sample of the 8mm tapes I'm converting for a work friend. Deinterlaced with QTGMC, upscaled to 1080p with NNEDI3, and sharpened with FineSharpen.
... In the future I may hold off on the FineSharpen, because if I'm not mistaken both QTGMC and NNEDI3 apply their own sharpening which seems to only accentuate the haloing already present in the source files (either Video8 camcorders did processing that sharpened the footage, or the Digital8 camcorder I used for capture applied sharpening as it was output over firewire)
Anyways, it could look a hell of a lot worse. I'm happy enough with the results and I think my coworker will be as well. It might not look "1080p" but it does look "better than 480p"