TNG re-released on DVD

[Jonesy]

With upscaling her DVDs will actually look BETTER on a Bluray player...

No, they won't.

When the first season was released on blu-ray, I did a comparison & I took one of the old dvd's and played it (upscaled) through my Oppo BDP-93 to my HD television. It wasn't even close in quality. As a matter of fact, in my opinion - the high definition screen makes it quite obvious how "low rez" the source is.

 

[Talos]

I thought some comparisons would be in order. I grabbed some screencaps from the most recent bluray gallery Trekcore posted and matching shots from the DVD version, upscaled the latter to match the 1080 pixel height of the first, and slapped them together. Two shots each of model work and the actors.

It's not just the resolution, it's things like the color timing (the biggest change to me) and much, much better shadows and black levels.

Spoiler: 1

Spoiler: 2

Spoiler: 3

Spoiler: 4

 

[Doug Otte]

I wonder how many more people out there are like that, that they honestly don't know BluRay players can play DVDs too?

I think a lot of it is more "don't care" as with a lot of tech, it isn't like they are exactly shy about it when advertising BD...

...which they really no longer do! Sadly, given how nice and shiny the picture and sound are, BD, at least here in the UK, has gone as far as it is going to go, and the ill-advised 3D format as well as grossly over-priced has been a bit of a failure. The rise of streaming services and popularity of subscription TV has hit disc sales hard, with £3 a perfectly sensible target price for any film over a year after release on DVD.

I'd say a serious risk now is not so much that the DS9 and VGR remasters won't happen, but at least VGR will probably miss the boat for BD altogether, and we will see it only on download services.

If it also leads to the death of 3D however, I couldn't be happier, it sucks balls.

The figures seem to show BD is gaining ground, or maybe just DVD continues to erode. Here in the US, when they advertise a new movie, they usually say "get it on BD or DVD" w/ BD announced first. However, the news media still have their "DVD review" or "release" sections, where they don't even mention BD. Anecdotally, very few people I know have a BD player, nor do they care. I don't even bother to proselytize any more.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

With upscaling her DVDs will actually look BETTER on a Bluray player...

No, they won't.

When the first season was released on blu-ray, I did a comparison & I took one of the old dvd's and played it (upscaled) through my Oppo BDP-93 to my HD television. It wasn't even close in quality. As a matter of fact, in my opinion - the high definition screen makes it quite obvious how "low rez" the source is.

The only point to upscaling is so that the standard definition image can fill the screen. It doesn't make anything better, it doesn't turn it into HD, just lets it fill the screen.

All HDTVs upscale. They have to do it, because otherwise you'd see a postage-stamp-sized image. The question is, which does it better - the HDTV or the player? And most of the time it's the HDTV.

 

[Start Wreck]

Most TVs have pretty cheap scalers in them, although in my experience plasma TVs are better at displaying SD content than LCDs.
My PS3 upscales SD content better than my TV does, which is understandable given the difference in processing hardware in each.

But, yes, ultimately you are just taking some pixels and trying to make it look like more pixels. It's no substitute for HD.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

I'm certain I'll get loudly shouted down for this, but as a home theatre entusiast of many decades standing I'll offer my opinion nevertheless. In my experience, the better the chipset, the better the final image on screen appears, and yes, that means noticeably and visibly improved picture quality.

I'm not for a nanosecond arguing upscaling can even come close to producing an HD image - I still get a chuckle from various manufacturers marketing hyperbole reference "near HD upscaling" for their budget players!

But, in premium machines, jaggies reduction, deinterlacing etc are definitely performed to a higher standard.

 

[Beta-Z]

To my opinion it all comes down to the used source material on the DVDs.
And the used chipset of course too.
Just take the "Lord of the rings" on DVD f.e.
Upscaled on a proper system (I do that with a Panasonic BD player which manages upscaling quite well imho) the outcome is really remarkable! Still no comparison to the way higher resoluted BDs, but still quite an enhancement over "standard DVD" experience.
When I take the "Lord of the Rings" DVDs and play with the HDMI resolution and switch between 480p and 1080p i can see a hell of a lot of improovement in picture detail there!
Whereas if I do the same with those quite awful TNG-DVDs, all I can see is that the blurry picture looses some sharpness, but that's mostly it, because the source was crap.
Upscaling can't do miracles to bad source material, but it can hugely improove good source stuff that is just restricted due to the DVD standard resolution.

 

[MikeS]

"HD Ready" televisions annoy me. They might aswell say "not HD" television!

 

[Start Wreck]

"HD Ready" televisions annoy me. They might aswell say "not HD" television!

But they are HD, and therefore "ready" for any HD content to be delivered into them.

 

[Tomalak]

"HD Ready" in the UK usually means 720p only. 1080p are marketed as "Full HD". It's a very cheeky marketing trick which I'm surprised the ASA hasn't looked at.

 

[Start Wreck]

Oh right. Well 720p is HD, so it's not false advertising.

Then again, 480/576 was once considered to be "HD". I guess "High" is a relative term.

 

[Tomalak]

Well quite! And for HD TV broadcasts it's fine. But if you want the true "HD" experience from blu-ray, you really need to make sure you're buying the real thing.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

The figures seem to show BD is gaining ground, or maybe just DVD continues to erode. Here in the US, when they advertise a new movie, they usually say "get it on BD or DVD" w/ BD announced first. However, the news media still have their "DVD review" or "release" sections, where they don't even mention BD. Anecdotally, very few people I know have a BD player, nor do they care. I don't even bother to proselytize any more.

from wikipedia on Blu-ray

A study by The NPD Group found that awareness of Blu-ray Disc had reached 60% of U.S. households. Nielsen VideoScan sales numbers showed that for some titles, such as 20th Century Fox's Hitman, up to 14% of total disc sales were from Blu-ray, although the average Blu-ray sales for the first half of the year were only around 5%. In December 2008, the Blu-ray Disc version of The Dark Knight sold 600,000 copies on the first day of its launch in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.[51] A week after the launch, The Dark Knight BD had sold over 1.7 million copies worldwide, making it the first Blu-ray Disc title to sell over a million copies in the first week of release.[52]

Yes I know some people who have Verizon FiOS and have a 55" HDTV and only a DVD player. They watch stuff on DVR in HD or on-demand HD video or Hulu/Netflix streaming in HD. They don't care about Blu-ray but they also do not have a library that they collect or rewatch films.
I have a blu-ray player and only a 720p native 32" HDTV. It is older and having some green LCD issues. I will eventually replace it and be able to see blu-rays on a larger screen in full 1080p.

CBS Home video knows it is their last chance to release Trek TV on Blu-ray in the next 5-10 years.
With shows like Save Me & Untitled Michael J. Fox series being shot and mastered in 4k right now and Breaking Bad being remastered from 35mm to 4k right now there is a very short window on new releases to DVD after 2016.

CBS Home video is getting ENT and TNG out the door on Blu-ray. I can see them doing DS9 and VOY too to make the $ before blu-ray disappears as a physical format to sell the franchise products.

 

[Jonesy]

The only point to upscaling is so that the standard definition image can fill the screen. It doesn't make anything better, it doesn't turn it into HD, just lets it fill the screen.

That is part of it, but you seem to suggest that all upscalers are the same, and none of them offer better upscaling performance from one to another, which would be misleading at best.

 

[JarodRussell]

The only point to upscaling is so that the standard definition image can fill the screen. It doesn't make anything better, it doesn't turn it into HD, just lets it fill the screen.

That is part of it, but you're kind of suggesting that all upscalers are the same, and none of them offer better upscaling performance from one to another, which would be misleading at best.

Performance, yes. Quality, no. No matter what algorithm, making 4 pixels out of 1 pixel will always just be interpolated. And interpolation is never the same quality as full sampling.

 

[USS KG5]

The figures seem to show BD is gaining ground, or maybe just DVD continues to erode.

The second one I believe is the case, the US is a bit ahead of the UK in killing off physical media, so with a lot of people replacing DVD purchases with streaming services and downloads, probably emphasizing Blu Ray when advertising a bit of physical media makes sense.

Anecdotally, very few people I know have a BD player, nor do they care. I don't even bother to proselytize any more.

Same here, Blu has settled into being a niche format, albeit a popular one, but will never approach DVD at it's peak. The catalogue releases are slowing right down now, and while I'd expect to see a Blu release for most new films for the forseeable future, anyone who has not jumped to Blu yet probably won't.

Both formats will probably die out in ten years or so.

 

[Start Wreck]

Performance, yes. Quality, no. No matter what algorithm, making 4 pixels out of 1 pixel will always just be interpolated. And interpolation is never the same quality as full sampling.

How are you differentiating between performance and quality here?

Bicubic interpolation will look "better quality" than bilinear, which will look "better quality" than nearest neighbour, etc. So the quality of the upscaled image can differ depending on the equipment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling