Star Trek TNG Remastered?

[WHF]

CoveTom wrote:

---

Again, I don't understand where the big point of contention is here. We've already established that Paramount could take the original, standard definition episodes and toss them onto the Blu-ray discs without in any way increasing their costs or affecting the enhanced HD releases. So why not do it?

I don't believe that we've established that it won't increase costs. Blu-Ray currently has a capacity of 50 GB and DVD 9GB. If seamless branching isn't possible it's going to take at least one entire Blu-Ray disc for a single standard definition season. This means increased costs. I'm Ok with paying extra for this but I'd rather see them release this disc separately or maybe even as a complete series boxset of the unaltered versions.

[CoveTom]

^ I was referring to this:

Harvey wrote:

---

Looking up the video that could fit on the disc, a Blu-Ray can hold 9 hours of HD video or 23 hours of SD video. Assuming 5 episodes per disc, which is the going rate on my Blu-Rays for the Prisoner, you could have roughly four hours of HD video (five episodes) and still have room for 10 hours of SD video.

So you could easily fit five HD episodes (pretty standard for Blu-ray releases) along with their 5 original SD counterparts and still have room for some special features, without needing to add so much as one extra disc. But even if it required adding, say, one more Blu-ray disc to the collection, that has to cost Paramount all of 10 cents. If the content is already there, and doesn't have to be edited or changed in any way, just sticking it on a disc costs virtually nothing.

[Harvey]

There's the cost of authoring the discs, of course, but after doing the math, it seems you're right. Paramount could throw the episodes on the discs in SD with little cost. But I doubt it will happen. Just as DVD is becoming obsolete, so is SD. For better or worse.

[Prologic9]

Harvey wrote:

---

Just as DVD is becoming obsolete, so is SD. For better or worse.

This you really don't have to worry about IMO. They aren't putting out Bluray's with SD content right now because they need to distinguish it as a format. But if in the future Bluray sales are strong and DVD has diminished significantly then it would be almost a forgone conclusion to see SD content released on blu, television especially.

It wouldn't be straight ports of DVD content either, there's more to HD than just resolution. They would be able to take advantage of newer compression technologies and higher bitrates, giving us nearly perfect reproductions of the video masters of all those 80s and 90s shows.

[3D Master]

Tomalak wrote:

---

They are available, intact, on DVD, on a thousand DVD Rips, and torrented around the world. They aren't going anywhere. They've had an official digital release, which in this day and age makes them immortal. I don't see what more you require. It's not as if all existing DVDs are wiped when the (hypothetical) Blu-ray release hits the shops.

:sighs:

AGAIN, for the THIRD time, it isn't whether they are available NOW that's the concern, the concern is whether they CONTINUE to be available in the decades and centuries TO COME. In whatever format that is functioning at the time.

And don't think it'll be disc systems that are backward compatible for eternity.

And seriously, are you actually arguing, that if you break the law you can still get a hold of them, really?

[billcosby]

Isn't it a reality that eventually they'll be released on Blu ray? They would have to be, right?

[3D Master]

billcosby wrote:

---

Isn't it a reality that eventually they'll be released on Blu ray? They would have to be, right?

Yes, and we're discussing HOW they should be released in HD.

[billcosby]

3D Master wrote:

---

Yes, and we're discussing HOW they should be released in HD.

Okay, good luck with this serious discussion. TNG doesn't seem to be Paramount's breadwinner these days. It might be a long wait.

[Tomalak]

3D Master wrote:

---

:sighs:

AGAIN, for the THIRD time, it isn't whether they are available NOW that's the concern, the concern is whether they CONTINUE to be available in the decades and centuries TO COME. In whatever format that is functioning at the time.

And don't think it'll be disc systems that are backward compatible for eternity.

And seriously, are you actually arguing, that if you break the law you can still get a hold of them, really?

Yes, I am. The fact is anyone can make a digital image of their DVDs, and keep it for the foreseeable future. Blu-ray is a red herring, the future is in downloads. This information is not going to go "out of print" because there will always be copies floating around in the ether. You are still thinking about it in a very 20th century way, but the same goes for the industry. They still don't really understand this because the people in charge haven't caught up with the new reality. It's like Rupert Murdoch talking about charging for News Corp content online. The man simply does not understand the nature of the internet.

If (that's a massive if) a HD version of TNG is produced, this will become the default, which CBS/Paramount/Whoever will wish to push, because otherwise what's the point in doing the HD transfer? Why bother to offer an SD alternative, which will require more disc authoring costs, disc space and time? They didn't include the original SD broadcasts of TOS, they simply used seamless branching for certain scenes. They may decide to do it, but there's no reason we should expect it.

[WHF]

CoveTom wrote:

---

^ I was referring to this:

So you could easily fit five HD episodes (pretty standard for Blu-ray releases) along with their 5 original SD counterparts and still have room for some special features, without needing to add so much as one extra disc. But even if it required adding, say, one more Blu-ray disc to the collection, that has to cost Paramount all of 10 cents. If the content is already there, and doesn't have to be edited or changed in any way, just sticking it on a disc costs virtually nothing.

10 cents for an extra disc? I hope you're right but I'm doubtful. I've noticed some multi-blu-ray sets that include a DVD, such as the Blade Runner set. If it's that cheap why wasn't every disc Blu-ray?

[Harvey]

I assume Blu-Ray discs are still more expensive than DVD discs, and if the features are all in SD and can fit on a regular DVD, that's probably the preferable option to the studios. However, as per the Blu-Ray.com FAQ:

According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, the overall cost of manufacturing Blu-ray Disc media will in the end be no more expensive than producing a DVD. The reduced injection molding costs (one molding machine instead of two, no birefringence problems) offset the additional cost of applying the cover layer and low cost hard-coat, while the techniques used for applying the recording layer remain the same. As production volumes increase the production costs should fall and eventually be comparable to DVDs.

Then again, the Blu-Ray Disc Association is an industry consortium with the sole purpose of promoting the format, so of course they'd claim their format isn't more expensive.

[CoveTom]

WHF wrote:

---

10 cents for an extra disc? I hope you're right but I'm doubtful.

I was basing that on the idea that Paramount home video probably buys blank discs by the truckload. Certainly, a blank Blu-ray disc is not that cheap for you or I, but I imagine the individual cost of each blank disc is negligible for a company that buys in the quantity they do.

[Hober Mallow]

Tomalak wrote:

---

Well yes, that's self-evident. It was designed to be seen on a small 525 line CRT television in very much standard definition.

Any attempts to make it available in HD will mean it is no longer the "original" version.

Welll, you're a little off here. Just making a show or movie HD doesn't mean it isn't the original. For instance, the original Star Trek is in complete edited form on film. The high-definition you see on the remastered blu-rays is actually already there on the film. In fact even more detail than that is on the film. The remastered Star Trek is, therefore, the same thing as the original. There is no "original" version vs. "remastered" version. The "original" version is what's right there on film. In order to make it HD, all they had to do was make a new transfer and show more of the detail that's already there on the film.

What makes TNG different is that the episodes are on videotape, meaning there is no extra detail to show. Whereas TOS episodes included tons of extra details you couldn't see because of the limitations of your TV set, there is no more detail to the TNG picture. What you see now is all the detail that exists. So to make the show HD, the episodes have to be reassembled into new edits from the original film elements.

In other words, remastering the original Star Trek preserved the original. "Remastering" TNG would be more like remaking the series.

But the idea that making something HD means it's no longer the original is wrong. In most cases, making it HD is actually showing it closer to what it really looks like on film, making it more like the original.

Prologic9 wrote:

---

It wouldn't be straight ports of DVD content either, there's more to HD than just resolution. They would be able to take advantage of newer compression technologies and higher bitrates, giving us nearly perfect reproductions of the video masters of all those 80s and 90s shows.

Just as an aside, "Trials and Tribble-ations" looked really great on the Star Trek second season blu-ray set.

[swaaye]

I keep seeing this talk of BDROM versions of the DVD material.

If you really want all of the SD eps in one easily accessible location to watch on a whim, you can extract the episodes fairly easily from your DVDs. Put them onto a hard drive (USB say) in VOB format and watch all of them from there. Each episode is about 2GB so figure on around 350GB of space. Of course this "little" project will take hours of repetitive labor, but it is worth it in the end IMO.

Optical disks are obsolete. Hard drives are cheap.

[CoveTom]

Despite the advances in storage, compression, broadband access, etc., I suspect we'll continue to see optical discs, or some physical form, produced and sold for quite some time.

To this day, most people still make a separation between their TV's and their computers. Despite the attempts by many companies to push the vision, we are still far away from one integrated device in the home. When people think of streaming or downloading video, they think of watching it on their computers, and their computers only. They think of getting a movie or TV show to watch on their TV as a separate process, and most people still have much bigger TV screens than they do computer screens.

Convergence may happen eventually. But it's not just a technological matter; it's changing people's attitudes and perceptions about which devices are for what. There's still a long way to go on that.