WTF, TAS getting Blu-Ray and DS9 not?
- Thread starter Photon
- Start date
Well... apparently not all that easy, because now it's three years later and no work is being done.
The comment about all the assets being there and re-rendering would be easy has been around for years now. And yes, technically, it would be. But you still need to invest time and money into actually doing that. Then, all the remastering of the actual footage needs to happen. That is also not cheap. The costs are still to high.
And as usual it comes down to money. TNG didn't fare as well as hoped, the suits seeing far less profit for their return. They look at the ratings of DS9 compared to TNG and decided that at the moment it's not worth the outlay.
Lucasfilm were planning a 3D converted re-release of all six Star Wars movies, but the disappointing returns from the 3D Phantom Menace put paid to that idea. They were pretty sure that people would almost certainly pay through the nose to see the Original Trilogy in 3D on the big screen, but they couldn't justify the costs of remastering all five other movies on the off-chance that maybe the reason people didn't TPM was due to the fact that they had copies they could watch at home.
Lucasfilm were planning a 3D converted re-release of all six Star Wars movies, but the disappointing returns from the 3D Phantom Menace put paid to that idea. They were pretty sure that people would almost certainly pay through the nose to see the Original Trilogy in 3D on the big screen, but they couldn't justify the costs of remastering all five other movies on the off-chance that maybe the reason people didn't TPM was due to the fact that they had copies they could watch at home.
Starting with The Phandom Menace was clearly the problem. Bad business sense.
If they'd started with An New Hope and then maybe did the 3D re-releases in order of original release (ANH, ESB, RTJ, TPM, AOC, ROS) instead of chronology order, then maybe they'd have had a better chance. Order maybe they'd have only got as far as four movies in, but at least we'd have had the OT in 3D. 
Starting with The Phandom Menace was clearly the problem. Bad business sense.
IIRC the reason they started with the Prequel Trilogy was that with mainly CGI and digital sets it was easier (and mainly cheaper!) to do the 3D conversion process than The Original Trilogy. Almost certainly starting with a New Hope would have been the way to go, but studio heads tend to be more cautious regarding the bottom line.
Jurassic Park got the 3D treatment, but I don't think they even considered the release and conversion of The Lost World and/or Jurassic Park III, so this probably points to the fact that had Lucasfilm waited to do IV,V and VI it would have been a success.
Even though it aired on a network, Voyager was still aired in Syndication at the same time. When I saw my first Voyager episodes during the summer of 1996, it was on FOX WUHF Rochester, and it was usually on Saturday afternoons, right after DS9. As I recall on Saturday afternoons WUHF would air TNG, DS9 and Voyager in a 3-hour block.
As for TAS, while a Blu-Ray is nice, personally for me when I watch More Tribbles, More Troubles on the TOS Season 2 Blu-Ray and compare it to its 480p DVD version, aside from seeing the edges of the animation cells pulling across the screen during the opening credits when the Enterprise zips left to right, I don't really see the benefit of upgrading to HD. But I think that for me, its just animation in general that doesn't really benefit from an HD upgrade. Good Quality 480p upgrade, yes, 1080p upgrade, not really! Even when I look at animated shows that have been upconverted to 1080p like A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, It's Magic, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, The Mayflower Voyages, Frosty The Snowman, Looney Tunes, I just don't see that much of a difference in terms of resolution between the 480p DVD versions and the 1080p Blu-Ray versions, unlike live-action stuff where you are watching a 3-D image that is squashed into a 2-D plane of viewing.
Also there is no comparison between TAS getting a 'upgrade' to HD, which if anything will only make the technical faults of its original production more apparent not less, and the mammoth project required to revisit DS9, which means having to recomposite all the visual effects, etc etc. The former is a cheap n' cheerful rescan of existing elements, the latter a much more ambitious prospect. Which doesn't make it impossible , only unlikely .
It's just been confirmed that the BBC's release of the 1996 Doctor Who movie on blu ray is an upscale, as were the releases of the new series 1-4, as will be the release of Red Dwarf. Admittedly these are isolated cases sofar, but if releasing upscales of SD product on Blu Ray is no longer an issue within the industry as a whole, then chances of a DS9 release become a lot better. TAS getting an HD scan is something different again.
It's just been confirmed that the BBC's release of the 1996 Doctor Who movie on blu ray is an upscale, as were the releases of the new series 1-4, as will be the release of Red Dwarf. Admittedly these are isolated cases sofar, but if releasing upscales of SD product on Blu Ray is no longer an issue within the industry as a whole, then chances of a DS9 release become a lot better. TAS getting an HD scan is something different again.
TAS was actually upgraded to HD in 2006 for the DVD release. All the advertisements at the time were mentioning that the series had been "Remastered In High-Definition".
It's just been confirmed that the BBC's release of the 1996 Doctor Who movie on blu ray is an upscale, as were the releases of the new series 1-4, as will be the release of Red Dwarf. Admittedly these are isolated cases sofar, but if releasing upscales of SD product on Blu Ray is no longer an issue within the industry as a whole, then chances of a DS9 release become a lot better. TAS getting an HD scan is something different again.
DS9 has already had a test release of an episode in HD. On my Blu-Ray's the episode was presented in 480p, but others have reported that other TOS Season 2 Blu-Ray's have a 1080p upscale of the Trials and Tribble-ations episode from the D2 master. Unfortunately people were not impressed.
But I've also heard of other TV series not having success on Blu-Ray. The recent North American reissues of the 1990's Japanese anime Sailor Moon has been using, even compared to the 1990's DIC masters, sub-par, de-interlaced Digital Betacam transfers of the original 16mm film, even though other countries have seen more recent 1080p and upconverted 480p transfers on Blu-Ray. Of course some stuff just has to be upscaled for HD, whether it is Blu-Ray or streaming, such as the 6 episodes of the 1950's/60's Twilight Zone that were shot on videotape and had to be upconverted to 1080i (and clearly the tapes are superior to the 16mm copies that have been in syndication since the 1960's).
I absolutely love the sharp look of animation in high definition. After watching Looney Tunes on blu-ray, I will never go back to DVD again for as long as I live (except for those cases where a certain work is only available on DVD).
I will have to check out Trials and Tribble-ations on the TOS blu ray set again. I could have sworn mine was in 480p, but maybe it was upscaled. Anyway, it looked quite mediocre, and I was immensely disappointed.
Kor
I will have to check out Trials and Tribble-ations on the TOS blu ray set again. I could have sworn mine was in 480p, but maybe it was upscaled. Anyway, it looked quite mediocre, and I was immensely disappointed.
Kor
I've yet to see anything to back up that claim. I'd be very interested in being proven wrong though.
I'm very sorry for bumping such a beaten and tired topic of discussion, but I'm very very surprised to hear this, also surprised at how far under-the-radar it's gone. If true, it could really increase the chances of seeing DS9 in HD (which would still be very small after the fact). Scanning the film elements for each episode would be costly as well as re-rendering and re-compositing all of the visual effects in HD, but as far as I know, most, if not all, of the CG assets were retained by Robert Bonchune of Foundation Imaging and Doug Drexler.As for the re-editing or HD conform of the show from original film elements, that should be much less of a headache than TNG was, as DS9 was made completely in the era of Kodak KeyKode which imprinted a frame specific, digitally-read barcode onto the edge of the o-neg film. This system was specifically implemented to facilitate automated conforms using original film elements. It likely wouldn't be any more difficult than the HD conform of THE X-FILES, which began shooting around the same time, at least for the live-action assembly.
Finding all the specific shots for each episode of TNG and putting them together, essentially re-editing the entire show, was a hell of a lot of work for that project. The majority of the work. To hear that DS9 and VOY were fully time coded is actually pretty big, it doesn't guarantee anything but it definitely makes things a lot easier. In fact, I'd almost say it makes DS9 and VOY easier to remaster than TNG, as long as the CG assets are retained for those shows as people have been saying.
The only thing really stopping them is TNG Blu-ray sales, and unfortunately, that's by far the most important factor.
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It's just been confirmed that the BBC's release of the 1996 Doctor Who movie on blu ray is an upscale, as were the releases of the new series 1-4, as will be the release of Red Dwarf. Admittedly these are isolated cases sofar, but if releasing upscales of SD product on Blu Ray is no longer an issue within the industry as a whole, then chances of a DS9 release become a lot better. TAS getting an HD scan is something different again.
The upscaling to get one last gulp of sales out of physical media is DEEPLY cynical, even by the standards of BBC Worldwide.
The benefits are at best extremely marginal, and achievable in streaming anyway. The upscaled Blus are really just an excuse to gouge collectors who always want the "best" quality.
Don't get me wrong, as many replies will say no-one is forcing anyone to buy anything, and people like having the choice of a DVD with MPEG artefacts and an upscaled Blu without them etc, and that is totally fair comment.
However - upscaled Blus are a deeply cynical product. It isn't just BBC Worldwide either, the movie industry is basically doing the same with 4K Blu Ray (and if HDR can be achieved so easily, why have we had TVs with piss-poor contrast for so long?) and the re-release of every credible album in a £60-£100 box set? Naff off.
Give me Netflix and Spotify and my media needs are complete!
The BBC do seem to have made it a policy now, though. They're not even slightly ashamed, in fact the Doctor Who movie proclaims on the back cover that "The Feature On This Disc Has Been Upscaled". (Admittedly this is probably a legal requirement for trading standards reasons, but they're not even slightly trying to hide the fact that the difference in quality will be negligible to most people.)
I've got a home theater setup so when blown up to big screen size resolution and shown on my projector then, yes, a "compression free" version of the TVM looks fabulous compared to the DVD. But to any Joe Schmoe watching on their standard TV set, the differences are likely to be much less obvious.
I guess that's where I see the biggest difference on Deep Space Nine DVD's vs. Netflix. The compression artifacts are almost completely gone on the latter. It really does improve the experience substantially. Though I wouldn't be willing to buy DS9 or Voyager again based on that alone.
As has been mentioned here regularly - for most people even the difference in quality between DVD and Blu on a brand new film, where to me it looks very clear, is unimportant.
In fact, there is a very strong argument that Blu Ray as a format has sorta failed. Sure, it didn't fill a tiny niche like laserdisc, but it also utterly failed to replace DVD.
Whisper it - but as a mainstream format sold in your local supermarket, DVD might well outlive Blu. Certainly (and unscientifically) my local supermarkets are devoting less space than they have for a long time to Blu Ray compared to DVD!
Did people expect Blu-ray to replicate DVD's success?
I wouldn't call the format a failure at all. There still seems to be a very large market for such a "niche" product.
That's because studios never had the faith to move away from DVD, the way they did from VHS.
Wow.. you are local to me.
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