Lost generation of TV shows?

[JoeZhang]

This is a spin-off from another part of the forum - I mentioned elsewhere I find Babylon 5 unwatchable because a 480p image on a 4K UHD TV looks terrible. There is an awful lot of content that exists only like this.

Are some shows going to disappear quicker than others simply because audiences coming to it later find them unwatchable?

 

[Christopher]

Are some shows going to disappear quicker than others simply because audiences coming to it later find them unwatchable?

There are a lot of people who refuse to watch black and white TV or movies. There are others who love them and keep interest in them alive. There is no single universal reaction to anything.

 

[Jayson1]

I think about this as well. Granted some shows don't always go away just because of visuals. It's hard for me to have much interest in watching half of the garbage I used to watch as a kid in the 80's. or even stuff on the 90's. Somehow I don't think "Growing Pains" and "Coach" were ever meant to last through decadeseven if they made it to 4k, though I know half of the stuff I call "garbage" is someone's else cult show or a show they still like because of nostiga. "Weird Science" the tv show and "Sliders" would be a couple of shows like that for me. I got to think at some point people not connected to the studio might find away to preserve them or old tv's will be made just for the sake of people watching them on it. I got to think selling retro-tech might become a good source of income in the future.
Also in the end the sheer bulk of modern day shows forgotten I think will really be shocking. With the number of shows created today you could have hundreds and hundreds of current era shows that people not only forget but didn't even know existed that is lost. If you go look at old tv lineups chances are you watched almost every show listed at least once and some you didn't but recall them being on tv. On the other hand I don't think I could tell you more than one show on NBC rightnow and that one is "All of Us" and i'm not even sure if that is a NBC show. Their is those Chicago Dick Wolf shows that have been on for the last 10 or 5 years or they have ended a few years ago. You could tell me a lie using all those example and would make sense to me.

Jason

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

There are a lot of people who refuse to watch black and white TV or movies. There are others who love them and keep interest in them alive. There is no single universal reaction to anything.

I'm in the second group on the B&W stuff. I only own the remastered Three Stooges B&W sets, I never had any interest in the colorized versions. Though being on film, the remasters are as clean as can be, so the quality of the material isn't in question here.

As far as movies & TV, I'd probably be turned off if the image quality was poor, but it'd have to be really poor.

 

[USS Firefly]

What about Third Watch?
13 years after the season finale, the serie is still not complete on dvd/bluray.

 

[BillJ]

There are a lot of people who refuse to watch black and white TV or movies. There are others who love them and keep interest in them alive. There is no single universal reaction to anything.

I think there is a difference between black and white and poor image quality.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I have no problem with black and white, but poor video quality drives me crazy. I haven't upgraded to 4K, but I unless there's a huge price difference, I will usually pick Blu-Ray, and HD streaming, over DVDs, or standard definition streaming.
A while back I tried to watch an episode of After M*A*S*H*, just out of morbid curiosity, but I gave up after about 30 second because it looked like it had probably come off of someones 20 year old VHS tape.
Same goes for the first Gilligan's Island movie, I found it on Amazon's streaming video service, but I didn't bother getting it once I saw it had a ton of reviews complaining about the bad video quality.

On the other hand I don't think I could tell you more than one show on NBC rightnow and that one is "All of Us" and i'm not even sure if that is a NBC show. Their is those Chicago Dick Wolf shows that have been on for the last 10 or 5 years or they have ended a few years ago. You could tell me a lie using all those example and would make sense to me.

Jason

I think you must be thinking of This is Us, there isn't a show called All of Us on NBC, unless you're not talking about the US NBC.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think in the long run, cultural specificity is going to be a bigger deal than dated visual effects. Shows that are so a product of their era that none of the characters' problems relate to anyone in any future era, which I think is a big problem with most sitcoms.

There's always going to be some people who only watch the stuff being marketed to them at the time, and won't watch anything else cause it's different, cause it's harder, cause it wasn't written with them in mind, for a lot of reasons. But those that do decide to explore and find out what else is out there besides what's marketed to them I think will find stuff like B5, and other shows that are well written and character driven enough not to be based on any one specific culture.

 

[Jayson1]

Yeah, I have no problem with black and white, but poor video quality drives me crazy. I haven't upgraded to 4K, but I unless there's a huge price difference, I will usually pick Blu-Ray, and HD streaming, over DVDs, or standard definition streaming.
A while back I tried to watch an episode of After M*A*S*H*, just out of morbid curiosity, but I gave up after about 30 second because it looked like it had probably come off of someones 20 year old VHS tape.
Same goes for the first Gilligan's Island movie, I found it on Amazon's streaming video service, but I didn't bother getting it once I saw it had a ton of reviews complaining about the bad video quality.

I think you must be thinking of This is Us, there isn't a show called All of Us on NBC, unless you're not talking about the US NBC.

That might be it. Is that the one that makes everyone cry all the time? That can't be true. If people want to cry all the time they need to watch Ricky Gervais on "Derek." I think I cried literally after ever episode.

Jason

 

[Jayson1]

I think in the long run, cultural specificity is going to be a bigger deal than dated visual effects. Shows that are so a product of their era that none of the characters' problems relate to anyone in any future era, which I think is a big problem with most sitcoms.

There's always going to be some people who only watch the stuff being marketed to them at the time, and won't watch anything else cause it's different, cause it's harder, cause it wasn't written with them in mind, for a lot of reasons. But those that do decide to explore and find out what else is out there besides what's marketed to them I think will find stuff like B5, and other shows that are well written and character driven enough not to be based on any one specific culture.

That's how I feel but it's even a bigger issue with movies. You basically have to search things out and find things that are new and interesting. I've noticed also that I tend to be won over more by a favorite character actor in a movie than a big name star or franchise label. For example I saw this upcoming movie trailer with Micheal Shannon in clown paint that looks really interesting and dark. Then you look at the photo of the new "Terminator" movie and it looks like it could have been a photo of the last movie they made which was a low for the franchise.

Jason

 

[Christopher]

I think in the long run, cultural specificity is going to be a bigger deal than dated visual effects. Shows that are so a product of their era that none of the characters' problems relate to anyone in any future era, which I think is a big problem with most sitcoms.

There's always going to be some people who only watch the stuff being marketed to them at the time, and won't watch anything else cause it's different, cause it's harder, cause it wasn't written with them in mind, for a lot of reasons. But those that do decide to explore and find out what else is out there besides what's marketed to them I think will find stuff like B5, and other shows that are well written and character driven enough not to be based on any one specific culture.

Heck, I like watching things that are made for a different culture, since it's a learning experience. For instance, I like the glimpses into Japanese culture that I get from watching tokusatsu, anime, kaiju movies, and the like. And watching vintage movies and learning about past culture can be interesting too.

 

[Jayson1]

Heck, I like watching things that are made for a different culture, since it's a learning experience. For instance, I like the glimpses into Japanese culture that I get from watching tokusatsu, anime, kaiju movies, and the like. And watching vintage movies and learning about past culture can be interesting too.

I also enjoy doing that. When I watch "TOS" for example I feel like I understand what the 60's were like. When I watch a British show I feel like I understand that culture a little better and so forth.

Jason

 

[JD]

That might be it. Is that the one that makes everyone cry all the time?

Probably, I haven't watched it yet but I now it's supposed to be really, really good.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Heck, I like watching things that are made for a different culture, since it's a learning experience. For instance, I like the glimpses into Japanese culture that I get from watching tokusatsu, anime, kaiju movies, and the like. And watching vintage movies and learning about past culture can be interesting too.

I would draw a difference between things that were made for another culture, and things that were made for the pop culture of a time. Because pop culture is never real culture, it's inherently artificial and based on the superficial aspects of what people consider 'Normal'.

Like, there's a big difference between watching Sansho the Baliff or The Human Condition and learning about Japanese history, and watching Full House and seeing what people used to think was 'The BIG NORMAL to compare our lives against'.

What a culture was really like, versus what audiences of the time idealized it was supposed to be like.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

This is a spin-off from another part of the forum - I mentioned elsewhere I find Babylon 5 unwatchable because a 480p image on a 4K UHD TV looks terrible. There is an awful lot of content that exists only like this.

Are some shows going to disappear quicker than others simply because audiences coming to it later find them unwatchable?

I think this is a subjective thing as I have a 55" 4K set in a tight viewing area and I watch 480 stuff all the time if it's all that's available. A *good* 480 recording still holds up pretty well still, I have some soft older DVDs or sometimes the rerun channels show something that hasn't been cleaned up and it looks pretty bad but newer DVDs and recordings still seem decent to me. Shows like Chips on Amazon Prime, or Magnum PI and A-Team on Starz are quite watchable today.

I watched an episode of B5 on Amazon Prime and it's not great but if one was interested in the show they could deal with it.

I think that's the bigger issue, there's a lot of material out there today, I don't know that a young person today is going to be interested in most of the stuff that was made before their time. I think that's more of a problem than image quality, I doubt there's a bunch of teens wanting to try out Babylon 5 and they just can't stand to watch them on their fancy TVs. Do they even use TVs? Seems my niece and nephew watch everything on phones and tablets where it seems it would be less of a problem.

Watching B5, I was more struck by the FX and the whole shot-on-video aesthetic of the thing. Programs just don't look like that these days. I know the FX were hampered by budget even in the day but the use of flares and moires and stuff were just as dated as the primitiveness of it. I'm not trying to knock the show, it is what it is but I just think even if it was in 1080p the appetite and audience for it wouldn't change much.


All that said, I can't stand watching Futurama on Syfy when they show it in the wrong aspect ratio. Like I say, subjective...

 

[Christopher]

Watching B5, I was more struck by the FX and the whole shot-on-video aesthetic of the thing.

As I recall, it was shot on film. It didn't have the videotaped look of a sitcom or the studio scenes in Doctor Who. Although it's possible you're seeing a version that's been processed with motion-smoothing or something to make it look like video, like Syfy's Twilight Zone reruns.

I know the FX were hampered by budget even in the day but the use of flares and moires and stuff were just as dated as the primitiveness of it.

People today don't appreciate how revolutionary B5's effects were. The "Video Toaster" software used to make them was a revolution in low-budget CGI and editing, making it possible to do effects on a TV budget that would've only been possible in big-budget features before. They weren't very lifelike, no, but that was the tradeoff for a major advance in the versatility of visual effects. You could do many, many more FX shots per episode, you could do much longer, more elaborate shots with fewer cuts and freer, faster camera movement, etc. The diminished quality compared to traditional optical effects was more than made up for by the vast increase in the quantity and variety of FX shots that could now be created. It was that breakthrough in low-budget CGI that permitted the explosion of SF/fantasy TV in the '90s and early '00s by making genre TV far more affordable and more versatile in what it could show. And it was B5 that pioneered it and showed that it could work.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

As I recall, it was shot on film. It didn't have the videotaped look of a sitcom or the studio scenes in Doctor Who. Although it's possible you're seeing a version that's been processed with motion-smoothing or something to make it look like video, like Syfy's Twilight Zone reruns.

It's more the completely uniform bright lighting, the camera tracking, the way everyone stays centered close-up in frame, etc.

 

[The Lensman]

As I recall, it was shot on film. It didn't have the videotaped look of a sitcom or the studio scenes in Doctor Who. Although it's possible you're seeing a version that's been processed with motion-smoothing or something to make it look like video, like Syfy's Twilight Zone reruns.




People today don't appreciate how revolutionary B5's effects were. The "Video Toaster" software used to make them was a revolution in low-budget CGI and editing, making it possible to do effects on a TV budget that would've only been possible in big-budget features before. They weren't very lifelike, no, but that was the tradeoff for a major advance in the versatility of visual effects. You could do many, many more FX shots per episode, you could do much longer, more elaborate shots with fewer cuts and freer, faster camera movement, etc. The diminished quality compared to traditional optical effects was more than made up for by the vast increase in the quantity and variety of FX shots that could now be created. It was that breakthrough in low-budget CGI that permitted the explosion of SF/fantasy TV in the '90s and early '00s by making genre TV far more affordable and more versatile in what it could show. And it was B5 that pioneered it and showed that it could work.

I remember being impressed with B5's FX when the show premiered. Yes, they were clearly CGI, but those FX were more dynamic and energetic than ANYTHING done by Trek before or after B5 premiered. Trek's FX were somewhat more "real" looking, but they were slow and stodgy by comparison. See the climax of "Yesterday's Enterprise". They should've enhanced that sequence when they went to Blu-Ray.