Paramount working on DS9 HD?

[Relayer1]

Sorry I missed where you said it would be optional.

To be honest that was back in post 246 !

 

[Ssosmcin]

For it to be a choice, though, I think it would take two releases or sets. You can't do it via seamless branching, so you'd need two different sets of episodes: one fill screen, one wide. I don't see that very often, but it is possible.

Lost in Space (TOS) is in fill screen on Blu Ray and wide on the DVDs, but only the 4:3 are in HD.
Battlestar Galactica (TOS) has the full screen episodes on their own in the Definitive Collection Box set along with the widescreen discs. Both are in HD

There are also much shorter running shows. I could see a widescreen choice for streaming and a 4:3 for the physical release.

 

[Tallguy]

There's also the example of if one wants to watch TOS on broadcast television or streaming one is NOT given a choice. It's TOS-R. So however they are going to spend their money to make DS9 "future-proof" that is most likely going to be the most widely and easily available presentation of the show going forward.

 

[Tuskin38]

There's also the example of if one wants to watch TOS on broadcast television or streaming one is NOT given a choice. It's TOS-R. So however they are going to spend their money to make DS9 "future-proof" that is most likely going to be the most widely and easily available presentation of the show going forward.

Then get the blu-ray release, you have a choice there.

 

[Tallguy]

Then get the blu-ray release, you have a choice there.

I do. And I have.

But lets face the facts that however this shakes out, when you tell someone that they should watch DS9 (or TOS or TNG) that there is going to be ONE version that they will watch.

 

[Jayson1]

Cropped for widescreen never looks "right." Even with safe areas and overscan, you're still losing information. Heads get cropped, everything looks a little too tight. Not to mention grain is higher. Lost in Space was cropped for the most recent DVD release and it looks wrong. Not as bad as some others, but it wasn't meant to be seen that way.

Old Lost in Space or new Lost in Space from Netflix?

 

[Tuskin38]

As long as DS9-R is done the same way as TNG-R, then I have no problem with it being the only version available in HD

 

[Firebird]

This continuing debate about the extremely artistically-dubious choice of making a widescreen version is a moot point, because Paramount does not have the money to redo high definition scans and recomposites for 180 episodes of a 30-year-old television series twice. It doesn't matter whether folks find black bars on the side of the image too much of an inconvenience.

 

[Jayson1]

That is why they will likely go with the cheapest option. Something along the lines that was done for Babylon 5 or Stargate SG1 IMO. I am guessing the tech is now cheap enough that can do something unlike in the past. I would not be shocked if this happens as soon as Warner buys Paramount.

 

[Tuskin38]

That is why they will likely go with the cheapest option. Something along the lines that was done for Babylon 5 or Stargate SG1 IMO.

Stargate SG-1 was filmed in 16:9 from the start and aired in both 16:9 and 4:3
The home releases have always been 16:9 AFAIK.

 

[Jayson1]

I always thought the big issue was stuff filmed using film vs stuff using video.

 

[David cgc]

I always thought the big issue was stuff filmed using film vs stuff using video.

It depends. None of the Star Trek shows (nor SG-1 or Babylon 5) were shot on videotape (well, standard-definition video), but they were edited on video (again, SD video). So to make them in HD (properly), you'd have to track down the original film from before it was edited, assuming it still exists and is accessible, and rebuild the episodes from that. It's like resetting the clock back to right after they finished filming the episodes, and everything visual that comes after that (editing, color correction, and visual effects) has to be done again, as if for the first time.

There are other shows, like Doctor Who, that actually were recorded on standard-definition video, at least partially, so there's a hard limit to how much more quality you can get from those scenes. And there are other, older shows, like TOS or Columbo or MASH that weren't just shot using film, but were also edited on film, so they can be digitized into HD straight off of the original film master copies of the episodes (that's where the recent Babylon 5 remaster came from, a version of the final episode edits made on film while the show was originally being produced, for TV stations in other countries that still broadcast television using film reels rather than playing back videotapes). The original intention on Babylon 5 was to do something like what Stargate SG-1 did for its first five seasons, and produce standard-definition widescreen versions in parallel with the standard-definition 4x3 versions, so they could be used for later reruns and DVDs once widescreen TVs became common, but the Babylon 5 post-production team didn't have the budget for the necessary equipment.

 

[Tallguy]

Yeah, I remember in the 2000s some (younger) fans getting pissy that TOS was getting HD and TNG wasn't. "They didn't even HAVE HD when TOS was made!" "Well, youngun, let me tell you of the magic of FILM."

 

[Ragitsu]

Snap them whippers.

 

[fireproof78]

Oh, it's magical alright.

 

[Alpharius]

Season 3 onward, if I remember rightly, was designed for 16:9 in mind...

Even better: Since they're going to the original film negatives, they have an opportunity to re-frame every camera angle change from the older seasons to best-fit the new ratio. So the net result may not be that bad, since the generic upscales and aspect ratio changes just slap on some matte bars without bothering to re-center vertically the old 4:3 material, leading to chopped off heads, hidden details needed for the plot's progression, and the opening/closing credits.

But the latter half of DS9 did have 16:9 in mind, so that's more than half the battle already. S1-3 does add to some costs, but it's nominal. Especially compared to the new f/x needing to be rendered or superimposed. (B5's original f/x are the same but they're not atrocious in of themselves. )

And after reading comments to other remastered goodies like:

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Sifting through some of them and I hope I got the right one, some say that the upscaling AI isn't as much a panacea as some like to believe, and - more importantly despite the tangent - the master reels may have been destroyed, so what was released on blu-ray is the only surviving master. Modern AI techniques are definitely better than what was around then, and the higher-detailed the source material, the better the upscaled result will be -- so all the hype of "DVD to 4K", which is garbage because 480i simply lacks the detail end of story, the blu-ray surviving master is clearly grainy, but also has more detail than the 480i ever had -- this could be cleaned up a bit easier. But there's still an upper limit that's less than the original 35mm film negs, which sound like they're gone forever. That's when software algorithm alternatives genuinely come in handy. But if the original is there, definitely try to preserve it. If nothing else, what does exist does. If nothing else, the B5 scenes mixing the cgi with live action could potentially have the frame rate equalized by comparing an array of adjacent frames and smoothing them out. But I digress again.

* but the whiny comments are ubiquitous so it's all good​

Thank you for this post. I went into this thread worrying about the DS9 remaster/upscale/whatever and your posts have been extremely informative and give me hope that whatever they choose to release will be better than the DVDs we have currently. Cheers.

 

[trekfan_1]

I think the compromise ( assuming a full remaster actually happens ) could be that for blu-ray , you respect the original ratio at all times. But for digital purchase ( like Apple tv 4k,) , you present it in wide-screen when available. And then the same when it (eventually) streams on a subscription service like Paramount plus ( or whatever).

People who collect Blurays are (generally ) more in line with purists when it comes to preserving the original material exactly as presented. Peaple who buy digital downloads or stream, less so. That's what I would do. Perhaps a few years later you re- release a blurayy with wide-screen version for seasons 3-7 . Wouldn't be the first time Paramount would double dip on physical media releases with " special " editions years later.

In terms of will they/won't they on a full remaster , It all comes down to 2 things I think. 1 ( most importantly) - Is the growing belief that the process and technology for a HD reconstruct is currently much cheaper/easier to execute is accurate or not. And 2, exactly how much better is AI upscaling really at today? How much improvement is there using the latest AI tech on the original video source vs DVD prints. Are we talking it being at an equivalent level that at least matches "true" 720p film quality? ( my personal wish if they go with upscale) We need those questions answered. Otherwise yeah, it seems way too expensive to pull off a TNG style HD upgrade. Especially with Paramount not exactly being super healthy right now along with the post strike fallout .

 

[Michael]

At this point I seriously doubt anyone is actively working on any sort of remastering of the show. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the rights holders are looking into the feasibility of the undertaking every other year, so that part of the rumor from the OP may be true, but other than that it just seems super unlikely that it will be happening anytime toon, taking everything we know into account. I kinda wish the thread title would reflect that it’s merely some rumor. The way it’s worded right now is borderline fake news, because there’s apparently no evidence to support that they are really working on it.

 

[Tomalak]

Maybe add a question mark to the thread title?

 

[James Cole]

I think a proper HD remaster would pay for itself in the long run... but not in one financial quarter. The best case I can see is Paramount+ wanting "more" Star Trek content, and remastering all of DS9 would only cost the budget of 2-3 episodes of NuTrek.

That said, it is very, very rare for HD remasters to go as well as TNG. Keeping the original aspect ratio, redoing all of the effects, finding practically all of the original footage (to the point that only two episodes have more than 10 seconds of subbed in footage from SD masters... and even then you're talking about <1 minute for "Power Play" and <2 minutes for "The First Duty").

My fear is something like THE X-FILES. The Pilot is just straight out cropped from 4:3. The rest of season 1 and season 2 barely gain any information on the sides compared to very visible cropping at the top and bottom. Far, far more footage is upscaled... but they crop SD in seasons 1-4, so it looks even more horrible.

~If~ a season of DS9 was actually shot like THE X-FILES from season 3 onwards... where you can open up the sides without losing any original picture information, I'm not that much of an OAR purist to not go with it. Provided they have 99.999% of the original footage as with TNG.