As if I needed another reason to move to Canada.
DS9 on blu ray?
- Thread starter borgboy
- Start date
As if I needed another reason to move to Canada.
With them saying the TNG blu ray was disappointing, I can't see this happening. The process is really difficult and wouldn't they basically have to recut the episodes again while cleaning them up?
The fact is that the price point on these blu rays to make them worth converting is huge, people did buy the TNG blu rays when they dropped in price but the fact is that with Netflix and other streaming services, we can get all of Star Trek for a few dollars a month. Hell, I can watch TNG HD on SyFy in the UK and I think Amazon Prime or even Netflix has it.
The fact is that the price point on these blu rays to make them worth converting is huge, people did buy the TNG blu rays when they dropped in price but the fact is that with Netflix and other streaming services, we can get all of Star Trek for a few dollars a month. Hell, I can watch TNG HD on SyFy in the UK and I think Amazon Prime or even Netflix has it.
I'm not buying the DVDs. If I had to take a wild guess at what could possibly be used to gauge support for a remastering, it would be sales of the blu rays, plus support for Ira Steven Behr's documentary. CBS has nothing to do with What We Left Behind, but Behr raised the entire total goal in one day. With that speed, maybe they really could do a crowdfunding to raise the estimated $20 million for the project, or at least a chunk of it.
In any case, over the past few years, I've bought the TOS blu rays, ENT blu rays, the blu rays for the first ten movies, the Complete Journey TNG blu rays, and all the two-parter TNG blu rays, as well as donated for the Freedom Fighter perk for the DS9 documentary. I think I've done my part for now, as I don't plan on buying the TAS blu rays (I already have the DVDs and the blu rays don't look like a significant improvement on picture quality or special features), and I'm waiting for the Kelvin movies to finish before buying those on blu ray. But I might do more in the future.
In any case, over the past few years, I've bought the TOS blu rays, ENT blu rays, the blu rays for the first ten movies, the Complete Journey TNG blu rays, and all the two-parter TNG blu rays, as well as donated for the Freedom Fighter perk for the DS9 documentary. I think I've done my part for now, as I don't plan on buying the TAS blu rays (I already have the DVDs and the blu rays don't look like a significant improvement on picture quality or special features), and I'm waiting for the Kelvin movies to finish before buying those on blu ray. But I might do more in the future.
I keep fantasising that someone will develop a better interpolation algorithm for upscaling SD to HD that will produce a result that is of sufficient quality to allow conversion on the cheap. Perhaps a technique based on maximum entropy image processing would do the trick?
Just order from the Canadian Amazon site, that's all.
That's not an excuse or a reason to have fans doing this job or raising money through crowdfunding. The reality of the situation is that CBS Studios is a business, not a charity, and won't just do the same thing for DS9 that was done for TNG as far as Blu-Ray is concerned unless people show some coin for the other show that was remastered.
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Which considering they did absolutely nothing to remaster it other than upscale it, says something. They did the cheapest, fastest, mininal work possible to have a short 2 season series ready to go on bluray, and didn't think it would bring in more money than it took to clean it.
DS9 needs a small army of people to sift through hundreds of hours of film, work on a length remastering process while another spends hundreds of hours taking old scene files and models and recompositing them as HD scenes. Taking the two and have a third group process that into the over 170 episodes, each in turn, scene by scene, into a final master.
Then the post production proofing and mastering, then an output into the final 1920x1080 files for digital and physical release. Which for the bluray needs yet more departments for the manufacture, pressing, marketing, shipping, packaging, retail contracts, shipping again. The digital platforms need separate IP DRM's, contracts, legal departments.
You get the idea.
Yes, as a complete pass, the whole thing cleaned and processed. That takes so much less effort than the greater amount of separtate elements of a live action TV series.
Looks like we might get some HD DS9 footage as part of Ira's documentary, based on some comments on the Indiegogo fundraising page!
I saw some of those comments! Hope they are able to do it. Obviously they have some insiders working on this, so who knows. It's exciting to see what happens with that project in general and where it may lead!
It was scanned at 1080p, albeit several years ago. It was NOT upscaled.
That said, since they used pre-existing masters and old bonus material, it's clear the project was done relatively inexpensively.
Even Emissary remastered for its 25th Anniversary would be great at this stage.
Yeah, I would love that, too. Maybe even something like the “Next Level” blu-ray that came out as a taste of the TNG-R project. “Emissary” and one or two key episodes from the series remastered for a one-off release. Surely that must be in the realm of feasibility.
As time goes by, I imagine the cost of conversion has been falling due to automation and computer advancements while the cost of labour has been increasing and the film and other assets have been deteriorating. At some point, presumably, therefore there must be either a minimum or at least a point of inflection in the cost of conversion although I'm not sure when that might occur. I'm sure some bean counter must have worked this out. Let's assume $20 million total for conversion -- how long would it take the studio to make a profit based on Blu-ray sales and licensing deals? I'm guessing they've worked out that they'll never regain that expenditure based on their experience with TNG, which was a more popular series. Perhaps complete automation in 30 years time drops the cost to next to nothing, who knows? By then, I won't care.
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