The quality of DS9 DVD:s again and how angry I am now!

I have my unprofessionally achieved solution to my displeasure with the DVD quality and as I'm happy with it I'll now shut up.

 

When people are willing to pay for my upgrade cool.

 

I consider DVD to be an obsolete format at this point. The only reason I buy anything on DVD nowadays is if it is not available on blu-ray, and it won't be available on blu-ray any time soon. Unfortunately that's how it looks for DS9 and VOY.

Kor

 

I love obsolete formats

 

I’ve been thinking of starting a petition to get official S-VHS releases of DS9 & Voyager!

 

I'd buy that. I might even watch Voyager!

 

There are things I like about VHS. If I want to fast forward the 5 splash screens at the beginning, I can. If I stop playing the tape in the middle, it starts again right where it was, instead of forcing me to watch 5 splash screens again and figure out where I was from the scene navigation.

 

Most DVD players will automatically start where you left off when you last powered the player down.

Kor

 

That is if you use the same DVD player. If you move the disc to another player, like going from one in the living room to one in a bedroom, then the bedroom one will start from the beginning of the disc, whereas VHS you could go from one VCR to another without losing your spot.

 

Both my DVD players are fussy about this. One will indeed start where I left off - but only if I remembered to press "pause" before pressing "off".

 

The annoying things is that Blu-ray allows for quite intelligent "last time played" control, but most companies refuse to take advantage of it. I can put Aliens in right now and it will still remember where I left it six months ago, but then others won't even resume just from being turned off and then on again with the disc still in place.

 

I don't see why it has to be up to the disc. Can't the player seek where it was last?

 

One of the benefits of streaming is that you can easily switch between devices almost seamlessly.

 

It's one of the weird quirks of the blu-ray format vs. DVD, that much of the time the blu-ray disc itself has to allow saving your place... something with how the disc navigation is authored/programmed for each movie. In many cases, each title has its own built-in playback software in javascript, that the blu-ray player interacts with. A related feature is that some blu-ray discs allow you to save bookmarks, and some don't. I'm not sure how the resume feature works with non-java blu-ray discs. In that case it might depend on the capabilities of the player.

As I recall, none of the James Bond movies on blu-ray will save your place when you turn off the player. It's rather annoying.

Kor

 

I have a first generation set of DS9 (and Voyager DVD's), that is the first boxed set of the season DVD's that Paramount released before the CBS split. Knock on wood I haven't had any problems with those.

About 10-15 years ago I only had 2 or 3 of the seasons of DS9, this is when it was still about $75 to $100/season, so I couldn't buy them all at once (still cheaper than when you had to buy individual episodes on VHS). And I saw somewhere, I think EBay, that you could buy the entire series for about $100. That should have tipped me off right there. But foolishly I thought I was getting a good deal. As some have noted about their issues, they were utter crap. They played horribly. And I took a closer look at the box and noticed some things were off. First of all there were mistakes in the typing. Some capitalization errors. And it said distributed by 20th Century Fox--um, it should have said Paramount. I believe what I got was a bootlegged copy of the series, someone copied the officially released DVD's.

Thankfully I reported it to Ebay, got my money back and went back to just buying them in the official seasonal box sets by Paramount. Those I have no issues with.

I can't speak to the CBS releases that have since come out. Not sure if they are the same quality or not. I do wish they'd release DS9 on Blu-Ray though. While DS9 isn't as bad on DVD as TNG was (TNG really needed the upgrade IMO), it'd still be nicer to have a crisp copy of DS9. Voyager is a bit better in quality on DVD. And DS9 did seem to get better as the seasons went on. Perhaps they used better recording technology as the years passed, I don't know.

 

The CBS releases just reused the 2003/04 glass masters for the DVD’s. Aside from the box art, they are the same. So they use the same transfers that CBS used for streaming that Paramount made.

I have the first Gen NTSC DS9 & Voyager DVD’s, and the only major manufacturing problems I’ve come across are the DS9 plastic cases breaking, and then my Disc 7 of Voyager’s season 7 has disc rot, so “Endgame” is constantly freezing. But I’ve got “Endgame” on the STFC “Time Travel” collection.

 

Yeah, I have that problem with my DS9 cases too. The plastic seems a bit too thin and they come apart, and they basically fold over twice compounding the problem. I could see that being a problem with the Voyager ones too since it's similar plastic, but since it's just a single fold over I haven't yet had any come apart on me yet. And I'm pretty obsessive about my DVDs, Blu Rays and CDs. I'm the type that has to keep them in order and the discs are always kept in their cases.

 

The DS9 cases were even breaking back in 2003. They should’ve stuck with the TNG style case.

 

Anyone know how DS9 looks on iTunes? And how it compares to DVD and Netflix/streaming?
I have an Apple Tv and may splurge to get it if its better than Netflix quality. Have the DVDs but wouldn't mind a digital back up and the convenience that comes with it.