Season THREE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[mswood]

Anticipation is very high at this point..the sheer thought I might get to see these fantastic episodes in HD is making me giddy

I haven't received the full set for review yet, but the material I've seen so far is indescribably beautiful. I'm gonna have a hard time coming up with fresh adjectives to represent the quality I'm seeing from CBS Digital.

Yeah, the first trailer was pretty good fx wise, but had some questionable colors for the live action. But the later trailers (that included some of the same footage) were spectacular.

Sucks that this will be the first one I can't get a bit early, and in fact wont beable to purchase for at least a month after its release (stupid medical bills). I will be jealous at each and everyone who gets to watch it....

 

[FrontierTrek]

The only problem with this (and not a dig at your site, which I LOVE), is that you weren't critical on the work of season two until a bit after its release. You often posted about how people were rushing their complaints.

I am someone who isn't going to assume the new company is doing a poor job, but I also won't believe they are doing a good job also until we see footage to judge for ourselves.

Hmm, I take issue with that. Our full review (which was published almost two weeks before release) was very balanced and highlighted my criticisms of Season Two clearly.

 

[BillJ]

I no longer feel like there's Vaseline smeared on the camera lens when watching season two. That alone made it worth the purchase.

Many of those "Vaseline" scenes were caused by some of the widescreen pan-and-scan conversion shots, which we covered this week over at TrekCore:

http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/04/tngs-visual-effects-you-asked-for-widescreen/

I don't really care for the technical reasoning, I just found it a real chore to watch TNG as the VHS/DVD's looked like ass especially on an HD set.

 

[davejames]

Well to be fair to HTV, when you look at the before and after you see that they DID do a very faithful recreation of the original shots.

Unfortunately those shots just don't look nearly as cool as the feature-quality work CBS-D did.

 

[BillJ]

Well to be fair to HTV, when you look at the before and after you see that they DID do a very faithful recreation of the original shots.

Unfortunately those shots just don't look nearly as cool as the feature-quality work CBS-D did.

They made some mistakes but overall I feel I got my money's worth buying the season two set.

 

[mswood]

The only problem with this (and not a dig at your site, which I LOVE), is that you weren't critical on the work of season two until a bit after its release. You often posted about how people were rushing their complaints.

I am someone who isn't going to assume the new company is doing a poor job, but I also won't believe they are doing a good job also until we see footage to judge for ourselves.

Hmm, I take issue with that. Our full review (which was published almost two weeks before release) was very balanced and highlighted my criticisms of Season Two clearly.

SOrry I wasn't clear. I wasn't talking about your review (which I read after the release), but the posts you made when posters talked about the press release materials and the flaws that were easily noticed in them versus material from the previous set, and their press release materials.

I also must be confused about which poster was arguing with me, on my comments on the copy I got early from work. Which would have been at the time you were reviewing the release.

Several posts talk about not judging the press release materials, and that you expected the material to be top notch (even at the same time stating how you wish CBS digital was doing all season. THough in all fairness, I don't see anything of you praising the FX you saw, just stating that it should be good, and not to judge the press materials.

 

[TheSeeker]

I no longer feel like there's Vaseline smeared on the camera lens when watching season two. That alone made it worth the purchase.

Many of those "Vaseline" scenes were caused by some of the widescreen pan-and-scan conversion shots, which we covered this week over at TrekCore:

http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/04/tngs-visual-effects-you-asked-for-widescreen/

Nice article. Thanks for the link!

 

[RAMA]

Anticipation is very high at this point..the sheer thought I might get to see these fantastic episodes in HD is making me giddy

I haven't received the full set for review yet, but the material I've seen so far is indescribably beautiful. I'm gonna have a hard time coming up with fresh adjectives to represent the quality I'm seeing from CBS Digital.

More caps!!

 

[Dream]

Well to be fair to HTV, when you look at the before and after you see that they DID do a very faithful recreation of the original shots.

But no one wants "faithful recreation of the original shots".
They want the effects to look modern.

 

[Borjis]

But no one wants "faithful recreation of the original shots".
They want the effects to look modern.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "no one." A lot of us do, but also enjoy the way CBS-D did it. More detail, more contrast. If that's what you call "modern."

 

[jimbotron]

Well to be fair to HTV, when you look at the before and after you see that they DID do a very faithful recreation of the original shots.

But no one wants "faithful recreation of the original shots".
They want the effects to look modern.

I would say that HTV was faithful in that it looks like 1980s compositing work in HD. They did not improve upon the original techniques, nor did they try. Effects were blurry, light passes were misaligned, overall lighting was poor and fake-looking, and matte lines were visible. The only improvement HTV made was making the effects 1080p from 480i. In some ways, HTV's work was worse than the original effects work in 1988.

CBS-D was faithful, but brought the techniques into the 2010s. What they pulled off looks as if it was shot today.

HTV used "faithful representation" as a crutch. CBS-D used it as a challenge.

 

[Flake]

And for some reason HTV made the grain disappear every time there was any VFX in shot and failed to notice!

 

[TheSeeker]

They probably didn't want to try to match the grain.

 

[Scotty]

Well to be fair to HTV, when you look at the before and after you see that they DID do a very faithful recreation of the original shots.

But no one wants "faithful recreation of the original shots".
They want the effects to look modern.

In the season 2 VAM, Dan Curry says more than once that his intention was to be faithful to the original work, not to modernize the effects.

 

[Tosk]

Of course, they weren't particularly faithful in a lot of places, so I don't know how much of an excuse that is. Not only were a lot of shots lackluster, there were many that were distinctly worse than the original. Image quality is higher, of course...but who let all those horizontally distorted Enterprise shots through?

 

[Aatrek]

Can we keep all the HTV criticism to the S2 thread? It's a little annoying seeing the same complaints coming up again and again...

 

[jimbotron]

TrekCore has posted some more beautiful S3 shots on their Facebook page. Man, I sure am going to miss that 6-foot model. The 4-footer in HD just cannot compare.

 

[FrontierTrek]

Be sure to "like" us on Facebook folks - I'll be posting new images regularly there:
http://www.facebook.com/Trekcore

 

[Chris2005]

TrekCore has posted some more beautiful S3 shots on their Facebook page. Man, I sure am going to miss that 6-foot model. The 4-footer in HD just cannot compare.

Yea, but the remastering greatly improves the 4 foot model... I can't wait to do the episode by episode comparison videos for TrekCore...

 

[tomalak301]

Does HD always have to make things better or can they make things worse? The reason I ask is because on the Trekcore facebook page, they posted a picture of the Sheliak in HD, and I wonder if the SD version with the blurriness added to the menacing aspect of this alien. Now it almost looks like Armus with no goo and instead of rising from the pond, he's attached to rods. It still looks cool and all, but it's almost like the clarity is taking away something from the oddity of that species.

It's a shame too that Ensigns of Command is not one of the more popular episodes of the season because I would love to hear some behind the scenes stories on this one, especially the concept of the Sheliak. Also, wasn't this the episode with the Voice dubbing for the Goshavin character? That would have been an interesting tidbit too. Granted, maybe they will talk about it, but I doubt it.