DS9 on blu ray?

[MakeshiftPython]

Isn't Netflix the more popular streaming site? I know it's the one I use most often. I'm not sure of the actual statistics.

 

[dub]

I started my streaming experience on Netflix, which is actually how I first watched the entirety of DS9. I fell in love with the series, and with no blus available I purchased the series on DVD (I guess I'm also one of those "nobody, ever" people).

These days, I'm more of an Amazon guy. I find the quality is better for me. There also seem to be (or at least at the time that I "switched" to amazon) more shows available in HD. Plus, I get free 2-day shipping on everything I purchase through amazon - which is pretty much anything I can think of. There are other benefits I haven't explored yet as well. Amazon > Netflix in my book. You should at least check it out and compare for yourself since there's a free trial period available. In case this is helpful, I've also had better luck with my streaming speed through Roku than through my Sony bluray player. Haven't tried Apple TV.

 

[kkt]

Why should I continue to pay Amazon for streaming an episode at a time when I know I'm going to be watching DS9 over and over for years? And what if Amazon raises their prices or discontinues their contract with CBS/future Trek rights owner?

 

[USS KG5]

Why should I continue to pay Amazon for streaming an episode at a time when I know I'm going to be watching DS9 over and over for years? And what if Amazon raises their prices or discontinues their contract with CBS/future Trek rights owner?

Sounds like maybe the DVDs are your best bet!

 

[MacLeod]

That's one of the things about streaming services, they all try and get exclusives which they think will attract subscribers. So you could find yourself having to subscribe to multiple providers to get the older shows you want to watch. In the case of DVD/BR if they are available you can just buy them. Of course there is a higher initial outlay than a subscribition over a period of months. As well as other shows available over a subscribition service which you might want to watch.

There is room for both physical and streaming.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I leave a lot of TV shows viewing to on air or subscription based streaming. When I have the option of watching however many shows I like on a $7.99 per month deal, I don't feel the need to buy the physical sets. I leave that to the shows I genuinely love enough to want to have all those bonus features. At least, that's how I look at it.

 

[Phantom]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery. It almost happened to Star Wars, for example. It happens to 100s of films every year because there is so little concern put into recovering them.

I find it hard to believe that CBS would just let an entire Trek series essentially "rot away".

Film is a fragile medium, and motion pictures of all types are deteriorating faster than archives can preserve them. Preservation practices slow film's inevitable decay by environmentally controlled storage and by copying endangered works onto more durable film stock. Today's film preservation crisis is not merely the result of substantially decreased public funding but also arises from a growth in the types of films now valued and requiring preservation. Newsreels, documentaries, avant-garde works, anthropological and regional films, advertising shorts, and even some home movies (especially of ethnic groups invisible in the mainstream media) are now seen as important records of America's social memory.

Fueling the crisis is the deterioration of films from the last 40 years, films previously thought not-at-risk. Preservation efforts were once directed solely at copying nitrate- base film, an older, unstable film stock. "safety film" replaced nitrate in the early 1950s, and now preservationists must deal with recently discovered problems of this less flammable substitute--the fading of color film and "vinegar syndrome", an irreversible film base decay--in addition to the still-pressing task of nitrate conversion. Research is increasingly demonstrating the critical role of low humidity and low temperature storage in extending film life. As technical expertise grows, better copies are being made from older film materials. Film preservation is increasingly perceived as an ongoing activity, not a one-time copying "fix". These factors point to the need to re-think the current approach.

Film preservation in practice. While many types of organizations have motion pictures of cultural interest, preservation efforts vary greatly with funding and commercial rights.Studios with large film libraries, once little interested in "last-year's pictures," now earn less revenue from a film's theatrical release than from later ancillary distribution by cable, network, and home video. Although industry practices vary, most studios are now investing in sophisticated storage facilities and restoring older features for which they own commercial rights. Independent producers and distributors, owners of films financed outside the large studios, generally lack the resources and organizational continuity to mount such expensive "asset protection" programs. The works of avant- garde and documentary filmmakers are among those most at risk.

http://www.loc.gov/programs/nationa...nt-state-of-american-film-preservation-study/

And before someone brings up existing digital media, consider that even they have "shelf lives", either in the storage media or in the encoding.

We know that photographic negatives, transparencies and prints last a long time. They are reliable forms of storing data. Recently the Royal Geographic Society reprinted Frank Hurley's pictures from the 1913 Antarctic Exhibition - from his original glass negatives, nearly 100 years old. An example of how robust the storage medium was - remember these negatives had been in sub-zero conditions and transported across an ocean in a tiny lifeboat!

In the headlong rush to put photographic images into digital form, little thought has been given to the problem of the longevity of digital files. There is an assumption that they will be lasting, but that is under question.

"There is growing realisation that this investment and future access to digital resources, are threatened by technology obsolescence and to a lesser degree by the fragility of digital media. The rate of change in computing technologies is such that information can be rendered inaccessible within a decade. Preservation is therefore a more immediate issue for digital than for traditional resources. Digital resources will not survive or remain accessible by accident: pro-active preservation is needed." Joint Information Systems Committee: Why Digital Preservation?

The 1086 Domesday Book, instigated by William the Conqueror, is still intact and available to be read by qualified researchers in the Public Record Office. In 1986 the BBC created a new Domesday Book about the state of the nation, costing £2.5 million. It is now unreadable. It contained 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 60 minutes of footage, and millions of words, but it was made on special disks which could only be read in the BBC micro computer. There are only a few of these left in existence, and most of them don't work. This Domesday Book Mark 2 lasted less than 16 years.
Digital media have to be stored, and the physical medium they are stored on, for instance a computer's hard disk drive or a CD-rom have finite lifespans. But the primary problem is of obsolescence. Computer formats sink into oblivion very rapidly. Howard Besser, of the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies says: "Fifteen years ago Wordstar had (by far) the largest market penetration of any word processing program. But few people today can read any of the many millions of Wordstar files, even when those have been transferred onto contemporary computer hard disks. Even today's popular word processing applications (such as Microsoft Word) typically cannot view files created any further back than two previous versions of the same application (and sometimes these still lose important formatting). Image and multimedia formats, lacking an underlying basis of ascii text, pose much greater obsolescence problems, as each format chooses to code image, sound, or control (synching) representation in a different way."

If an image has been generated on negative or transparency, then scanned and transformed into a digital file, then the original is safe. However if it has been digitally originated, such as much of today's news and sport photography, then vital parts of our cultural heritage may be lost forever. This problem will get worse as more photography becomes completely digital.

http://www.dpconline.org/events/previous-events/306-digital-longevity

 

[BillJ]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery. It almost happened to Star Wars, for example. It happens to 100s of films every year because there is so little concern put into recovering them.

I find it hard to believe that CBS would just let an entire Trek series essentially "rot away".

Film is a fragile medium, and motion pictures of all types are deteriorating faster than archives can preserve them. Preservation practices slow film's inevitable decay by environmentally controlled storage and by copying endangered works onto more durable film stock. Today's film preservation crisis is not merely the result of substantially decreased public funding but also arises from a growth in the types of films now valued and requiring preservation. Newsreels, documentaries, avant-garde works, anthropological and regional films, advertising shorts, and even some home movies (especially of ethnic groups invisible in the mainstream media) are now seen as important records of America's social memory.

Fueling the crisis is the deterioration of films from the last 40 years, films previously thought not-at-risk. Preservation efforts were once directed solely at copying nitrate- base film, an older, unstable film stock. "safety film" replaced nitrate in the early 1950s, and now preservationists must deal with recently discovered problems of this less flammable substitute--the fading of color film and "vinegar syndrome", an irreversible film base decay--in addition to the still-pressing task of nitrate conversion. Research is increasingly demonstrating the critical role of low humidity and low temperature storage in extending film life. As technical expertise grows, better copies are being made from older film materials. Film preservation is increasingly perceived as an ongoing activity, not a one-time copying "fix". These factors point to the need to re-think the current approach.

Film preservation in practice. While many types of organizations have motion pictures of cultural interest, preservation efforts vary greatly with funding and commercial rights.Studios with large film libraries, once little interested in "last-year's pictures," now earn less revenue from a film's theatrical release than from later ancillary distribution by cable, network, and home video. Although industry practices vary, most studios are now investing in sophisticated storage facilities and restoring older features for which they own commercial rights. Independent producers and distributors, owners of films financed outside the large studios, generally lack the resources and organizational continuity to mount such expensive "asset protection" programs. The works of avant- garde and documentary filmmakers are among those most at risk.

http://www.loc.gov/programs/nationa...nt-state-of-american-film-preservation-study/

TNG film elements sat in a salt mine for twenty-five years and looked as good as the day they buried it. Paramount may actually know how to take care of their assets.

 

[Phantom]

^They can slow it, but not stop it.

Ironically, Enterprise may be the show most at risk of being lost, because it was shot digitally to begin with.

Remember, we can't get a HD version of TMP Director's cut because the model files are lost and the existing digital extension shots were only rendered 720 and can't be upscaled.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

The difference was that the negatives for popular films like Star Wars was being worn out due to its use to make copies over and over throughout the years (while at the same time the film stock used had its flaws). This is why many of the most popular films like the early Bond films, Jaws, ect had to be restored at a certain point because throughout all the years of using them as the basis for copies, they collected dirt, got worn, scratched, ect.

DS9 is likely in a better condition than the negatives for those films ever were at any capacity because the only time they served a purpose was to capture the image on set and then make video copies out of them. After that, they were shipped and stored somewhere never to be used again. This is why the TNG negatives were in incredible condition because they never had to go through the kind of wear and tear films and older TV shows did. TOS on the other hand had the negative already cut, so those were the basis for copies as much as TNG's master videos were.

At some point though they will have to restore DS9 not because of the possibility of film stock deteriorating (that comes much later), but because the master tapes will at some point become unusable.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

^They can slow it, but not stop it.

Ironically, Enterprise may be the show most at risk of being lost, because it was shot digitally to begin with.

Remember, we can't get a HD version of TMP Director's cut because the model files are lost and the existing digital extension shots were only rendered 720 and can't be upscaled.

IIRC, Enterprise (the fourth season) was actually shot and mastered on high definition digital tape, much like the two Star Wars prequels were. They'll definitely have to preserve the master tapes though, but the situation is different from TMP because a high definition master already exists, whereas TMP never had one at any point.

 

[Squiggy]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery.

Nope.

They can digitize the current material. It doesn't need to be HD.

 

[BillJ]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery.

Nope.

They can digitize the current material. It doesn't need to be HD.

As long as the master tapes exist, they will always be able to copy them. I can't imagine they haven't taken care of them over the years.

But then, there are probably numerous physical copies of the masters as well. Then there are probably digital copies stored in various locations in case one site fails.

I agree with Squiggy, they can pump out 480i copies of DS9 and Voyager for as long as people/distributors want to buy them.

 

[USS KG5]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery.

Nope.

They can digitize the current material. It doesn't need to be HD.

Yeah Voyager has been on Amazon in the UK, looks awful but its there all digital and streamable.

 

[Trekkin]

They're all up on iTunes, aren't they? Except for S7 of TNG, last I knew.

 

[Jedman67]

The show looks pretty awful on DVD, so any kind of upscale would make for atrocious blu ray quality.

To be fair though, an upscale would be from the master tapes, not from the crummy DVD files. It wouldn't look even 30% as good as TNGR, but it would kick the shit out of the current DVDs. (Some of the season 5 upscaled footage in TNGR, while fuzzy compared to the surrounding footage, wasn't too bad.) Much as I want a proper remaster, I'd even buy a 'budget' remastering.

Were the VFX for DS9 stored as separate elements; or once they were comped onto the tape master the originals were lost/destroyed?

Some of the things such as odo's morphing and stock ship footage and wormhole effects could be done fairly easily - create the 3d models, and render out a library of stock shots and try to match them up to existing footage best you can.

 

[The Transformed Man]

Sooner or later, CBS will be forced into doing a fresh master for no other reason than if they do not, then the show will be lost to them, because the original source masters will degrade past recovery. It almost happened to Star Wars, for example. It happens to 100s of films every year because there is so little concern put into recovering them.

I find it hard to believe that CBS would just let an entire Trek series essentially "rot away".

Film is a fragile medium, and motion pictures of all types are deteriorating faster than archives can preserve them. Preservation practices slow film's inevitable decay by environmentally controlled storage and by copying endangered works onto more durable film stock. Today's film preservation crisis is not merely the result of substantially decreased public funding but also arises from a growth in the types of films now valued and requiring preservation. Newsreels, documentaries, avant-garde works, anthropological and regional films, advertising shorts, and even some home movies (especially of ethnic groups invisible in the mainstream media) are now seen as important records of America's social memory.

Fueling the crisis is the deterioration of films from the last 40 years, films previously thought not-at-risk. Preservation efforts were once directed solely at copying nitrate- base film, an older, unstable film stock. "safety film" replaced nitrate in the early 1950s, and now preservationists must deal with recently discovered problems of this less flammable substitute--the fading of color film and "vinegar syndrome", an irreversible film base decay--in addition to the still-pressing task of nitrate conversion. Research is increasingly demonstrating the critical role of low humidity and low temperature storage in extending film life. As technical expertise grows, better copies are being made from older film materials. Film preservation is increasingly perceived as an ongoing activity, not a one-time copying "fix". These factors point to the need to re-think the current approach.

Film preservation in practice. While many types of organizations have motion pictures of cultural interest, preservation efforts vary greatly with funding and commercial rights.Studios with large film libraries, once little interested in "last-year's pictures," now earn less revenue from a film's theatrical release than from later ancillary distribution by cable, network, and home video. Although industry practices vary, most studios are now investing in sophisticated storage facilities and restoring older features for which they own commercial rights. Independent producers and distributors, owners of films financed outside the large studios, generally lack the resources and organizational continuity to mount such expensive "asset protection" programs. The works of avant- garde and documentary filmmakers are among those most at risk.

http://www.loc.gov/programs/nationa...nt-state-of-american-film-preservation-study/

And before someone brings up existing digital media, consider that even they have "shelf lives", either in the storage media or in the encoding.

We know that photographic negatives, transparencies and prints last a long time. They are reliable forms of storing data. Recently the Royal Geographic Society reprinted Frank Hurley's pictures from the 1913 Antarctic Exhibition - from his original glass negatives, nearly 100 years old. An example of how robust the storage medium was - remember these negatives had been in sub-zero conditions and transported across an ocean in a tiny lifeboat!

In the headlong rush to put photographic images into digital form, little thought has been given to the problem of the longevity of digital files. There is an assumption that they will be lasting, but that is under question.

"There is growing realisation that this investment and future access to digital resources, are threatened by technology obsolescence and to a lesser degree by the fragility of digital media. The rate of change in computing technologies is such that information can be rendered inaccessible within a decade. Preservation is therefore a more immediate issue for digital than for traditional resources. Digital resources will not survive or remain accessible by accident: pro-active preservation is needed." Joint Information Systems Committee: Why Digital Preservation?

The 1086 Domesday Book, instigated by William the Conqueror, is still intact and available to be read by qualified researchers in the Public Record Office. In 1986 the BBC created a new Domesday Book about the state of the nation, costing £2.5 million. It is now unreadable. It contained 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 60 minutes of footage, and millions of words, but it was made on special disks which could only be read in the BBC micro computer. There are only a few of these left in existence, and most of them don't work. This Domesday Book Mark 2 lasted less than 16 years.
Digital media have to be stored, and the physical medium they are stored on, for instance a computer's hard disk drive or a CD-rom have finite lifespans. But the primary problem is of obsolescence. Computer formats sink into oblivion very rapidly. Howard Besser, of the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies says: "Fifteen years ago Wordstar had (by far) the largest market penetration of any word processing program. But few people today can read any of the many millions of Wordstar files, even when those have been transferred onto contemporary computer hard disks. Even today's popular word processing applications (such as Microsoft Word) typically cannot view files created any further back than two previous versions of the same application (and sometimes these still lose important formatting). Image and multimedia formats, lacking an underlying basis of ascii text, pose much greater obsolescence problems, as each format chooses to code image, sound, or control (synching) representation in a different way."

If an image has been generated on negative or transparency, then scanned and transformed into a digital file, then the original is safe. However if it has been digitally originated, such as much of today's news and sport photography, then vital parts of our cultural heritage may be lost forever. This problem will get worse as more photography becomes completely digital.

http://www.dpconline.org/events/previous-events/306-digital-longevity

Citing Star Wars is a bad example here. Star Wars, and a number of films from the 70's have required special attention from film historians because of the specific film stock used creating negatives of films from the era. Star Wars used Eastman Color Negative II 100T 5247 which was a common negative from the 70's. By the late 80's/early 90's film preservationists discovered elements from these films were degrading unnaturally fast.

For example, the original negatives from TOS were in far better shape than the original Star Wars, as were a number of Hollywood films from films as far back as the 30's... the reason... the Eastman Color Negative II stock. A number of 70's era films have required careful restoration.

This certainly would not be the case with DS9 which used a similar film stock to TNG.

 

[USS KG5]

Were the VFX for DS9 stored as separate elements; or once they were comped onto the tape master the originals were lost/destroyed?

Hopefully like TNG a lot was stored.

It gets a lot more complicated with the CG - some still survives, some doesn't. It wasn't kept by the studio but some of the artists have come out and got some of it.

One of them did a very pretty HD render of a Nebula class based on files he still has.

 

[Phantom]

Hopefully like TNG a lot was stored.

It gets a lot more complicated with the CG - some still survives, some doesn't. It wasn't kept by the studio but some of the artists have come out and got some of it.

One of them did a very pretty HD render of a Nebula class based on files he still has.

In a counter example, I recall one FX artist talking about the files he knows are on a certain HD that he has that are 100% worthless to anyone because they were made for a proprietary software format a particular studio once used that is now gone.

Digital is even more vulnerable than film media to obsolescence.

The point is that sooner or later CBS will have to upgrade the master to maintain the viability of the property for distribution.

 

[Kemaiku]

Why? not enough people want it. Trek fans just aren't enough reason to spend that many millions of dollars.

All they need is the master tape and they can update it to whatever format they need and keep reproducing it on demand.