Which brings me back full swing to my TNG sales figures question. If the latest figures are anything but impressive - and that's still TNG with the larger fanbase we are talking about - what kind of sales could CBS Home Entertainment realistically expect from the DS9 hardcore fans? This is not ENT where you essentially pull the masters from the shelf, this is DS9 where the necessary amount of remastering and costs for one season is probably still equal to remaster one season of TNG in HD. I believe it will have to appeal to general audiences and future TV broadcasters as well. And, again and again and again, this does not need to be accomplished by a brutal 16:9 cropping, but instead by adding the unseen areas left and right of the camera negatives to the already existing 4:3 image (in most cases). Admittedly, some trimming at the top and bottom would occur, but frankly I don’t need to see upper parts of the set in final images like this one from “Reunion” (there was also this exterior shot of the conference lounge from an early TNG season with studio equipment still visible on the top) – which BTW wouldn’t look too bad (or even better) reframed in 16:9, I think. Bob
No, that's not correct. In most cases, if this heinous procedure must be done, "smart cropping" is employed. At a very basic level, it starts with having the top of the frame just above the highest head as it were. Obviously, it gets more complex as you go on - with panning shots etc. As bad as it is, this technique at least extracts a half tolerable frame - umm, sort of! Zooming on your TV is most definitely not the same. That simply blows up the centre of the image - and I guarantee - for the most part, it looks bloody terrible. "Cut off" heads aplenty!
Exactly this. Plus, if your blurayplayer is set to fill the screen no matter what, plus your tv wants to fill the screen, things can get conflicted. I don't scale anything. Original size or nothing. The combo of zooming and stretching is just horrible, and if there are actually people out there that think that altering an original 4:3 source into 16:9, I'd love to see some examples of that done properly, because I haven't encountered it yet. Only of the source material was in 16:9, and you have acces to the original source material, will it work. It doesn't matter of everything was shot in 16:9, if all that is left is material in 4:3, it's gonna suck when altered to fit 16:9. Top and bottom of the shots have to be cut of, which will make things look completey weird. For example, a few weeks ago I noted somewhere in the Voyager-section of the forum how the cinematogrophy of season 5 included a lot of pretty tight close-ups of the characters. If you can cut the bottom of for scenes like that, you basicly see a face on your screen, no chin, no hair. How is that going to look good?? Spacebattles where half of the action is just chopped away. Yeah, that's gonna look great. So yeah, my tv is set to show everything in original size, both from tv signal and my blurayplayer, and that is set to also show everything in source-size. No weird stretching and zooming for me thank you very much.
That's why I clearly said "essentially," yes, I'm well aware that the studios use a smart technique for the cropping, but the effect is similar. Whether your doing a smart crop or zooming on the center of the image, you're losing the same amount of information. The difference, as you stated, is whether the lost information is the top of heads or not. And, in case it wasn't clear, I wasn't condoning the cropping of the show. I am a firm believer in OAR. My statement was to make the point that we should get the shows as they were originally produced, because people who want the widescreen appearance can already do that on their own.
OK, thanks for the clarification, trekker670. It's good to know another paid up member of the OAR club! Hopefully, we can stop the madness of cropping!
^^ No doubt it does, but that's inevitable when you only have the final 4:3 image to make the widescreen extraction from. Here is an old (but still graphic) visualization how a TNG (or DS9) widescreen image could look like more or less, provided you had access to the original camera negatives. Bob
I mentioned it earlier, but "Broken Bow" looks pretty decent. You'd never guess it was shot and completely finished in 4:3. But that's because the director was given the time to reframe it carefully shot by shot before it aired. That kind of director involvement would likely never happen with the last few seasons of a DS9-R, I'm afraid.
Another aspect ratio discussion? *sigh* DS9 was always shot with 4:3 in mind. They made test to film it in a way both 4:3 and 16:9 were possible. They made special ground glasses for that. But the results were bad and they decided to keep shooting for 4:3. There was an article about this somewhere. Maybe someone knows where. Even if 2/3 of the scenes work in 16:9 (which I doubt) it's useless because 1/3 will still look horrible. Also that most scenes will include additional footage on the sides without props, lightstands etc. visible is more wishful thinking than anything else. Buffy was mentioned as a good example. TNG is 4:3 and almost no one is complaining about that anymore. So keep DS9 at 4:3 as it was meant to be.
What always surprises me is how big an issue the whole 16:9 thing is to people. I mean of all the things one could discuss about a remastered release this gets brought up again and again and again. What is truly annoying is that no progress is made with this debate in the face of rock solid arguments for maintaining the original aspect ratio. The 16:9 crowd just ignore what ever is said and keep spamming their redudant opinions.
In Germany I only remember letterboxed movies on VHS. Probably because PAL has a higher vertical resolution with 576i (compared to 480i NTSC). So having movies letterboxed in NTSC just means the picture gets too blurry, while PAL can handle it better.
I've watched many, many hours of Star Trek under less than ideal conditions over the years. I, for one, would like to have 16:9 as an option on the discs along side 4:3.
Yes, options are always the way in these cases - totally agree. The only downside is the practicality of offering both aspect ratios. You can't do it via seamless branching, so, the choices are: Drop the bitrate (quite considerably) on one/both of the encodes, or, double up on the discs - never going to happen IMO.
Be realistic. You would have to significantly reduce the bit rate for each episode if you have them doubled up on each disc or double the amount of discs per season. How could that be feasible? Also why should CBS invest a significant amount of money in reframing all these episodes if the outcome will be no more than a flawed compromise? This project will be pricey enough as it is with near insurmountable hurdles to solve on a very tight budget. Making 16:9 available for a couple of pillarbox phobics just doesn't seem like a viable priority.
I don't think its "pillarbox phobics". As we move further and further into the 16:9 world, some of these shows might have trouble finding broadcasters willing to pay top dollar for 4:3 content. Even BBC America blows up the picture on TNG-SD so it uses more of the screen. TNG-HD still isn't available here in the States via broadcast.
Well the BBC doesn't exactly have a history of treating its Star Trek broadcasts with respect. Always seemed like a low priority for them. Having said that over here in the UK it certainly isn't unusual for old content to be broadcast in its original aspect ratio and I believe the last time I saw a Star Trek episode on TV it was indeed shown in 4:3. Thing is people and broadcasters can do with it what they like. They can zoom, crop, stretch to their heart's content no one will stop them. But at least the original is still there 100% with nothing taken away or taken out of proportion. Really can't see what's so horrendous about that.