Wow, I don't know if I have that kind of strength, R. Star. But that would certainly be a wise move.
DS9 on blu-ray -- What can we do?
- Thread starter GNDN
- Start date
Wow, I don't know if I have that kind of strength, R. Star. But that would certainly be a wise move.
Well the marketing department hopes you don't. 
But to me... Star Trek is more about the stories than the flashy graphics. So shelling out for slightly upgraded graphics isn't high on my priority list. The main things in the TNG blurays I've been interested in is the deleted scenes, but even those show up on youtube so... yeah.
But to me... Star Trek is more about the stories than the flashy graphics. So shelling out for slightly upgraded graphics isn't high on my priority list. The main things in the TNG blurays I've been interested in is the deleted scenes, but even those show up on youtube so... yeah.
Remember though that the overall principle behind a Blu-Ray release goes far beyond simply updating the VFX -- for a TV series shot on 35mm film stock, there is a massive upgrade in resolution for the live-action scenes involving the actors versus what is possible with DVD.
When you compare the TNG BDs to the TNG DVD releases head-to-head, the difference is absolutely breathtaking, and that's before you even get to the upgrades in visual effects (which, like you, are simply the cherry atop the sundae for me).
Also, bear in mind that no studio in its right mind would ever in a million years release seven years' worth of brand-new television series Blu-Ray product all at once onto the market as a boxed set at full retail cost.
They'd never sell enough copies to break even, much less turn a reasonable profit; the sell-through costs at launch for the individual seasons are already substantial, and seven such seasons dropping at once would be far out of most Trek fans' price-range, to say the least.
I've seen a few of the episodes on BluRay, the difference it noticeable.. it just doesn't matter to me. I don't enjoy it any more beyond a moment of "hey that's neat." Is that worth shelling out for a new set? I don't think so. As I said, the deleted scene extras are the only reason I'd even think about buying them, and those end up on youtube eventually anyways.
Different people, different tastes. I know some people seem personally insulted when I say the BluRays just don't impress me all that much.
I'm fairly certain non-Trek fans don't factor in the decision at all.
People don't generally buy box sets of shows they're not fans of.
I would feel pretty pissed off if they started converting VOY or ENT to blu-ray first.
ENT is already being released on blu-ray
Right. ENT doesn't need any conversion so it's easy money for CBS to release.
Easy money to spend on DS9-R hopefully!
Nope, not easy at all... they'd have to go through a similar process to what TNG went through, but then there's an additional snag...
DS9 might suffer from the Babylon 5 problem. A lot of the battles were CGI, and rendered at standard resolution. Fine for DVDs, but they'd need to track down all those files that came from different companies and have them re-rendered... If by a miracle they were able to do that, there might still be a concern if the quality of the models isn't good enough to look realistic at 1080p.
DS9 is the best Star Trek, so I would love to see it on Blu-Ray but unfortunately for some incomprehensible reason, most people don't seem to like DS9 as much as the others, and so given the additional difficulties who knows if it might ever happen.
Trekmovie had that article a few months ago about how Rob Bonchune had a ton of DS9 CGI files. He used them to render an HD screencap of that Nebula class ship from Waltz.
TrekCore actually.
http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/05/deep-space-nine-in-high-definition-one-step-closer/
The problem still remains that multiple vendors provided the CGI for DS9 and VOY, so it gets harder to have the original CGI assets that way. Rob's obviously got some from working at Foundation Imaging, but there are quite a few others that Digital Muse did. Both of which are defunct companies.
The only choice for missing assets is start again from scratch, something that could be quite an undertaking. Since it's not just the models (which could easily be licensed from awesome CG artists like CBS Digital is rumored to have done with Tobias Richter's Enterprise-D model for TNG-R), it's the entire render: the positions of ships, lighting, etc. that would need to be redone.
Don't get me wrong, I want DS9-R very badly, I really really want to see remastered. DS9 had a depth and breadth that no other show could match. We just to have understand what huge undertaking this could be for CBS. Let alone trying to do VOY which is all CGI for 7 seasons.
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I think The Making of DS9 hints some of the obstacles. In contrast to TNG they made quite some use of fixing shooting errors on the sets by means of early CGI (that wouldn't show in NTSC resolution).
So there is the probability that they really have to go through the camera negatives to look for these flaws they fixed in CGI post-production. If they kept records that would help to minimize the search for these errors, but they will have to correct these.
Bob
They used primitive CGI to fix the seams on Odo's makeup in Season One, cover up microphones extending into the image and reflections of studio equipment on the display screens.
Back in those days of standard definition resolution (regardless whether NTSC or PAL) they could get away with it (you wouldn't / didn't notice) but in remastered HD the original camera footage would reveal those flaws, therefore these need to be fixed again with state-of-the-art CGI.
I really don't know how big this problem is, hopefully they didn't get too sloppy knowing "We can fix this with CGI in post-production."
Bob
Back in those days of standard definition resolution (regardless whether NTSC or PAL) they could get away with it (you wouldn't / didn't notice) but in remastered HD the original camera footage would reveal those flaws, therefore these need to be fixed again with state-of-the-art CGI.
I really don't know how big this problem is, hopefully they didn't get too sloppy knowing "We can fix this with CGI in post-production."
Bob
That's not even close to true.
