Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[M]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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Unless his cryptic tweet was referring to an announcement that besides Enterprise, the Animated Series will hit Blu-Ray---it was Remastered in HD for it's DVD release in 2006. So that's another Trek show that could be popped onto Blu-Ray with no trouble.

Scotty wrote:

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And we already had a TAS HD sample on Star Trek TOS season 2 and it looked great.

Really?! I didn't know that. I will have to watch out for that episode on the blu-ray set. I always thought it was merely the upconverted SD material.

[Maxwell Everett]

Harvey wrote:

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Hopefully Paramount gets their act together and does a proper remastering of all ten films for a better HD release in the future.

(Although TWOK looks great for the most part, it has a few color timing issues which have made Regula look blue in most -- but not all -- shots. I'd be fine with the change if it were consistent, but it isn't.).

Yeah, in my opinion, this is the worst offending shot:

DVD: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a...9/twok0716.jpg
BLU-RAY: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a...twokhd0627.jpg

They must've lost or ignored the timing reports which either specified a warmer look from what was there on the negative or perhaps they corrected away the intended warmer look of Regula as shot. ILM may have lit the miniature with orange colored gel and the new color timers turned up the blue channel to correct for it.

Either way, it's a screw up... and Paramount is unlikely to revisit the film on Blu-ray.

[Harvey]

Yeah, it's a shame. But what really bothers me is that there's a distinctive red tint on plenty of shots that doesn't match the new blue look given to the planet. At least the transfer is otherwise fine, though.

[tomswift2002]

Aside from TWOK, I recall reading that the rest of the films were just being upressed for the Blu-Rays (from the Special Edition DVD's), so it's no wonder the Blu-Rays don't have the same level of detail as TWOK or the 2009 movie. I wouldn't be surprised if, when Paramount transferred the films back in the early-2000's for the Special Edition DVD's, they were only transferring them so that they looked good in Broadcast 720 HD, or on the home video front, 480p.

[Maxwell Everett]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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Aside from TWOK, I recall reading that the rest of the films were just being upressed for the Blu-Rays (from the Special Edition DVD's), so it's no wonder the Blu-Rays don't have the same level of detail as TWOK or the 2009 movie. I wouldn't be surprised if, when Paramount transferred the films back in the early-2000's for the Special Edition DVD's, they were only transferring them so that they looked good in Broadcast 720 HD, or on the home video front, 480p.

Well, Paramount didn't have to upres the HD masters they used for those Blu-rays (they already had 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution even though they were from older telecines)... as I said, you can see clips of them untouched by DNR on the various new HD special features on each movie's disc.

[tomswift2002]

How do we know that they did 1080p scans of the films back in the early 2000's? All that we know is that Paramount, at most, scanned them with HD Broadcast standards in mind (especially since at the time there was nothing for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, and DVHS was barely making an impact). So for Paramount doing even just a 720p transfer in the early 2000's would've been sufficient, as far as they were concerned.

[Pindar]

I never bought the movie blurays because of the noise reduction. I keep hoping they will do it properly.

[Maxwell Everett]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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How do we know that they did 1080p scans of the films back in the early 2000's? All that we know is that Paramount, at most, scanned them with HD Broadcast standards in mind (especially since at the time there was nothing for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, and DVHS was barely making an impact). So for Paramount doing even just a 720p transfer in the early 2000's would've been sufficient, as far as they were concerned.

Not 1080 scans, 1080 telecines. An HD telecine can be up to 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution and is output to tape (HDCam or D5). Scanning, on the other hand, can be anywhere from 2K to 8K and isn't output to tape, it's output to digital files. Telecine is a real-time process, because it's basically an HD camera that's aimed at the film as it goes through what is essentially a projector. A film scanner is a slower process, it scans each frame separately in red, green, and blue light.

And we know they had 1080 line HD telecines for quite some time because, well, 1080i versions of the films have been floating around newsgroups since about the mid-2000s -- that's when I got them anyway. I think HBO-HD and Cinemax-HD have been showing the first six films since they began broadcasting in high-definition (HBO in 1999 and Cinemax in 2003).

And again, you can see DNR-free clips from these older 1080 line telecines (which were the basis for the I & III-VI Blu-rays) on the new HD special features.

[tomswift2002]

That still doesn't address the original post. How do we know that the films were sourced from 1080i/p sources? Just because a tape can hold 1080p material doesn't mean that it does.

Just look at how Warner Brothers is sending out 720 and 1080i broadcast masters (or even downloads) too stations of the first four seasons of "Smallville", even though they have stated that the material isn't up to Blu-Ray standards. It could be that Paramount was in the same boat, but instead of saying that the sources weren't up to Blu-Ray specs Paramount just unpressed a 720p tape too 1080p and added some film grain too make it look like they had taken the Blu-Rays from the film.

[Salinga]

A private interview with Dan Curry. One interesting anekdote: To recreate the surface of a planet, Dan used a rock he photographed back in the 80s and saved in his private collection. He went home, took a new photograph and they recreated the planets surface in HD with the exact same rock.

[Maxwell Everett]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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That still doesn't address the original post. How do we know that the films were sourced from 1080i/p sources? Just because a tape can hold 1080p material doesn't mean that it does.

Just look at how Warner Brothers is sending out 720 and 1080i broadcast masters (or even downloads) too stations of the first four seasons of "Smallville", even though they have stated that the material isn't up to Blu-Ray standards. It could be that Paramount was in the same boat, but instead of saying that the sources weren't up to Blu-Ray specs Paramount just unpressed a 720p tape too 1080p and added some film grain too make it look like they had taken the Blu-Rays from the film.

Because it looks like 1080?

Tom, if you're making the claim that, "Paramount just unpressed a 720p tape too 1080p and added some film grain too," you need to provide evidence for that claim -- you can't just make unsupported assertions. Why would Paramount add grain only to wipe it away with DNR? That makes absolutely no sense.

You wrote earlier that you, "recall reading that the rest of the films were just being upressed for the Blu-Rays." Where did you read this?

For the third time, my evidence for the masters having 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution can be found not merely in my old MPEG2 1080i HDTV copies of the films which I still possess, but also on the Blu-rays themselves -- in the new HD special features created for each film by King Media Services. There are clips there from those masters with intact grain. Have you looked at them recently? They do not appear to be 720p upscales and the grain does not appear to be simulated.

If you still doubt this, there's nothing stopping you from contacting King Media and asking them what resolution the clips were that Paramount gave them. But you don't even have to go that far -- you just have to look at the clips in the featurettes on the Trek Blu-rays.

Besides, why would Paramount choose to make 720p telecines instead of 1080i back in the late 90s? 1440x1080i on HDCAM or D-5 had been available since about 1996/97, concurrent with the introduction of Thompson's Grass Valley Spirit DataCine -- which could both scan to DPX files and telecine to HDTV resolutions. Then around 2000, 1080/24P became the norm. 720p wasn't the norm for feature films. Even Star Trek: Enterprise, which began in 2001, was finished on 1080/24P D-5 HD videotape. Seasons 1-3 were shot on 3-perf 35mm film and in Season 4 they switched to the Sony CineAlta digital camera.

Smallville was finished on DigiBeta (720×486) for season 1 and then HDCAM (and later HDCAM SR) for all subsequent seasons. Seasons 1-7 were shot on 3-perf 35mm film and then they switched to the Panavision Genesis digital camera for seasons 8-10.

[Salinga]

Not bluRay related, but a Con appearance of Marina Sirtis in 1989, at the time of Season 2:

[dg1379]

Well thank you Salinga for trying to put this thread back on track!

[Salinga]

;o)

[Trekker4747]

Salinga wrote:

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Not bluRay related, but a Con appearance of Marina Sirtis in 1989, at the time of Season 2:

She's always been a lovely woman.