Star Trek Voyager Remastered in 4K

[James Cole]

If MACGYVER, LA LAW, MOONLIGHTING, LOIS AND CLARK, FRASIER, and, of all things, DALLAS could all support HD rebuilds, then DS9 and VGR should as well. Yes, yes... more expensive effects and mastered on film vs videotape.

But rescanning the raw footage and having AI upcovert most SD effects should be doable in a worst case scenario.

I'd assume HD rebuilding probably will eventually happen. But the real questions are how much raw footage is lost (only two TNG episodes had more than a minute of upconverted footage, THE X-FILES was not so lucky...), OAR or 16:9 (were the shows really shot widescreen safe after a certain point, and are they willing to crop part of the original frame, again, like early X-FILES), and, again, just how committed they are to rebuilding the effects.

And, throw in HD vs 4K as the x factor.

 

[fireproof78]

Less effects, larger fan base, more likely to spend money.

Trek has an uphill climb to prove it's viable.

 

[Lord Garth]

Less effects, larger fan base, more likely to spend money.

Trek has an uphill climb to prove it's viable.

MacGuyver, LA Law, Lois & Clark... I don't think you believe they have a larger fanbase than Star Trek.

Fraiser definitely. It has a larger "fanbase" (if you can call it that) than Star Trek. Dallas, in its day, sure. Now? I'd say no.

 

[fireproof78]

MacGuyver, LA Law, Lois & Clark... I don't think you believe they have a larger fanbase than Star Trek.

Fraiser definitely. It has a larger "fanbase" (if you can call it that) than Star Trek. Dallas, in its day, sure. Now? I'd say no.

Larger in terms of willingness to buy the physical media.

I've seen many in my parents generation buying shows like LA Law on physical media, and show more interest in those shows even though they hardly watch it.

There's something about it.

 

[Lord Garth]

Yeah, I notice the shitty picture

At least there's that.

I wouldn't say it looked spectacular

That's right.

I'm saying I want it to look as good as it can look. Yes, I'll say it: I want it to look spectacular. I have my preferences, you have yours. Obviously, I'm watching SD, I'm doing a Re-Watch, but if we had HD, I'd be watching that. If it had been HD, I would've been doing the Re-Watch sooner as well. Much sooner. As opposed to right now where it's like, "Any New Trek I was interested in is done, I don't like the direction it's going in now, might as well go back to Old Trek for my Star Trek fix!"

If they made DS9-R or VOY-R, just the sake of argument, are you going to complain, "Oh no! They made it HD! What the fuck?!" Of course not. Unless they did a terrible job, then I could understand.

 

[DonIago]

The minute DS9 Remastered is available to purchase I'll purchase it. I don't even care if it comes with any special features...though I'd be extremely disappointed if it didn't. Hell, I'd throw $100 at it to make it happen (more once it actually started happening).

VOY Remastered, though...I already felt a bit burned by the documentary. That would be a tougher sell for me.

 

[Dukhat]

Nerds on an online Star Trek bulletin board (who represent about 1% of the total Trek fandom) can bitch until the cows come home about having DS9 and VOY in HD. CBS doesn’t give a shit about our bitching. They will only do something like that if it’s financially viable for them to expend time and money to do so. And do it right: no cheaping out like what happened with TOS-R. If it was viable for them to do so, they would have done it right after TNG-R. But the conclusions they drew from that experiment seemed to indicate that it’s just not worth it.

 

[James Cole]

Fraiser definitely. It has a larger "fanbase" (if you can call it that) than Star Trek. Dallas, in its day, sure. Now? I'd say no.

And the former had a reboot on P+ that was canceled after two seasons.

Now I need to head over to the Blu-ray Forum BBS and see how their thread on this respective topic is going. I've been out of the loop for a few months.

 

[fireproof78]

Nerds on an online Star Trek bulletin board (who represent about 1% of the total Trek fandom) can bitch until the cows come home about having DS9 and VOY in HD. CBS doesn’t give a shit about our bitching. They will only do something like that if it’s financially viable for them to expend time and money to do so. And do it right: no cheaping out like what happened with TOS-R. If it was viable for them to do so, they would have done it right after TNG-R. But the conclusions they drew from that experiment seemed to indicate that it’s just not worth it.

Indeed, yes. There needs to be a demonstration of fiscal viability. Without any meaningful statistics on profit/loss or market interest assertions can be made all over the place over this theoretical flood of fans who itching to drop $$$$ on HD remix.

 

[Ssosmcin]

If MACGYVER, LA LAW, MOONLIGHTING, LOIS AND CLARK, FRASIER, and, of all things, DALLAS could all support HD rebuilds, then DS9 and VGR should as well. Yes, yes... more expensive effects and mastered on film vs videotape.

Dallas' last 4 seasons were originally edited on videotape, as per the practice of the day, so that also involved additional work. I have to take a look at the current remaster to see how those episodes stand up, but the stuff originally done on film looks great - and the Lorimar logo is back!

Babylon 5 and SeaQuest both got HD restorations and upscales of the effects, which actually look pretty darned good. Certainly not perfect, but they look miles better than they did on DVD and better than how DS9 and VGR look now.

Nobody in a million years is gonna tell me with a straight face that Babylon 5 and SeaQuest have larger fanbases.

Do new viewers want to sit through SD Star Trek? Who knows? Some do, some don't. I would love to see if showing the original series with the original effects would impact it also, but nobody's gonna bring back the originals to streaming.

 

[Gaith]

Trying to assume three times the amount of consumers would magically appear at price point X is a foolserrand, and is assuming a lot. Accountants and home video execs that are much savvier than I at economics would've easily figured out that math ain't mathing.

Entertainment execs get the math wrong all the time. I can easily picture many more people buying the TNG Blus if they hadn't been so pricey.

 

[Dukhat]

Nobody in a million years is gonna tell me with a straight face that Babylon 5 and SeaQuest have larger fanbases.

Is it about the fanbase, though? Or is it about the cost-to-revenue ratio? Nobody was making tons of money on B5 and SQ DVD sales (or streaming revenue, for that matter), so spending whatever amount of money to upscale them and repackage them as affordable Blurays would have been in their best interests (see next.)

Entertainment execs get the math wrong all the time. I can easily picture many more people buying the TNG Blus if they hadn't been so pricey.

But that's the thing: They had to be pricey to justify their costs to produce them. Could they do it cheaper now? Maybe. But I would think that if it was significantly cheaper to do so now, it would be happening. And of course, there's also the possibility that CBS simply doesn't care about remastering DS9 and VOY.

 

[Gaith]

But that's the thing: They had to be pricey to justify their costs to produce them. Could they do it cheaper now? Maybe. But I would think that if it was significantly cheaper to do so now, it would be happening. And of course, there's also the possibility that CBS simply doesn't care about remastering DS9 and VOY.

Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money. Pricing the sets more modestly may have resulted in upfront losses, but it could also have resulted in more sales over a period of years. Pricing the initial seasons so highly, on the other hand, probably resulted in lots of fans who might have bought more modestly priced sets settling for streaming and/or their old DVD sets until the complete remastered Blu-ray set came out at a reasonable price point.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Is it about the fanbase, though? Or is it about the cost-to-revenue ratio? Nobody was making tons of money on B5 and SQ DVD sales (or streaming revenue, for that matter), so spending whatever amount of money to upscale them and repackage them as affordable Blurays would have been in their best interests (see next.)

Yeah, SeaQuest was already restored and on free streaming platforms before the US blu ray release. It was released in Australia first in HD. The first two DVD seasons didn't exactly sell well enough in the US to get the third season out there until the BD. So I'm not saying you're wrong since apparantly nobody wanted SeaQuest on blu ray but me. Universal also licensed it out, so yep, agreed, since the work was done, there was nothing else for them to lose by having someone pay them to get it out on physical media. However, Universal did put work into the restoration. So they must have felt there was some chance of a ROI in one form or another. Sci-Fi fans will pony up the money.

Babylon 5 was, I believe, restored for streaming first and then tossed out on blu ray in a quick Mega Pack release. That series does have a decent fanbase, larger certainly than SeaQuest.

I still feel that Paramount could extend the life of their remaining two SD shows and at the very least do that kind of upscale for their platform. Once that runs its course a bit, they can pop them out on budget physical copies (budget as in $99 or thereabouts MSRP).

 

[fireproof78]

Sci-Fi fans will pony up the money.

I think this is were I differ; I don't think sci-fi fans will pony up the money. The interest might be there but I'm skeptical as to the willingness that enough fans are are willing to spend the money, and that Paramount are willing to take a loss.

It strikes me as a lose/lose for many but that might be short sighted of me.

 

[DonIago]

Ironically I feel that Trek fans would probably be more willing to put up the money for such a thing if streaming wasn't an option, and if they wanted to watch the older series they had to buy the discs.

It's late at night for me right now, so perhaps I'm not thinking this entirely through.

 

[Firebird]

Pricing the sets more modestly may have resulted in upfront losses, but it could also have resulted in more sales over a period of years.

It's abundantly clear that upfront losses are something that all studios avoid like the plague.