I believe, I choose to believe.
Rumor: TNG-HD is a-coming
- Thread starter MrPointy
- Start date
I have all of Star Trek on DVD. I'm not ponying up again unless some sets are destroyed or something. That wasn't a small investment, even if I did get a lot of sets used. At 51 and looking at perhaps another period of extended unemployment, not even a blip on my radar, LOL!
I won't believe it until wither CBS or someone actually working on the project come forward and say its happening.
Not this viewer. Besides, if I just want to watch TNG in SD I already have the DVDs, so Paramount isn't going to make any more money off of me unless that add some value to a new product.
I have Casablanca, The Day the Earth Stood Still, King Kong, The Maltese Falcon, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on Blu-ray. They're all B&W movies, and they all look much better on Blu-ray than DVD on a decent sized television. Even on my 25" computer monitor they look much better than on DVD.
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I'm with you, BillJ. But as Dr. Phlox might say... "optimism"!
I won't believe it until wither CBS or someone actually working on the project come forward and say its happening.
If they do it, it will most likely just be HD, not widescreen. There's no reason to screw up the picture.
^ TOS-R was not widescreen, so TNG-R probably will also not be.
Then again, the "Menage a Troi" footage that found its way into ENT's final episode was widescreen. How did they manage that? AFAIK, it wasn't cropped.
Then again, the "Menage a Troi" footage that found its way into ENT's final episode was widescreen. How did they manage that? AFAIK, it wasn't cropped.
Mildly cropped, mildly stretched side-to-side and had the framing mildly widened (i.e. they used some elements on either side of the frame that were cropped for the original broadcast). There's an analysis here. It looks okay for those shots, as long as you don't compare them to the original, but I wouldn't want to see that done to every frame of footage in the series.
Original footage has a safe action area with an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, its televised at 1.33:1. They used that, then stretched it by 5.8%. Top and bottom was cropped.
RAMA
I'm fairly certain it IS being worked on right now, but I am also fairly certain this poster doesn't know anything about it.
If they screw this up with widescreen, my enthusiasm for this project goes from 110% to 0%. Widescreen does not magically make shows better, especially when it was not shot for that aspect ratio.
If people want to watch it in "widescreen" they can hit the crop button on their remote, instead of chopping off part of the picture permanently.
My enthusiasm would go from 20% to 80% if it is a well done widescreen conversion.
If it can be done well, it will be at the hands of professionals and not your television. The part of the picture that gets cropped is unlikely to have anything more interesting going on than the additional image on the sides has.
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Sure, they may be able to do it without damaging it too much overall, but then there's also the possibility of cutting off parts off people's heads in close up, gaining crap on the sides that was never meant to be seen or was never spotted when filming for TV, and changing the intended framing of shots, but for what? So you don't have to see black bars on your TV?
It was filmed in 4:3, so that's how it is going to look artistically best. If was never framed with widescreen in mind, so it's always going to be a compromise. It's just a matter of how much it's compromised.
Even watch the few seconds in TATV (or look at the pic earlier). Half of the guy's head is chopped off, and people are crammed claustrophically into frame. The rest of the shot may be 80-90% fine, but why compromise 10-20% of the framing of the shot at all when you don't have to?
I don't mind them redoing space shots with CG, or adding entirely new effects, because these can be done from scratch, so no compromise has to be made to convert the show to HD, and I'm not too much of a purist overall, so no worry there, but over 178 episodes, there are going to be compromises if they crop the show to widescreen. And if the show has to be compromised 10% to do it, then I see no point to do it at all.
Now I know how people feel with TOS-R.
Here in the UK, CBS Action are currently screening TOS-R in 16:9 format. People, please trust me on this - it's friggin' horrible! Yes, it has been "intelligently" cropped so heads aren't cut off etc., and to be fair, a few shots actually work really well. But, overall, it feels extremely claustrophobic and destroys the superb work of the original cinematographers.
If TNG-R is similarly cropped for Blu-ray - I'm out.
If TNG-R is similarly cropped for Blu-ray - I'm out.
Ouch!!!
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