Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

Ah, thanks. Knew there had to be others out there.

 

You mean you have a separate printed insert that comes inside the case? That would be nice if they did that for us here. Of course, I can't really take credit for the fonts or layout as I'm quite literally copying what our episode guide looks like, which is printed on the reverse of our cover artwork -- you have to view it through the blue-colored case though, which is why I liberated it.

 

Ok, I didn't know that

I ordered the steelcase, which, to my taste, is much nicer than the normal Amaray, and with that came the guide, seperated indeed.
First I thought: hey, they've "stolen" that from Maxwell

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 Blu-ray Gag Reel Special Feature Clip

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQanNIW2jQw[/yt]

 

Hmm... I have no idea why Michael Dorn just seems to keep cracking up during other people's dialogue, but it's hilarious.

But that little hand sign routine that Data and Geordi pulled should've totally made it into the show.

 

SCNR

 

Just got back from the theatrical release. Things looked "okay" as you watched the two episodes, though some shots were really soft and the yellow's sometimes had a greenish tint to them.

But what really sticks a fork in HTV's work is when they show the season three trailer at the end. I stand by my earlier statement that the work done by HTV looks like ass when compared to the work done by CBS-Digital.

 

I saw the showing and thought it looked great on the big screen! I think seeing everything in motion helped out quite a bit when comparing to the stills posted online. Maybe my sight is getting bad, but I was impressed by the work. True, it is not up to par with season 1, but I feel better about buying this next week.

 

Saw the showing, enjoyed it. I don't think everything looked quite as crisp and bold as the S1 stuff but, still, it looked pretty good. I liked the extended edition of MoaM but I can see why the cut stuff was cut. I don't really think it added much to the episode.

 

I couldn't agree more. I sat through the show and thought it was good, some noticible errors, but no show-stoppers...until the S3 trailer, then I was blown away. I'm already excited for S3.

Again, I agree. I thoroughly enjoyed the extended cut. For the most part the scenes really worked and while they didn't necessarily add anything to the show, I enjoyed the additional character interactions and definitely didn't take anything away from the show (like some deleted scenes might).

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A few things that I noticed (and managed to remember):

- In some ship shots, it appears that HTV didn't properly correct for the film warping as CBS mentioned in their interviews and the lighting pass floats around on the ship
- Some live actions shots looked blurrier than others, even in the same scene, I'm not sure if this is due to some digital zooming (as was the case occasionally in S1) or different film grains or HTV messing up the scanned film (I doubt this one, actually)
- The exterior shuttle shot in Q Who is blurry, the markings on the ship weren't as clear as I'd expect them to be. One could argue it's meant to be out of focus, but this doesn't make much sense since it's the only thing in the shot.
- The 2 footer still looks really out of place.

 

Yeah, that's one reason I decided against going. Even in HD, I don't think TNG was really meant to be blown up on a giant movie screen like that. Whatever errors there might be were just going to be even MORE glaringly apparent at that size.

 

My observations from the screening....

Overall, the episodes were very faithful to the original SD versions....which is both good and bad. Good in that nothing really jumped out as a downgrade, but nothing really stood out as an upgrade (other than the fact it is HD, of course).

The good: Measure of a Man extended cut is GREAT. The added scenes add a lot to the overall story, especially to Riker vs. Picard. Aside from a couple sound issues, the additions were completely seamless. The only part that stood out as unnecessary was Maddox crashing Data's party. Going forward, I will only ever watch the extended cut.

The space station in MoaM looked pretty good. The Borg shipped looked decent, though due to the original effects, it looked like a cardboard cut-out some of the time. The new Borg matte looks pretty good. I see from the S3 trailer that it's used again. I wonder if CBS-D made it (hence it looking good)

Now for the bad:

• In the conference room scene with Maddox, there is a background effect of the space station behind Maddox and Picard's heads, seen here: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x09/themeasureofaman062.jpg. The effect is AWWWWWWFUL. For one, the image is so DNRed that it looks like upscaled SD. Second, the matte lines around Picard and Maddox are terrible. It's a fuzzy mess around their heads, and parts of their heads (especially Maddox's hair) appear and disappear. It was very jarring and ugly. Then when it cuts to another shot, it's back to sharp picture with film grain. No effort was made to make it consistent. I have to say, that shot looks better on DVD.
• The model effects for the Enterprise are satisfactory, nothing more. For one, the Enterprise lacks any depth due to poor lighting/shadows, and is pale gray, much like standard definition. When you see the ship in the opening credits, it looks wonderful again. Then back to pale gray with no depth. The Enterprise was squished in most of the main beauty shots, but not all.
• Grain was fairly inconsistent. Sometimes grain was heavy and consistent, and other times it was gone.
• There appeared to be a graphical glitch in Measure of a Man. In this establishing shot (used twice) http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x09/themeasureofaman043.jpg , the effects are glitched on the far left of the frame, as if they're reflecting off the edge of the frame. I worry that the Blu-ray is the same way.
• The sound mix for Measure of a Man was off. During the courtroom scenes, the voices were slightly echoey. Sound was also inconsistent cutting between the existing and newly inserted scenes, but only slightly.
• The photon torpedo explosions looked like upscaled SD. Soft and not well defined.
• In one of the shots of the Enterprise, the lighting effects appeared to wobble relative to the model, particularly around the bussard collector. Once you see it, you'll....

Finally, the season 3 trailer was AMAZING. Seeing the amazing quality of the effect shots was quite a condemnation of the season 2 effects. After seeing 2 hours of gray, pale Enterprise, it's back to sharp, multi-colored and shadowy Enterprise. The Borg ship didn't look like a cardboard cut-out.

The trailer was extremely well-done. Very heavy on footage of Yesterday's Enterprise and BOBW 1. Those episodes looked very cinematic. My friend and I both said "wow, the two episodes we just watched looked nowhere as good as this"

Overall, I am not expecting much out of Season 2. The heavily DNRed shot was disgusting, and I'm not looking forward to seeing more.

Oh, and the only thing HTV got right that CBS-D got wrong - the final credit card with the year and copyright. CBS-D used some wonky unfamiliar font. HTV used the correct font. That's the only positive I can think of.

 

After hearing the reviews from the screenings I think, it is time for a combined efford of Trek fans bombarding HTV with complains about their lack of quality. History has shown that the fans voice is going to be heard. It's enough that we "lost" one Season of TNG, because it was handled by HTV, it cannot be accepted, that there are probably more Seasons of TNG to be "lost" like this again.

 

You'd be better off going to CBS rather than HTV. Clearly, HTV don't care to learn any lessons from past failures. And CBS are the ones paying the bills, so they're the ones who can do something about it.

 

So is HTV doing S3 or is someone else? Did they do Season 1? Because the work done on S1 was jaw-droppingly good where as the S2 work, not so much.

The only added scene I think worked was with Riker and Picard's encounter in the fencing room.

 

I am bit confused..many here have said that HTV will be doing season 4 but in this documentary we clearly see somebody working on the S4 episode "Reunion"(around 08:28) or is this just some "pre-mastering" or something like that?

 

At this point we're all somewhat uncertain. HTV's website says they were going to be working on 'multiple' Seasons, however an email posted here from someone at the Digital Bits website says that CBS has learned their lesson and will no longer be outsourcing the VFX.

At this point, we can only hope that CBS-Digital will handle the rest of the Seasons and that they will be given more time to do it up to the Season 1 standards.

 

Are you talking about the Starbase shots at about the 9 minute mark? Those are from 11001010

 

I took a screenshot(sorry about the large size):



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