when will we have a bluray?

[JekylHyde]

Hi
i know that there is a bluray for all the films
& for the first original tv show
& for the last show enterprise
but what with:
The Next Generation
Deep Space Nine
Voyager
will we see a bluray/HD DVD for them soon?
thanks

[Cheapjack]

I think they're going to do it soon, and well. The episodes on freeview and DVD are a bit washed out and you can't see the wrinkles on the faces.

[JekylHyde]

Cheapjack wrote:

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I think they're going to do it soon, and well. The episodes on freeview and DVD are a bit washed out and you can't see the wrinkles on the faces.

are you teasing me?

[TheGodBen]

Almost certainly never.

The TNG-era series were all edited on video-tape which only stored an SD image, so to release TNG in HD they would have to re-edit all the episodes to exactly replicate the video edits. What's more, all the visual effects would need to be redone too as they were also done on video tape. The cost of doing this would be huge, and they might not make a return on investment, so there's no real incentive to do it. There's a small chance they may do it for TNG as TNG was hugely popular, but there's almost no chance they'd do it for DS9 or Voyager.

(In case you're wondering, TOS was edited on film, so it was much easier to transfer it to HD, they only needed to update the visual effects.)

[The Wormhole]

TheGodBen wrote:

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(In case you're wondering, TOS was edited on film, so it was much easier to transfer it to HD, they only needed to update the visual effects.)

No, they wanted to update the visual effects. The fact that they have included the original versions of the episodes on blu-ray proves they didn't have to update them.

[RyuRoots]

The Wormhole wrote:

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No, they wanted to update the visual effects. The fact that they have included the original versions of the episodes on blu-ray proves they didn't have to update them.

Fine. Didn't need to, but it sure helps a show that is painfully dated, visually (and in other ways too if you ask me, but that's beside the point).

[JohnChod]

The Wormhole wrote:

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No, they wanted to update the visual effects. The fact that they have included the original versions of the episodes on blu-ray proves they didn't have to update them.

Touché

[The Trekster]

What TheGodBen said. They'll need to recut every episode. Which isn't as much work as redoing all of the vidual effects, but honestly, it wouldn't even be that hard.

And I'm gonna disagree that they won't make a return on their investment. Are you telling me that Trekkies are not going to buy up HD versions of TNG and VOY in droves?\

I see the reasons why it's harder and why they may not do it, but IMO, the pros far outweigh the cons, and if they look into it, I'm sure TPTB would agree that's it totally worth it.

[Rarewolf]

You can release (a lot of) SD material on BluRay of course, it just wouldn't offer any improvement over the DVDs. It wouldn't make it HD.

[JekylHyde]

i don't understand
if they shot it in SD then they can't upscale it. you can't make HD out of SD unless you re-shot the show again.

[TheGodBen]

VulcanLoveSlave wrote:

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What TheGodBen said. They'll need to recut every episode. Which isn't as much work as redoing all of the vidual effects, but honestly, it wouldn't even be that hard.

Actually, it's possibly more work than redoing the visual effects. Editing an episode takes days, re-editing an episode to exactly match the original version would be a nightmare of a task, even with modern editing software. I don't know how well the film negatives are archived, but they'd need to find the right scene, the right angle, the right take, and then get the timing exactly right for each transition. That's not only hard, it's extremely dull for the editors too because they wouldn't be able to add any of themselves to it, it would be pure replication of someone else's work. Even TOS-R wasn't beholden to complete replication of the VFX original shots.

And I'm gonna disagree that they won't make a return on their investment. Are you telling me that Trekkies are not going to buy up HD versions of TNG and VOY in droves?

I'm certainly not, I paid enough for the DVDs, thank you very much. I don't even have a blu-ray player. Blu-ray players are still a niche item at the moment, and Star Trek fandom is a niche group already. The market just isn't there, not yet.

The only way this would be worthwhile is if they got a syndication deal out of it like TOS-R, where some HD station buys the rights to air each season as they're produced and the blu-rays come out later. Even there, it's still debatable if they'd make a return on investment.

JekylHyde wrote:

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i don't understand
if they shot it in SD then they can't upscale it. you can't make HD out of SD unless you re-shot the show again.

They shot it on proper film, and that can be converted to HD-digital. Unfortunately, as a cost-cutting measure, they edited the episodes together on video-tape, and that only has an SD resolution. They have all the shots archived on film, so they could make new edits from that and convert it to HD-digital, but the time and the cost of doing that would probably be too much.

[Vanyel]

As of right now, no. However, with line doubling and raw computer power HD versions are bound to come out. Later rather than sooner to be sure. Right now it's just too expensive and time consuming to transfer it all to HD. Once those two barriers come down, look for ALL the old video edited TV shows coming out on Bluray.

[Harvey]

SEINFELD was able to spare the expense of re-editing all of their episodes in order to release them in HD (the Blu-Rays have yet to emerge, but they're already being aired in HD on television).

It's true, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION probably has a smaller audience than SEINFELD (it had about half the Nielsen audience during its run), but it still had a big audience.

The release on Blu-Ray by CBS Paramount is not a question of if, but a question of when. It may be a few years, but it's pretty unlikely that CBS Paramount will forgo the revenue opportunities of converting the most popular series in the STAR TREK franchise to HD. The further spin-offs, which feature much more elaborate visual effects and had decreasing audiences, are a much more open question when it comes to HD versions. Only ENTERPRISE is assured one, since it already exists in HD (albeit with up-converted visual effects).

[Vanyel]

Harvey wrote:

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SEINFELD was able to spare the expense of re-editing all of their episodes in order to release them in HD (the Blu-Rays have yet to emerge, but they're already being aired in HD on television).

It's true, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION probably has a smaller audience than SEINFELD (it had about half the Nielsen audience during its run), but it still had a big audience.

The release on Blu-Ray by CBS Paramount is not a question of if, but a question of when. It may be a few years, but it's pretty unlikely that CBS Paramount will forgo the revenue opportunities of converting the most popular series in the STAR TREK franchise to HD. The further spin-offs, which feature much more elaborate visual effects and had decreasing audiences, are a much more open question when it comes to HD versions. Only ENTERPRISE is assured one, since it already exists in HD (albeit with up-converted visual effects).

The HD Seinfeld episodes I've seen, especially from the first few seasons are horrible. They are grainy and spotty. These could be up scaled version shown on the HD channel, and not true HD, but if it is HD, it's terrible.

[Harvey]

I haven't actually seen the HD episodes in question, but apparently there are two different versions out there. One which comes from the original 35mm film, and another which is simply upscaled to HD. Unless the job they did on the early episodes was horrible, I suspect you saw the up-converted episodes.