What We Left Behind - Documentary Update Confirms *Some* HD Remastering

[Eric Cheung]

If the DS9 Documentary or DS9 in HD threads were active, I'd post there, but I don't know if they're too old to bump, so I wasn't sure if a new thread was in order.

The documentary team seems to confirm that their ultimate stretch goal of including remastered footage is happening.

[FONT=GillSans]Any luck with DS9 in HD?[/FONT]
[FONT=GillSans]YES! It’s expensive, it’s time-intensive and lengthening our post process… and it’s gosh-darn beautiful. CBS has been partnering with us on this aspect and we can confirm it will *absolutely* be worth the wait.[/FONT]

DS9 Documentary Team Confirms HD Footage is Coming! | TrekCore Blog

As far as the prospects for a total remastering of the series, I remain [FONT=Helvetica Neue]a bit agnostic on whether or not an HD remastering would happen, and remain cautiously optimistic at most. The best hope I've seen is that this documentary's remastering of select process can perhaps illuminate a more efficient way to remaster DS9 with its unique obstacles. If so, that would drive down the costs a little bit, which is important in order to compensate for the expected lower demand that DS9 sets would bring (although a lot of people have discovered it since its release and the documentary could help raise awareness, even if it doesn't drive up interest to TNG levels).

There haven't really been any recent public numbers for the TNG sets, but three years ago, it looked as if it made back half its budget. Since then, it's been repackaged and presumably sold more. Whether it's surpassed its budget by now is unknown.[/FONT]

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I wish CBS was spending their money wisely and giving us DS9 in HD rather than another series of STD

 

[Eric Cheung]

While I think that DS9 hit a sweet spot in terms of being dark but not too dark, serialized but not too serialized, and had great dialogue and character development, I like DSC quite a bit. But even if I didn't like the new show, I would encourage new Trek because I figure that any new fans it brings in increases the chance that those viewers will check out the old shows.

 

[DS9forever]

Great news!

 

[Mage]

I wish CBS was spending their money wisely and giving us DS9 in HD rather than another series of STD

I wish fanboys would stop taking every small change they get to whine about Star Trek Discovery and just not watch it and move on.... Tough t**ties you don't like it. Loads of people do. Wishing something wasn't made so you as a minority could gloat in achieving a goal while a majority can't watch something they really enjoy is really sad.

 

[Firebird]

I wish CBS was spending their money wisely and giving us DS9 in HD rather than another series of STD

DS9 in HD is likely to never pay back, let alone make a profit for CBS. Discovery is profitable before the season even begins.

So, they are spending their money wisely, just not the way you want.

 

[tomswift2002]

DS9 in HD is likely to never pay back, let alone make a profit for CBS. Discovery is profitable before the season even begins.

So, they are spending their money wisely, just not the way you want.

From all the reports out there, DS9 has been profitable for Paramount/CBS since Season 1 (The Making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, page 33, sidebar). So even to do the remaster, with Hollywood accounting, and 20 years of profits behind the show, CBS would still come out on top, and they would stand to make even more profit by being able to charge more for the HD versions than the can currently charge now for the SD versions.

 

[ALF]

As countermeasures, DS9 fans everywhere confirmed *some* excitement.
At the very least, having 'proof of concept' like this that's official will only benefit the cause.

Why can't CBS buy a really big computer that will do the scanning negatives work / upgrade the SFX automatically and much cheaper than TNG? I thought we all lived in the future.

 

[Firebird]

From all the reports out there, DS9 has been profitable for Paramount/CBS since Season 1 (The Making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, page 33, sidebar). So even to do the remaster, with Hollywood accounting, and 20 years of profits behind the show, CBS would still come out on top, and they would stand to make even more profit by being able to charge more for the HD versions than the can currently charge now for the SD versions.

That the show was profitable when it was originally airing is not surprising. We're now talking 25 years later, when the profit to be gained to outweigh the probable EIGHT-figure investment to rebuild DS9 from the ground up (including lots of digital VFX work for the latter seasons) would have to be gained from the home video market. If this were 10 years ago, CBS would stand to get a bit of the money back, but home video is now a dying entity. Plus, sales to Netflix or syndication packages would never fully payback the effort needed to give DS9 the full treatment given to TNG. Additionally, I believe it's pretty well-known that the TNG remastered sets performed well-below what CBS was expecting, which translates to them losing money on the project.

Unless a private backer ponies up the cash, expecting no return on the investment in anything other than a finished product, DS9 in HD will never be a feasible project.

 

[Horizons96]

This is most exciting! My anticipation of this documentary is building!!

I wish fanboys would stop... ...Tough t**ties you don't like it... ...is really sad....

Why can't someone just express their opinion without being jumped on? I think the fact some people feel the need to act so defensively over one benign statement is sad!

 

[Jayson1]

DS9 will be done in HD someday. Only it will happen after I die because God likes to prank me in that way. Kind of like how my soul mate is mot likely living in another state and thus we will never meet or how that time I bought a lottery ticket I am sure I missed a bag of 1 million dollars of cash just laying around outside of the gas station and someone else scooped in and got it.

Jason

 

[Tosk]

it's pretty well-known that the TNG remastered sets performed well-below what CBS was expecting, which translates to them losing money on the project.

One doesn't equal the other. A product can fail to meet expectations without being a loss.

Not that I'm saying they'd jump at the chance to make only minimal profit, but we don't know for sure what their actual profit or loss was on TNGR.

 

[Mage]

This is most exciting! My anticipation of this documentary is building!!

Why can't someone just express their opinion without being jumped on? I think the fact some people feel the need to act so defensively over one benign statement is sad!

Because the entire forum is filled with people saying that want Disco to stop because they don't like and it get something else in return. Which is fine in itself, but dude, people are posting whiny stuff about Disco in just about every other thread there is and it's getting kinda old. It's here to stay for atleast another season, and it's popular with a quite a big following. Deal with it.

 

[Jayson1]

Because the entire forum is filled with people saying that want Disco to stop because they don't like and it get something else in return. Which is fine in itself, but dude, people are posting whiny stuff about Disco in just about every other thread there is and it's getting kinda old. It's here to stay for atleast another season, and it's popular with a quite a big following. Deal with it.

You got people who praise it in great deal as well. It's only naturally that people are going to disagree. Toss in the fact that people enjoy nitpicking and complaining it's not a big deal.

Jason

 

[Mage]

You got people who praise it in great deal as well. It's only naturally that people are going to disagree. Toss in the fact that people enjoy nitpicking and complaining it's not a big deal.

Jason

That's not the issue. The issue is some fans taking EVERY chance they get to complain. This is a topic about DS9, in the DS9 section of the forum. No need to bring whinewhine in here.

 

[Qonundrum]

I wish fanboys would stop taking every small change they get to whine about Star Trek Discovery and just not watch it and move on....

That is a fair point. They are different shows and STD, so far, is more likely to pull in a profit faster.Despite each episode costing $8-$10 million to make.

DS9-R would indeed recoup costs, for home video AND streaming venues, but would simply take a little more time. At least media press of recent has been very kind to the show and giving it recognition it deserves. It is estimated at $20 million to do, and many CGI assets still exist. 2 episodes from 1 year of STD in exchange for 7 seasons' worth of DS9 where every DS9 season is twice that of STD? How is that somehow an evil proposition when STD has ~13 episodes per season but DS9 has 26? DS9 is a bargain.

So, pardon my copping dialogue from STD, "That is (bleep)in' cool!"

Tough t**ties you don't like it. Loads of people do. Wishing something wasn't made so you as a minority could gloat in achieving a goal while a majority can't watch something they really enjoy is really sad.

Here's where a need to disagree is formed. Using naughty words followed by what could be perceived a nose-up attitude. Is this an example of what Earth people call "democracy"?

 

[tomswift2002]

That the show was profitable when it was originally airing is not surprising. We're now talking 25 years later, when the profit to be gained to outweigh the probable EIGHT-figure investment to rebuild DS9 from the ground up (including lots of digital VFX work for the latter seasons) would have to be gained from the home video market. If this were 10 years ago, CBS would stand to get a bit of the money back, but home video is now a dying entity. Plus, sales to Netflix or syndication packages would never fully payback the effort needed to give DS9 the full treatment given to TNG. Additionally, I believe it's pretty well-known that the TNG remastered sets performed well-below what CBS was expecting, which translates to them losing money on the project.

Unless a private backer ponies up the cash, expecting no return on the investment in anything other than a finished product, DS9 in HD will never be a feasible project.

Even in the present whenever Disney re-releases Snow White they try to say that it still hasn’t made a profit, because they add the new home video/promotion costs to the original costs. That’s Hollywood accounting 101. However, with DS9 and TNG we have a case where CBS can not make that claim, since even to add TNG’s remastering to the original 80’s/90’s cost, CBS would still be showing a huge profit.

And the last official update that we had on TNG’s Blu Rays was way back in December 2012. Since then CBS has been dead quiet on how the sets performed. All that we’ve heard is from a 3rd party.

As for Syndication, it’s still alive, not to mention the more lucrative network option which CBS currently has for all the live-action series here in Canada with Bell/CTV.

But considering that CBS is letting a separate entity include HD scans in an upcoming documentary, I think CBS May be waiting till the doc is released to announce further plans (or, considering what’s going on with the novels, there might be something corporately at CBS that has held up any news on DS9 HD) or release a set.

But besides Blu-Ray, DS9 might just go streaming for HD—-they could still offer it for free for people through Amazon Prime or Apple TV, as long as the could sell ads to different advertisers.

 

[kkt]

If what they charged customers for the blu ray of TNG wasn't enough to get them their hoped-for rate of return, I really don't think ads alone would provide that rate of return either. For the project to make a decent rate of return, they'll need every possible revenue stream: ads from streaming, sales of discs, another round of merchandising, and anything else they can think of. Manufacturing and distributing discs is not that expensive a process, and some fans (like me) would give it a miss if it's only available streaming.

 

[tomswift2002]

If what they charged customers for the blu ray of TNG wasn't enough to get them their hoped-for rate of return, I really don't think ads alone would provide that rate of return either. For the project to make a decent rate of return, they'll need every possible revenue stream: ads from streaming, sales of discs, another round of merchandising, and anything else they can think of. Manufacturing and distributing discs is not that expensive a process, and some fans (like me) would give it a miss if it's only available streaming.

Ads would do it. The average cost to air a 30 second ad on national TV was $123,000 USD in 2016. So times that by 14 for 7 minutes of ads, CBS would be bringing in over $1 million dollars an episode, and that wouldn’t include what the TV station would sell to its local clients.

 

[Firebird]

Ads would do it. The average cost to air a 30 second ad on national TV was $123,000 USD in 2016. So times that by 14 for 7 minutes of ads, CBS would be bringing in over $1 million dollars an episode, and that wouldn’t include what the TV station would sell to its local clients.

Second-run syndicated series do not generate the level of ad revenue you're thinking of. It appears most of the money is generated from the sale of the rights to a specific station to air the series: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Syndication

There's also the case of "barter time," where stations sell ad space to the studio, rather than buy distribution rights to a less-than-popular series: http://filmescape.com/how-does-tv-syndication-really-work

In addition to license fees, there’s also another type of payment known as barter time. This is money generated from ad revenue. With a license fee, the station will pay the studio cash upfront and make its own money by selling ad space within each airing (just like how TV networks make money). But sometimes, a station may want a show that wasn’t as big of a hit as FRIENDS and doesn’t want to shoulder the risk of airing it. So to hedge this risk, the station will not pay cash upfront but instead offer the studio its own ad space to sell. This is riskier for the syndicators, but if the show garners great viewership, they stand to make a lot more money than a straight license fee.