of the ‘perfect’ word, but I have to say that this Zulu broadcast gets as close to perfect as anything I’ve ever seen.

It’s broadcast here in straight stereo, and meanders along with precious few highlights to set your sound system alight. In fact, the soundstage becomes even a touch compressed and thin-sounding under moments of duress, mostly when John Barry’s classic score kicks in - a problem which leaves the rather stilted choreography of the battle scenes feeling a touch exposed at times.

On the upside, the soundtrack is fantastically clean, with no crackle, hiss or dropout, and voices sound surprisingly credible. Plus the impact of the ‘train-like’ sound of the approaching Zulu hordes is every bit as spine-tinglingly impactful in its own lo-fi way as the approach of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

All in all, it’s actually hard to see how the broadcast could have been made to sound any better given the limitations of the original source.

There is one technical hitch we have to finish with, though: the clear presence at various points in the broadcast of lip-synch problems, where actors’ mouths move out of sync with the soundtrack. Just as well, then, that Sky’s HD box includes the facility to counter this problem via the audio delay adjustment in the ‘sound’ part of its setup menus. We found opting for around 120-140ms did the trick.

With their terrific work on Zulu, Paramount and Sky have proved once and for all that HD is not just a modern film-maker's toy. It also has the potential to breathe pristine new life into vintage films with a degree of success I simply wouldn't have believed possible.