Does the entertainment industry think that everybody's made of money or what? Do they know how much it costs to use the Internet in most countries, even (Canada has the most expensive Internet ever)? Not everybody wants or will have the money to go online and watch movies/TV in streaming video; many will still want to own DVD's because there's no compression of the video and audio and things look amazing. Stephen Bowie has talked about this (and made a better case against this trend) better than I could: Streamageddon vs. Discpocalypse
I don't stream, but I do buy most of my stuff from the iTunes Store. That doesn't (IMHO) count as streaming because it's all stored on my computer.
Point taken. However, not everybody wants to buy movies or TV shows from iTunes or Cinema Now; some just want to keep what they have on physical media, due to what I said before about the costs of having the Internet and downloading. This is why (IMHO) there's a group of fans who want to have Babylon 5 on regular TV in syndication or on specialty cable channels rather than on streaming media like Netflix.
I can barely stream low quality SD, never mind HD. Not everyone has a fast enough broadband service to be ablet to stream. And some people don't even have internet, you don't limit your potential market by not releasing it onto a physical product. Some pople still buy CD's despite being able to DL a song. and a song is a lot easier to download than a HD movie.
Hopefully, when DS9 is remastered for HD, they will fix a few bugs from "fleet shots" that always bothered me greatly, particularly the omission of starship names and registry numbers. It's particularly egregious on the Galaxy-class ships shown in "Sacrifice of Angels."
I'd like the Galaxy-class without a name in "What You Leave Behind" (link to image on Memory Alpha below) to be given the name Robinson and the registry NCC-71842 - Sisko's new command in the Pocket Books novels. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Galaxy_class_firing_phasers.jpg
Crazy Matt, is that avatar of yours actually a photo of what you look like after a 72-hour binge watch?
In the future, PLEASE ask if I'm wearing my Depends before posting something that makes me bust a gut laughing.
I wish I had that kind of free time. I'm still working on watching Season 2 of the TNG Blu-Ray release! Agreed!
Actually, it's my understanding that all the fleet VFX will have to be completely redone for an HD release. While Mojo has stated that all the ship renders still exist, I fail to see how they could be used for a remastering that won't take place until at least ten more years at the earliest. Considering that the fleet VFX was done back in 1995, I'd think it would be easier just to make new renders (and new ship designs while they're at it...I'm so sick of seeing Excelsiors, Mirandas and Klingon BoPs...)
I doubt they're going to wait ten years to start DS9. Only two more seasons of TNG are yet to be released. I don't see why they would wait to get started on DS9. Even if, for some inexplicable reason, they did VOY first, it wouldn't take ten years to finish. As far as whether or not any of the old CGI shots could be reused, it's been confirmed that at least some of the ship shots were intentionally over-rendered with extra detail. Incidentally, we'll get a preview of some of the first stock model shots of DS9 in HD as soon as TNG season six is released; both "Birthright, Part 1" and "Timscape" feature FX footage originally created for DS9, including shots of the station itself and of a runabout. (It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but I can't be bothered to look now.)
I meant that it would be at least ten years before DS9 seasons 6 and 7 would be remastered, which is where the bulk of the fleet scenes take place. Be that as it may, I still have a hard time believing that renders made with 1995 FX tech would still be viable in 2024 (or even 2014 for that matter).
Since FrontierTrek kindly informs us that there are many passionate DS9 fans willing to produce the series in HD on Blu Ray, I wonder if at some point they've run some footage through their conversion process to see if it is possible? Perhaps created something that was entirely CGI themselves and see how closely they could match it to the series? Or maybe just the HD versions of the DS9 sets in Birthright might be a good way to pitch the series? Do any of our wonderful insiders know if there has been any pre-approval test footage made for CBS eyes only to see if DS9 was technically possible?
How do you figure ten years? That means they'd have to release less than one season per year, which would just be shooting themselves in the foot. They've done TNG in less than 3, even if DS9 had a more relaxed release schedule to allow extra time for the CG issues, I'd imagine it would be out within 5 years from start to finish, tops. My guess would be that they do two seasons per year (rather than the 2/3/2 done for TNG) and we'd see the show complete in 4 years. Why don't you judge for yourself: http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/05/deep-space-nine-in-high-definition-one-step-closer/