The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

Well whatever.

 

As time goes by even TOS has lost it's fans. There aren't as many people interested. Now think about the later shows. What but the most hardcore base could they have left?

My mistake that Enterprise is in HD already - it didn't start airing that way until much later and I don't care enough about it to know it's all streaming that way. And yet CBS has no plans for a blu-ray release because they know it wouldn't be profitable even without a major HD retrofit.

 

First run ratings are a good general indication of popularity and presumably trend fairly well with other indicators. TOS is probably an exception since it built a reputation over the years on syndication.

For TOS, CBS probably looked at the current syndication deals, the DVD sales, the money they were getting from HD-DVD, and their expected HD syndication revenue to justify the conversion.

For TNG they probably looked at DVD sales and current syndication deals to determine that a remastering project was worthwhile. There may be a streaming/syndication deal that has been worked on privately and they will announce when the 1st season set is ready, but we'll have to wait and see for that.

Once TNG starts selling they will judge the sales vs. their model to determine if they think they can make money off of DS9/VOY. The determining factor of which series they tackle next(if any) is probably which series sold better on DVD and in syndication.

 

I don't think that that profits are why they're holding back on Enterprise - there's no reason to think that paying to redo the effects on a recent show will improve sales over releasing what they have now for cheaper. And Paramount is refusing to release their current shows on Blu-ray, instead giving Leverage and NCIS and others DVD-only releases.

To me, it looks like the only TV Paramount is interested in releasing on Blu-ray are projects conceived with a high-def disc release in mind from the start, like TOS-R and TNG-R. Other TV shows - current and archive - can suffer with DVD releases.

I welcome counter-examples. (CSI and NCIS: LA don't count since Paramount abandoned their Blu-ray releases a year or two ago. )

 

I don’t know whether or when ENT will be released on Blu-Ray, but clearly it’s a different kind of thing than TNG-R. TNG-R is for Paramount a major project, and for fans a chance to “See it like you’ve never seen it before.”

ENT on Blu-Ray is a much less compelling product: “See it very much like you’ve seen it before, but the image is a little sharper.” Those who want ENT on disc can get it on DVD; videophiles who spurn DVD as a primitive technology can get ENT-HD from digital download or streaming services. I don’t see a BluRay release giving Paramount access to a lot of consumers they can’t sell to today.

If you want disc-traditional special features and an HD image, you can’t get them both in a single product today. If you’re a typical consumer, you’ll make your choice between available formats and Paramount gets their sale. If HD and special features both are important to you, then maybe you’ll be dissuaded from buying, or maybe you’ll choose which is more important to you and buy the format that offers it, or maybe you’ll even be driven to buy it twice so you can have it both ways! The impact of BluRay availability on total sales is unclear, but probably not very large, and possibly not even positive.

On the other hand, it’s a much lesser project for Paramount. Small investment, small risk, small reward. A completely different set of considerations from TNG-R.

 

A lot? Maybe not, but I'm certainly one of them. I'm not going to pay to watch streaming (besides watching ads), and removing the DRM to safeguard my digital video purchases from retailer failure and convert them for use on other platforms is just too much work.

Plus, as you alluded to, special features are nice.

 

I said even *without* an HD retrofit.

 

I think the real money is in syndication over the next 20 years and the fact that there is a fanbase that will go out and buy a blu-ray of the show is just the icing on the cake for CBS.

 

Any excuse to get out of watching Voyager, eh?

 

It's probably just upscaled, but Voyager is currently running on the Sky Atlantic HD channel here in the UK.

 

Not "probably", is.

 

"Upscaling" means just that. The video is "upscaled" from SD to HD so that the picture isn't in a small box in the middle of your screen.

Upscaling cannot add resolution because the extra information simply is not there. It just makes a smaller picture fit on a larger screen without it looking like a bunch of pixelated blocks. The process used to "upscale" makes a "rough guess" on the color of a pixel between two other pixels. Boom. "Upscaled."

To get something to be true-HD you have to go back to original film stock and re-acquire the data to truly know what information that pixel had.

"Up-scaling" something means pretty much nothing other than "we made to picture bigger to fit your TV so you don't have to use the zoom feature to make it fit, but look like ass."

 

Theoretically it's possible for a precomputed upscaling to do a better job than your TV can when displaying SD material (since it doesn't need to be done in real time). I haven't done any testing to see if that's borne out in practice, though.

 

My PS3 does a (somewhat) better job of upscaling than my TV does.
TNG looks like ass either way, sadly. Beautifully upscaled fuzz!

On the other hand, Enterprise on DVD looks pretty damned good. A better quality source and improved encoding can do wonders even for SD content, I suppose.

 

Most decent HDTVs will do a better job of upscaling than the players would.

And remember, any time you are watching standard definition material on a HD set, you are already watching upscaled material. If this didn't happen, there'd be like a postage stamp sized image in the middle of the screen surrounded by oodles of black on all sides.

 

Ultimately though SD cannot hold a candle to HD regardless of what the source or upscaling algorithm might be. Furthermore, as time goes on and we go from HD to 2k and finally 4k SD is going to be unsustainable. Media that remain unremastered will fade away and will never be broadcast again. Some people here might hate Voyager and even I am no big fan of Enterprise. But that's no reason to condemn those shows to historic oblivion. In the end the Star Trek catalogue is a successful product. So far indefinitely. Thus all shows will end up being remastered because decades of syndication, streaming and home video sales await, dwarfing the short term cost of these projects. Why else do you think Paramount/CBS are putting so much more effort into TNG than any other of their classic TV series?

 

That's true. IIRC someone in this thread mentioned that would be a problem for Season Four of Enterprise, which was shot digitally.