The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

[davejames]

I personally don't care, except for the fact that I own a Plasma, so I have to keep in mind always to no try and burn out my middle pixels while the pixels in my black bars go unused, so I will alternate between stretching 4:3 to 16:9 on occasion. You actually get used to it after 5 mins watching something and don't notice it anymore.

Yeah I have a plasma too, but from everything I've read the burning issue is much less of a concern with the newer TVs, and only has to be guarded against early on (and by the time you do notice any difference with fading pixels, you'll have most likely moved onto a new TV anyway).

Personally I don't really mind the old 4:3 format. It feels a bit less dynamic on my widescreen, but it's just something you have to live with I guess.

 

[Start Wreck]

Anything that is not supposed to be in the image (mic booms, cables, etc) could be CGI'd out.

Just like that! Just hit the magic "CGI this out" button on the computer and "poof!" it's gone.

 

[NewHorizon]

Anything that is not supposed to be in the image (mic booms, cables, etc) could be CGI'd out.

Just like that! Just hit the magic "CGI this out" button on the computer and "poof!" it's gone.

Yeah, really though. I don't think people realize that it isn't a quick process. That stuff would have to be carefully painted out frame by frame. Even if a mic, crew member, or some other piece of equipment only appeared in 50% of the expanded footage...that would be 3 1/2 years worth of the show to hand edit.

Even the extremely tiny amount CBS increased the framing by in Encounter at Farpoint revealed a light stand in the holodeck scene with Data that wasn't visible in the original broadcast. It's just not realistic to expect CBS to 'CGI' everything out. Imagine a 2 minute scene where some equipment is visible for the full 2 minutes. At 24 frames per second that's over 2000 frames that would need to be hand painted to remove the equipment. That's for a single 2 minute scene. Even if there was as little as 10% of an episode that require work, it would be an incredible amount of work.

 

[Admiral Bear]

When I said that my BR rip of Farpoint looked terrible in 4:3, I should've have made clear that the picture looked tiny, and the wide angle distance shots on the Bridge made the cast look like Lilliputians. There was nothing wrong with the picture quality. . that I could actually see.

In this instance, I don't see what's wrong with downloading a rip of the disc. It's a tester. If you like what you see, you'll likely buy the BR sets at huge expense. If you don't, you won't.

Why pay twice for 3 episodes?

To my mind, if CBS thought they'd make enough money out of the TNG Blu-ray sets to make the whole exercise worthwhile, they should've given the Next Level disc away free as a goodwill gesture. It's not as if Trek fans haven't been milked enough times already. I paid £60 for each season on DVD 10 years ago.

Ah, yes! But I got a £5 off season 1 voucher with the Next Level disc, I hear you all cry. Yup, a voucher you won't be able to redeem online, so you'll have to find somewhere on the high street that actually sells the set (no mean feat in the UK) and pay at least a 30% higher price.

 

[NewHorizon]

Why pay twice for 3 episodes?

To help fund the project? To give them an indication as to whether or not there is even interest in TNG:HD? Probably more good reasons, but those two are top on my list.

 

[StewMc]

Ah, yes! But I got a £5 off season 1 voucher with the Next Level disc, I hear you all cry. Yup, a voucher you won't be able to redeem online, so you'll have to find somewhere on the high street that actually sells the set (no mean feat in the UK) and pay at least a 30% higher price.

It's a mail-in voucher, you send off the proof of purchase and they send you a cheque for £5, I don't see how online shops will be excluded?

 

[LitmusDragon]

I personally don't care, except for the fact that I own a Plasma, so I have to keep in mind always to no try and burn out my middle pixels while the pixels in my black bars go unused, so I will alternate between stretching 4:3 to 16:9 on occasion. You actually get used to it after 5 mins watching something and don't notice it anymore.

I have a Plasma too, does yours have an option for the grey bars instead of black? On mine you can access it by pressing the "Aspect" button a few times. Grey bars for 4:3 is just as good as 16:9 stretch and doesn't distort the image.

I also have a home theater PC and have it set up in such a way that any 4:3 content I play automatically adds grey bars through the PC, but probably most people don't have that kind of setup.

 

[mswood]

GalaxyX

Clearly the digital file you looked at was an altered rip. the full rip which was and is out there over 20 gigs

 

[Jefferies]

When I said that my BR rip of Farpoint looked terrible in 4:3, I should've have made clear that the picture looked tiny, and the wide angle distance shots on the Bridge made the cast look like Lilliputians. There was nothing wrong with the picture quality. . that I could actually see.

In this instance, I don't see what's wrong with downloading a rip of the disc. It's a tester. If you like what you see, you'll likely buy the BR sets at huge expense. If you don't, you won't.

Why pay twice for 3 episodes?

To my mind, if CBS thought they'd make enough money out of the TNG Blu-ray sets to make the whole exercise worthwhile, they should've given the Next Level disc away free as a goodwill gesture. It's not as if Trek fans haven't been milked enough times already. I paid £60 for each season on DVD 10 years ago.

Ah, yes! But I got a £5 off season 1 voucher with the Next Level disc, I hear you all cry. Yup, a voucher you won't be able to redeem online, so you'll have to find somewhere on the high street that actually sells the set (no mean feat in the UK) and pay at least a 30% higher price.

Wow, just wow at your attitude. Anyways discussing illegal copies is against the rules of this board so go somewhere else please.

 

[Dac]

Ah, yes! But I got a £5 off season 1 voucher with the Next Level disc, I hear you all cry. Yup, a voucher you won't be able to redeem online, so you'll have to find somewhere on the high street that actually sells the set (no mean feat in the UK) and pay at least a 30% higher price.

It's a mail-in voucher, you send off the proof of purchase and they send you a cheque for £5, I don't see how online shops will be excluded?

They're not. It said on the plastic wrapping "redeemable from high street and online retailer purchases", or words to that effect.

 

[sojourner]

Why pay twice for 3 episodes?

To help fund the project? To give them an indication as to whether or not there is even interest in TNG:HD? Probably more good reasons, but those two are top on my list.

Those are good reasons to sell it, not to buy it.

 

[NewHorizon]

Those are good reasons to sell it, not to buy it.

Well that's clearly the obvious angle, but as a fan who cares about the project, likes how they're handling it and would like to encourage them to continue...I want to help fund what has been invested in thus far. I also want to speak with my wallet to let them know I am interested.

They are not mutually exclusive concepts.

 

[GalaxyX]

Yeah, really though. I don't think people realize that it isn't a quick process. That stuff would have to be carefully painted out frame by frame. Even if a mic, crew member, or some other piece of equipment only appeared in 50% of the expanded footage...that would be 3 1/2 years worth of the show to hand edit.

I know it's not an easy task. I have a good background in Photoshop editing, so I understand the basics. I guess I keep forgetting that TNG-R is a budget production, and doesn't have LucasFilm™ unlimited funds.

I have a Plasma too, does yours have an option for the grey bars instead of black? On mine you can access it by pressing the "Aspect" button a few times. Grey bars for 4:3 is just as good as 16:9 stretch and doesn't distort the image.

I have the grey bars, but I have to manually switch the screen size with the remote to get it, and it doesn't work for some 4:3 content. I do enable it when I can. I was going to get an LCD, but the colors on the Plasma blew me away. Only super expensive LED LCD's have gotten close to what even a cheapie Plasma can do.
But these Plasmas should really have smarter software. They should detect automatically when there's black bars on the sides, or on the top/bottom and fill them in automatically.

GalaxyX
Clearly the digital file you looked at was an altered rip. the full rip which was and is out there over 20 gigs

I know there's 20+gig Blu-ray rips. I wasn't going to bother downloading such a big file for something I already own on a BD. I was dissapointed with the special features on my disk. There's only the director's commentary and that was it. I was underwhelmed.

 

[Sho]

I know it's not an easy task. I have a good background in Photoshop editing, so I understand the basics. I guess I keep forgetting that TNG-R is a budget production, and doesn't have LucasFilm™ unlimited funds.

Oh c'mon, always with the negative slants. Lucas may have "unlimited funds", but he's also got a reputation as an effective business man (that tends to be how you get to "unlimited funds" in the first place), and generally doesn't spend more money than he needs to. Plus the Star Wars films he remastered have a tiny short runtime compared to TNG.

 

[AviTrek]

Yeah, really though. I don't think people realize that it isn't a quick process. That stuff would have to be carefully painted out frame by frame. Even if a mic, crew member, or some other piece of equipment only appeared in 50% of the expanded footage...that would be 3 1/2 years worth of the show to hand edit.

I know it's not an easy task. I have a good background in Photoshop editing, so I understand the basics. I guess I keep forgetting that TNG-R is a budget production, and doesn't have LucasFilm™ unlimited funds.

The fact that you're thinking about it in terms of photoshop instead of a video editing package is exactly the issue. There are 1440 images in one minute of video alone. Of course this all ignores that the extra material is not evenly split on both sides
of the film, so widening the image would ruin the framing of the shots.

 

[JJohnson]

When I said that my BR rip of Farpoint looked terrible in 4:3, I should've have made clear that the picture looked tiny, and the wide angle distance shots on the Bridge made the cast look like Lilliputians. There was nothing wrong with the picture quality. . that I could actually see.

In this instance, I don't see what's wrong with downloading a rip of the disc. It's a tester. If you like what you see, you'll likely buy the BR sets at huge expense. If you don't, you won't.

Why pay twice for 3 episodes?

To my mind, if CBS thought they'd make enough money out of the TNG Blu-ray sets to make the whole exercise worthwhile, they should've given the Next Level disc away free as a goodwill gesture. It's not as if Trek fans haven't been milked enough times already. I paid £60 for each season on DVD 10 years ago.

Ah, yes! But I got a £5 off season 1 voucher with the Next Level disc, I hear you all cry. Yup, a voucher you won't be able to redeem online, so you'll have to find somewhere on the high street that actually sells the set (no mean feat in the UK) and pay at least a 30% higher price.

Wow, just wow at your attitude. Anyways discussing illegal copies is against the rules of this board so go somewhere else please.

I paid three times for mine...one for me, one for my brother, and one for a friend. And I ripped mine to my HDD only for the fact that Windows doesn't have blu-ray drivers built-in, I can't afford to buy a program to play them, and my blu-ray player died. As soon as I can afford a new blu-ray player, I'm deleting the ripped files. They're too big and I'm interested in this project going forward to correct the mistakes and make TNG look amazing. I'll be buying the series in HD for sure. Don't download it - just pay for the thing. It's serioiusly not that expensive, and it will show support for the series!

 

[RAMA]

Anyone have any sales figure data?

RAMA

 

[Start Wreck]

I know it's not an easy task. I have a good background in Photoshop editing, so I understand the basics. I guess I keep forgetting that TNG-R is a budget production, and doesn't have LucasFilm™ unlimited funds.

It's not just a question of funds, it's the sheer logistics of it. Say you have an extra in the background waiting for his or her cue to walk into the centre frame. If they're already visible just outside of the safe zone, you have a bit of a problem, because they still need to walk into shot but they can't be seen standing there on the edge. You can't just 'erase' them, you'd need to track them back further than they originally walked. Replace them with a CGI person? Where does it end? There could be thousands and thousands of shots with little 'problems' like that. Even a feature film budget wouldn't be enough to cover it. They'd have to be working on it for about fifty years. It'd be cheaper and quicker to remake whole the show!

 

[JarodRussell]

Why did they film it like that in the first place? I find it kinda clumsy to say "ah the hell, it's in the frame, but not in the safe zone." during a production.

 

[roliver]

Anyone have any sales figure data?

RAMA

As of 2/10/2012 the disc was #23 in Amazon's Movies & TV on Blu-ray. It's selling better than Dumbo, but being beaten by the Muppets.