Even watching over yellow composite most people thought DVD offered a better quality. But most people had their VCR's hooked up by RF as well, not yellow composite. Of course the best way to watch VHS was through S-Video. But streaming will never match DVD's quality when you are dealing with 480i. Most SD shows on streaming sites, including DS9 & Voyager, have the resolution of an NES---240p. This is due to half the fields being removed and the remaining ones being duplicated. But I was just watching the Season 1 set of DS9 on my PS3 recently, and even in 480i, I couldn't get over how soft and washed out the show looked. It was almost like the cameraman took some pantyhose and has shooting through it.
That's all going to depend on your streaming source. There are plenty of good, high-definition streams that are definitely far better than DVD, but not as good as Blu-ray (in most cases). It's just math: average Blu-ray bitrate is around 28Mbps. While there are a lot of people who have data connections that meet or exceed that speed, maintaining that data rate consistently for over an hour can still be difficult or expensive in many situations. You'll find that HD streams are typically more like 6Mbps. Obviously, you're going to have to sacrifice some quality by dropping the bitrate that much. Still, it's good enough for most situations today, and if the stream you're looking at is obviously "soft and washed out" compared to standard DVD, then there's clearly something not right about your set-up.
I don't think the whole "Blu-ray sells fewer copies than DVD" thing is true anyway. It all depends on individual films. For instance, Sully sold 300,000 on DVD and only 193,000 on Blu. But Doctor Strange sold 374,000 on DVD and 999,000 on Blu. Arrival - 282,000 DVD, 408,000 Blu Hacksaw Ridge - 477,000 DVD, 454,000 Blu Sing - 443,000 DVD, 1,000,000 Blu et cetera. http://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2017 http://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/bluray-sales/2017
I assume they mean "Blu-ray at its peak sells fewer copies than DVD did at its peak" meaning fewer people are buying discs now (regardless of format) than they were 10 years ago.
What I don't understand though is I would think their would be strong interest in HD stuff for sci-fi stuff like DS9. I would understand if your talking about something like Seinfeld or Law and Order that doesn't have special effects and frankly the look of those kind of shows don't really mean all that much. Maybe I am underestimating how many nerds are in the world. I thought nerd culture had became mainstream culture in this day and age. Jason
It has in a broader sense, but DS9 fandom (as in the portion of it that is still a thing in 2017) is a very small niche in the grand scheme of things
It's not just math, it's also the master and transfer process that's used. Most SD stuff that's streamed was sourced from interlaced MPEG-2 files, or whatever file format the studio captured it in years ago for DVD, and they've just used software to deinterlace the 480i image rather than grabbing the videotape masters and running them through a hardware deinterlacer that would give a much higher quality 480p. But with 6 Mbps for HD that is also way below Broadcast HD which, depending on the station is usually in the 10-12 Mbps range (after going through your cable/satellite company's decompression), with sports networks (like TSN, Sportsnet) pushing 14-16. I've downloaded shows on my PS3 (such as Mythbusters) in HD, and the SD version was included as a bonus. Quite frankly the HD versions looked as good as an upscaled DVD on my PS3 (and this is watching over HDMI). Meanwhile the SD version looked about as good as a VHS recorded in SP. by comparison broadcast SD looks like S-VHS in SP. And on streaming/download sites, DS9 & Voyager look like VHS in SLP!
Plus, it's the high amount of effort/cost required to get DS9 (and VOY) into HD. If it were just a matter of just scanning old film in HD I'm sure it would be done by now, but we know it would be similar to the effort expended on TNG, only with even more CGI work. Maybe as time passes the economics will change (cheaper to do the work and/or more demand for the results) and it will become easier to justify financially. I only hope the source materials don't deteriorate or get lost between now and then.
I agree with everything you've said, I've just never seen streaming media in that bad of shape unless it was being delivered over a very low bandwidth connection (like to a mobile phone). I can tell you I've seen HD streams of about 6~7 Mbps that looked very good - certainly far better than DVD. It's only with direct comparison to Blu-ray (or during difficult to compress scenes, like those involving rain) that the lower quality was obvious.
I got a question. What do people think about Amazon Prime's streaming? I think it looks good but I don't have my dvd's anymore to compare them. If I did get some of these newly released DS9 dvd's do you think it would be a improvement over Amazon Prime? I feel certain it would be over what you get from Hulu or Netflix but not sure about Amazon Prime. Also all the Trek stuff looks good, especially TNG which they might be using the updated look from the blu rays for all I know. Jason
From what I've seen, streaming from any of the major vendors will be as good as the source DVD (assuming DVD sources are the best available material). You'll miss out on all the extras, of course - I don't think those are available to stream. Also, I should add that I haven't seen Trek specifically streamed - I'm talking general experience with other shows available on DVD. Blu-ray will look better than currently-available streams, but usually only in direct comparison (or if you're more critical to visual details than I am, but I'm more so than most people I know). Also - last I checked, Amazon had the worst streams (in terms of picture quality) when comparing the same material against iTunes and Vudu. Vudu had the best. So if you want streaming but still care about the best available quality, I'd check out other options besides Amazon. Of course, Amazon has the advantage in that so many people already pay for Amazon Prime.
DVD is better than streaming, in general, and I think it's definitely true for Trek. I've posted this review in a couple places but it bears worth repeating here. There's a problem with something called "deinterlacing" which negatively affects the video quality of the Trek shows on streaming. This review of the VOY DVD goes into this problem and why you should invest in the DVDs. I'm watching DS9 on DVD, sometimes on Netflix, and it's always better on DVD.
The deinterlacing on DS9/VOY must've been handled really poorly for people to bring it up as a problem. It's certainly something than *can* be done transparently with a little effort. That said, this wouldn't be the first time it has been done poorly with specific titles.
The DS9/VOY deinterlacing is pretty bad across all the streaming sites. The DVD's are marginally better. Though they would be well served to recapture the shows without the interlacing before they go and sell them yet again. It is the least CBS could do.
Yeah apparently they just didn't process it properly? Which irritates me because this isn't some obscure show. It's Star Trek for god's sake. You'd think they'd give a shit about video quality with this franchise.
Yeah, it's painful when media owners handle anything poorly like this, but even more so with Trek. You'd think Paramount/Viacom/CBS/MaxiMegaConglomCo would have a little pride in owning one of the few television/film series with as much worldwide cultural reach and importance.
The DVD's are going to be superior, as they will not be deinterlaced. Of course a major problem with DS9 and Voyager is that in the 90's the film elements were transferred to NTSC video using the 3:2 pull down method. So when you do a deinterlace some frames are going to have blended half-frames during cuts and dissolves. And in PAL regions DS9 and Voy will be derived from NTSC. But with TNG, CBS has all but deleted the old masters. iTunes currently has SD's made from the HD masters, and there's no way to download the old versions. Also I very rarely stream, unless I'm watching like a 2 minute promo video. Otherwise I download, because I know that I can watch the video at its best, without a slow down in speed.
"Nerd culture" (or more accurately, fake nerds) only applies to safe, mainstream franchises such as Star Wars and whatever latest superhero flicks. Star Trek doesn't get to be included. It's too boring and preachy.