The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

The definitive example of how not to upscale SD is given by the Blu-ray version of Peacekeeper Wars as distributed in Germany.

 

Yeah that posed a quandary for me a few days ago. I was considering getting the Farscape BD set, but it doesn't include PKW, and I'm not getting that woeful German version.

 

I haven't compared them side to side, but I recall the 'HD' version having a lot of awful ghosting effects that the SD doesn't.

 

So guys ... less than 30 days? Is it time to squeee yet?

 

FWIW, I pre-ordered it on Amazon UK for £6.99...seems like a hell of a nice deal to me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Trek-G...QNS6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325539233&sr=8-1

 

That's pretty good, plus you get it a day early. Hopefully you or others in the UK will post 1080p screenshots.

I'm in the US and for me it would come out to $13.82 with delivery around 6-10 business days... so obviously it's better for me to stick with the domestic release at $14.99 with release day delivery (January 31st).

 

I'd love too, if only I had a BD-ROM drive

 

Well, if we keep our eyes peeled, we may see some more screenshots in about two weeks.

 

I keep hoping for CBS Digital or rather CBS' marketing wing to get the whole social media marketing thing on this. Hire a community manager for the project who sets up a blog and a Twitter feed and a Facebook page, and trickle out info as the project goes to town over the next few years, to keep up awareness (and thus rev up sales) as people retweet and share and subscribe. It's an obvious opportunity for this given that you have a sequential release of content over a longer time frame, and there's ample behind the scenes stuff to draw from as well.

I suppose they kind of did do this on TOS-R back then with the per-episode media packages, with TrekMovie.com acting as the blog. I hope they'll do it again, but even better and a bit more official.

A good example that comes to mind is the official Tumblr blog for the new Tomb Raider game: http://officialtombraiderblog.tumblr.com/

One might say that the TNG audience is a tad to old for this to be the right fit, but then this might actually bring in some new and younger folks. People want to follow and actively fan stuff these days more than ever. Feed 'em.

Drex, you reading this? One could hope. You get this! Suggest it to the right people!

 

Right. I'm pretty sure the original season 1/2 episodes were not originally aired this way, but somewhere along the way these muddy & dark transfers were slipped into the rotation.

(I recall reading that the early seasons were distributed as 16mm film rather than videotape and telecined by each individual station. For whatever reason, seasons 1/2 were not in the regular rerun rotation in my area until after TNG was off the air. Perhaps the official studio tapes were only done later as a half-hearted effort.)

And lousy picture quality was pretty common for syndicated television in those days. They would often show old movies with what looked like fourth generation prints which had been lying around in a basement for ten years. TOS episodes also looked like beat-up crap until Paramount redistributed them in the mid 1990s.

 

The video quality of the Blu-ray version of the series is damn well indistinguishable from the upscaled PAL DVDs - to my aged eyesight at least. The only real benefits are subtitles (which aren't included on the DVDs that I have) and much improved audio.

Anyway, more on topic, play.com has the TNG taster Blu-ray listed for £7.99 - £1 more than amazon.co.uk. I'm not switching 'though as I find Play's delivery is generally much swifter.

 

That's because the Blu-ray version of Farscape is upscaled from the PAL masters, and not native HD.

 

Yeah, I know - even with better compression algorithms, I can't see much difference in the image from the DVDs apart from each episode occupying about 7.5GB of disc space instead of 1.5GB.

 

Unless you have Prime!

 

I could sign up for the one-month free trial but it hardly seems worth the effort to save £1. Amazon have cocked up several orders in the past so I tend not to trust their competence. Play have never got an order wrong.

 

I believe you're thinking of TOS.

 

Yes, reruns of any 60s/70s show would have been distributed as film not videotape. However, I think that practice may have continued into the late 80s with TNG episodes. I do know movies were distributed as 16mm well into this era.

Either way, the TNG season 1/2 transfers we have been watching for the last 15 years are definitely worse than the others; they look more like generation loss (print of a print) than intentionally darker. It will be interesting to see how these episodes look with a fresh transfer from the original negs.

 

Not 15... it's been almost 25 years now!

What you're seeing is the fact that those seasons were finished on 1 inch analog type C composite videotape, while later seasons were component D1 (digital video).

I don't believe they would have considered doing a 16mm film-out with their low-quality video sources, then expected TV stations to do their own telecine back from film. What would be the purpose of that? The various affiliate TV stations across the country would have likely just recorded the analog satellite signal at a given time and then just re-broadcast it to their viewers. There's your generation loss.

 

Yeah I have it because I piggyback on my housemate's account. It's useful but otherwise I wouldn't pay the annual fee for it. Play have always been excellent for me too.

 

New video online:

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/01/05/star-trek-tng-hd-exclusive-video/