I still think eventually they are going to have to upgrade the two remaining series. Will they get the same treatment as TNG-R? Most likely not, meaning no new bonus features, very little in the way of cast interviews but eventually the two series will have to be upgraded in some fashion if they are to survive into the future.
Voyager On Blu-Ray
- Thread starter Saxman1
- Start date
The assumption here is, that you asume that he men and women at CS care enough for it to be there in the future. Somehow, everyone seems to asume that the people at CBS are hardcore fans or something. That they all religiously watch the shows they produce. And that's simply not true. They only care about profit. If restoring DS9 and VOY means making a loss, there simply will not be a restoration. Certainly not just because it should be.
Yep. They have digital masters already that were used to create the DVDs. Upscale em and sling em on whatever distribution format we have in "the future" and boom done. No fucks given and certainly not a second thought either.
Commentaries, interviews, behind the scenes featurettes are all cheap and easy. Dig up some old footage, find a couple of cast members who aren't doing much, pay them a few dollars and give the recordings to a junior editor for practice.
Almost certainly the best we could hope for, but :
This would cost very little more than Beatles take on it, and give considerably better results.
And there's packaging, distribution, advertisement, salaries. The actual production. People say an empty bluray disc is cheap. Yes it is, but the actual costs of ultimatly getting something on that disc is not.
So no, it's still a matter of costs outweighing the profit that could theoratically make. Now, CBS nows that overal, TNG was more populair then DS9 and VOY. If TNG didn't sell well enough, why would they invest in something that is likely to make even less??
Again, people, stop thinking like a fan who wants a thing really badly, and start thinking like you're in business. It'll make a lot more sense.
So no, it's still a matter of costs outweighing the profit that could theoratically make. Now, CBS nows that overal, TNG was more populair then DS9 and VOY. If TNG didn't sell well enough, why would they invest in something that is likely to make even less??
Again, people, stop thinking like a fan who wants a thing really badly, and start thinking like you're in business. It'll make a lot more sense.
As stated earlier, there's no incentive from the home Bluray market to 'redo' DS9. However, there is a tiny chance that if (IF) there's enough incentive to prepare a HD version for repeats on TV/cable, there might be a $ or two in putting it on disc for home release as production costs have already been covered.
I'd say it's chances are somewhere between slim and none though.
I'd say it's chances are somewhere between slim and none though.
I don't know how acceptable a simply upscale would be.
Last night I watched "The First Duty" on BR, an episode which contains some upscaled shots.
Let me say, most of the them positively dreadful. As if they had used a TOS female close up soft focus.
Could be the contrast between the upscaled and non upscaled shots.
Sure, those shots looked better than on DVD, but I'm not sure if it would be worthy...
Better than nothing, I guess...
Last night I watched "The First Duty" on BR, an episode which contains some upscaled shots.
Let me say, most of the them positively dreadful. As if they had used a TOS female close up soft focus.
Could be the contrast between the upscaled and non upscaled shots.
Sure, those shots looked better than on DVD, but I'm not sure if it would be worthy...
Better than nothing, I guess...
If you are watching Voyager, or any other show made in standard definition, on a HDTV, you are always watching upscaled shots.
If this was not the case, you'd be watching a postage stamp sized image surrounded by like two feet of black on all sides. EVERYTHING in standard def is upscaled when viewed on an HDTV.
The question is, which is better at upscaling - the player or the TV. Usually it's the TV.
If this was not the case, you'd be watching a postage stamp sized image surrounded by like two feet of black on all sides. EVERYTHING in standard def is upscaled when viewed on an HDTV.
The question is, which is better at upscaling - the player or the TV. Usually it's the TV.
The problem is, DVDs have got 'artifacts' due to their compression and the MPEG routines used to put them onto the DVDs, which even an upscaler won't get rid of. In this regard, even VHS has got a certain clarity that DVD doesn't...
In terms of these compression issues, that's one area where even taking the existing "master copies" and simply transfering them to Blu Ray without any further remastering would still result in a better presentation than what's on the DVD, because they'd be lossless transfers of the broadcast copies. Blu Ray doesn't suffer from compression artifacts because the actual capacity of the discs is much greater than a DVD, so they don't need to lessen the quality of the picture and sound in order to cram them onto each disc. So long as these theoretical Blu ray releases used the broadcast master tapes as a base rather than the existing DVD files, then logically they'd already be a whole generation better quality than the DVDs are. Sure, they wouldn't look as good as TOS-R or TNG-R do. But they'd still be an improvement on the DVDs.
The best upscale results are gained from the combination of a good Blu Ray player, a good HD television, the correct settings, and the use of HDMI cables (rather than the red-yellow-white 'composite' cables that DVD players typically use). All of these things can lead to DVDs being upscaled satisfactorily.
In any case, upscaling a DVD won't get rid of the DVD compression artifacts. In a best case scenario it'll compensate for it, but the results will vary depending on the quality of the DVD to begin with. It's a matter of pure mathematics as well: you simply can't take a lower resolution picture and magically turn it into a higher resolution than it already was. The picture data just isn't there.
But like I say, a good setup will help a multitude of sins.
In terms of these compression issues, that's one area where even taking the existing "master copies" and simply transfering them to Blu Ray without any further remastering would still result in a better presentation than what's on the DVD, because they'd be lossless transfers of the broadcast copies. Blu Ray doesn't suffer from compression artifacts because the actual capacity of the discs is much greater than a DVD, so they don't need to lessen the quality of the picture and sound in order to cram them onto each disc. So long as these theoretical Blu ray releases used the broadcast master tapes as a base rather than the existing DVD files, then logically they'd already be a whole generation better quality than the DVDs are. Sure, they wouldn't look as good as TOS-R or TNG-R do. But they'd still be an improvement on the DVDs.
The best upscale results are gained from the combination of a good Blu Ray player, a good HD television, the correct settings, and the use of HDMI cables (rather than the red-yellow-white 'composite' cables that DVD players typically use). All of these things can lead to DVDs being upscaled satisfactorily.
In any case, upscaling a DVD won't get rid of the DVD compression artifacts. In a best case scenario it'll compensate for it, but the results will vary depending on the quality of the DVD to begin with. It's a matter of pure mathematics as well: you simply can't take a lower resolution picture and magically turn it into a higher resolution than it already was. The picture data just isn't there.
But like I say, a good setup will help a multitude of sins.
This makes the most sense to me. I would imagine that uncompressed digital masters transferred to Blu-ray would look better than the original DVDs and could be made relatively easily as well.
As I explained in the post above yours, there's no question that even the broadcast masters dropped straight onto Blu Ray with no additional work done on them would still look and sound better than DVD, because as you rightly say they would be lossless versions of the episodes (no compression).
Whether they would consider even that meagre level of work worth it is another matter again. If they've got sales figures telling them that DS9 and VOY Blu Rays won't bring back a substantive profit, and they can just keep churning out the current DVDs anyway ad infinitium and make a profit on them, then they aren't likely to bother with Blu Rays full stop.
You TV's likely made by a good company (as are most of them) but one day it will stop working and you'll have to get a new one-you might want to consider looking at some options soon.
Just sayin'...
As many wiser people at this BBS have said, that's not likely to happen, either, also just because of money.
Last edited:
There's also a tiny chance that Raptor Jesus could come at 3pm and save us all.
Look, people, it's a sci-fi show that hasn't been on the air in 15 years. There's zero syndication of Voyager and DS9 in the US (which is all that matters here). Making it HD isn't going to suddenly make stations want to syndicate a 20 year old show that had limited ratings success to begin with. Hell, it hasn't made stations want to air TNG. It's still just on BBC-A.
CBS-D knows this and that's not how television works.
This.
I'd love to have both shows on Blu-ray. But the fact is that Star Trek doesn't seem to be very viable on TV right now, in any form. I'm not sure doing a remaster and increasing the licensing fees that very few are willing to pay now is doing the franchise any favors.
They don't need to be big or hi-def for that.Similar threads
