Movie Blurays: Pros and Cons

They were transferred from film. The movies weren't shot on video.

Neil

 

I think everyone over the age of 2 and a half knows that.

The Blurays were not taken from the film originals. They were taken from the video transfers of the films, which are of lower definition.

 

I'll try one more time.

Nothing is taken from the film originals, by which I'm guessing you mean the original negatives. They usually use an interpositive, then make a digital master from it. Then, the HD broadcast or BD transfer comes from that digital master.

The issue here is that they apparently (except for Khan) used old transfers that were made at 1080i for HD broadcast.

To get better PQ, they need to make new transfers, and that won't happen anytime soon.

But, the BDs did not come from SD transfers, which is I think what you've been arguing for over a year.

Doug

 

That's not what it says on review sites. Only ST2 was taken from film. The others were taken from 1999 DVD, and they didn't look that far ahead then, HD was in it's infancy. Paramount rarely spends that amount of money.

You can tell by the pixellated eyes and the colour balance, which is exactly the same as my DVD's. Everyone knows, when you dig film out and take another copy, it looks different. Even VHS copies to other types of tape, at home, give you a different balance.

i would say. I think I may have been wrong about Shatner's TOS wig, so I'm not sure.

i'm just going on what I see, and site reviews.

 

^^^If you mean they simply upscaled the standard DVDs----you are way wrong.
They all came from regular prints of the movies.They all are proper Bluray releases (except for Trek 6 which was proven to be from a 1080i transfer and not from a 1080p source)
The problem was that Trek 2 was completely restored for the releases---the other 5 were cleaned up to some extent.They certainly do warrant a full restoration and perhaps that will be a selling point for the next release that will probably around the release of the next Trek movie.Hopefully the next release will include deleted scenes for 2,3 4 & 6 as well as the Director's cuts.
Here, for example, is the review of Trek TMP at hi def digest concerning the video quality...........


The Video: Sizing Up the Picture

According to the vaguely-worded notice on the back of the box set's packaging, "The films have been digitally remastered and The Wrath of Khan has been fully restored in high definition with brilliant picture quality." What exactly that means, and what the difference is between "remastered" and "restored," has been the subject of much debate in internet discussion forums. Ever since the set was released, buzz has been circulating online that 'Star Trek II' is the only remotely watchable Blu-ray in the set, and that all of the others look like 18th-generation VHS tapes smothered in Digital Noise Reduction. At least as far as 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' is concerned, that's a huge load of bunk. This disc looks pretty terrific.
With that said, while watching the movie, you'll need to keep in mind the conditions under which it was made. The majority of the film was photographed using anamorphic lenses with short focal range on dimly-lit interior sets. As a result, there are a great many soft-focus scenes throughout the movie. Director Robert Wise also liked to play with split-diopter lenses, in which one side of the screen will be focused on the foreground while the other side of the screen will be focused on the background, usually with a visible line demarking the two. It's an effect that isn't used much in modern movies, and the dramatic drop-off in focus between the two sides of the screen can be very distracting at times. The special effects shots contain many layers of information optically-composited on top of one another, a process that caused a generation loss in quality and detail with each new layer added. On top of all that, most of the aging cast were plastered in pancake makeup to hide their wrinkles.
The result of all this is that 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' is inconsistent in sharpness throughout its running time. Some shots are vividly sharp and detailed, while others look soft and gauzy. None of this has anything to do with the disc transfer. That's just the way the movie looks. If anything, the Blu-ray's high-def transfer is so clear that it makes these shot-to-shot variances stand out more than they ever have on home video.
The Blu-ray's 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer (presented at its theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio) looks significantly, often astoundingly, better than the movie's previous incarnations on DVD and other formats. In fact, it looks a lot better than the 35mm print I saw a few years ago. At its best, the disc is revelatory in its detail. DeForest Kelley's fake beard, William Shatner's toupee, and Stephen Collins' unibrow have never been so obvious. Colors are clean and accurate, and the picture has a very strong sense of object separation and depth. Paramount has also put in a tremendous amount of work cleaning up or digitally painting out the dirt and debris commonly associated with optically-composited special effects of the era.
That's not to say that it's perfect. Some grain removal and DNR artifacts are visible from time to time. The contrast appears to have been artificially boosted, which leads to a little bit of crushed shadow detail in the dark space scenes (most noticeable at the Spacedock). Even so, these are nit-picking quibbles at worst. Complaints you may read elsewhere about "waxy" facial features have been exaggerated way beyond any resemblance to reality. For the most part, this is a rich, dynamic, and very impressive Blu-ray transfer that is at least as good as, if not sometimes better than, the full-blown "restoration" performed for the next movie in the set. I only wish that all of the later movies fared so well.

 

Come off it, they are exactly the same colour balance as the standard DVD's. The eyes are pixellated. They come from a 1999 transfer. HD was in infancy then.

 

You haven't actually read the reviews have you?
Where did one review say they were taken from the DVDs?People, go to the various review sites and read for yourselves.
The movies are far better than they have ever looked and they suffer from what the 90% of catalog titles suffer from...they haven't been 100% cleaned up and restored.
Even recent classic releases like Psycho have not the 100% clean up job they deserve, but that is about money and only a handful of titles will ever get the 100% treatment.
These are NOT upscaled DVDs and anybody who says that is uniformed.

 

Here is a proper link to the review since for some reason my posts have turned into run-on sentences!!!http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/2458/startrek1_tmp.html

 

There was one review that says that they were 1999 transfers from DVD. And even that review says there is some doubt about the source.

You can tell by the colour balance. And Kirk's pixellated eyes in the ST4 caps.

 

So there was one unnamed review that said they were from the DVDs-----that's pretty conclusive.
Anyway here is another in depth review of the collection.http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewshd/bdreviews051409.html#sta

 

Grant, it says in your named review that it is mooted where they came from.

Look at the colour balance, it's obvious.

 

You see why I say give up? Cheapjack just doesn't understand the technical background of the masters, transfers, HD color space, etc.

I give up (again). Yes; I mean it this time. You won't have me to kick around anymore...ooops.

Doug

 

Yes, I'm with you, Doug. I'll be bowing out of this thread too - sometimes you just have to let it go! I'm pleased as punch having my beloved TOS movie six-pack on BD. It's a clear, blatantly obvious, night and day difference in terms of both PQ/AQ for me - and anyone I've shown them to for that matter, regardles of whether they're home cinema aficionados or not.

To anyone who believes the TOS BD's are upscaled SD transferred to Blu-ray - I say good for you. Furthermore, to anyone who believes an upscaled 480i/576i DVD with compressed audio looks and sounds "just as good" as their "overrated" BD counterparts - brilliant, you won't have to waste your money on such a con.

 

Look, you can tell. They're good. They're hyper enhanced, hyper realistic, hyper richly-colourful, hyper you-are-there. But they're still enhanced and not from film, I think. I was probably wrong about shatner's 60's toupee, I don't know.

I'll still buy'em. I'll be buying them on ultra high def and ultra high def 3-d, I should imagine. I'm a trekkie.

 

You can't enhance a DVD image to look that good in HD. You watched too much CSI.

If you upscale a DVD image to HD resolution is looks just like that, upscaled. Piece of text that was unreadable on the DVD will stay unreadable, for example. The DVD of The Voyage Home look on my HD screen worse than the bluray of The Voyage Home. One is upscaled, one is native HD. Even though the DNR on the bluray is horrible.

And you are wrong about the color timing, too. The bluray looks different in many places.


Granted, the blurays are not the best transfers they could have done. But the claim that they are just upscaled from the DVDs is bullshit.

Maybe this will convince you: http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/8614/dvdbluray.jpg
Screencap taken from DVD and upscaled, and below the screencap from the bluray.

 

No, that doesn't convince me at all. It says on the website mentioned earlier, that their source is dubious, and one another, that I can't find, that only ST2 came from film and the others come from 1999 sources.

If what you say is true, howcome they haven't, in all those vaults around the world, destroyed all those celluliod copies of films, and just kept these' '90's high def transfers', whatever that means? Why do they still keep films? I think I'll find out in ten years time.

 

Well then I can't help you.

 

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tvhhd/tvhhd0269.jpg

This is exactly the same colour balance as my DVD and kirk's eyes are slightly ill defined and pixellated.

 

I just don't see it?

 

Why then you are a blind fool !!!!Gee, I wonder if the Blu-rays for TMP and TUC 'were taken from the DVD."----even though the theatrical version of both those movies was never on DVD?