Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Any Plans For a Remaster? (1 Viewer)

[hotdvd]

I want to order a Star Trek: The Next Generation box set and have read some bad reviews about howthe Star trek Complete Series set was packaged. What I'd really like to know is are there any differences in DVD content, if they include the same things, I might choose to buy the Seasons set just for better packaging. Event if it is much more expensive.

 

[AmsterdamEric]

Guaranteed there will be HD remaster of All of the Star Trek series.
Why would they not? It is Paramount's most lucrative franchise.
TV is made on film, which makes it easy to remaster in HD 16:9.
They had it on VHS.... did they not sell it to us on DVD? We already it, or I did at least, the series on VHS. I still have the tapes.
Why would they not try and sell it to us in h.264 on itunes and AMAZON? The beatles sold us 45 RP singles, Record Albums, and then CDs.
Then it was not available until last year in any other form but CD...on purpose.
Until Apple Computers bought Apple Records, settling a 30 year battle over the name Apple, and voila, the Beatles are available for download!
I thought itw
Silly whenever someone says "never."
I remember in 1998 someone saying of Apple Laptops," there will never be a PowerBook with a g-3 (yes G-3).
Then there were 4 laptops with g3 processors, followed by 6 models with G-4 processors, followed by more models with faster, dual core processors.
Never is a BIG word on the Internet.
Please try and use it carefully.
Eric Johnson

 

[smithb]

Guaranteed there will be HD remaster of All of the Star Trek series.
Why would they not? It is Paramount's most lucrative franchise.
TV is made on film, which makes it easy to remaster in HD 16:9.

Not as easy when effects were generated in SD (not HD) in post processing. Thus, requiring the effects to be redone if properly ported to HD and not just an upconversion. That is why many have questioned if the transistion would be made. TOS made it to HD first but it never went through the same SD process as the later series. However, they did redo many of the effects. Now that TNG is being attempted there is hope for the later series as well. But the driver is most likely future syndication in HD more then anything else. I agree that Star Trek has always been lucrative to Paramount so it will get to HD at some point. But it may be just syndication and streaming by the time DS9 gets done.
Remember Firefly and Farscape made it to Bluray but the effects were only upconverted.

 

[Nelson Au]

As I understand it, Apple Corp, the record company of The Beatles and Apple Inc, formerly Apple Computers are still separate companies. It is nice they finally reached an agreement (after a thousand years) and The Beatles albums are now available on Apple iTunes.
The remastering of The Next Generation should be very interesting to watch. Already there is a report that footage could not be found for the episode Sins of The Father. About 13 seconds of the original footage have not been found, so they have to up convert that section. Hopefully, this is the only incident.
So as far as Deep Space Nine is concerned, if they have to do the same effort of reassembling the actual film footage to reconstruct each episode, including the original optical effects, missing footage could also be the case. Also interesting is that I don't know if the CGI effects of the later seasons are rendered at 480 or higher? There's a lot of battle sequences to either recreate or re-render if the files still exist.
It could be like the case of Star Trek The Motion Picture Directors Cut and it's 2001 CGI effects were not rendered at 1080.
PS: I did some reading, the lost 13 secs may still be found by the time the season set this episode appears in makes it to release. The 13 secs of up converted material will appear in the 4 episode sampler set due in January.

 

[Mark Collins]

I hope they put TNG in the fast track and then begin with DS9.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I find Amazon.com's policy of replacing primary listings with MarketPlace sellers intensely annoying - probably more so than others because I am outside of the USA and often find that "bargain prices" are unusable because the sellers only ship domestically. This sometimes happens even when fulfillment is by Amazon and in that case the only way to check is to put it in the basket and get told "we are unable to ship this item to your address"
IMHO the primary listing should always be sold and fulfilled by Amazon, marketplace sellers always be in the "New and used" subsection.

Of course, I have the exact opposite problem (Amazon UK making the primarly listing for a certain DVD being a marketplace seller, but 'fulfilled by Amazon'). I personally feel that on those "fulfilled by Amazon" listings that, if Amazon themselves are really doing the fulfillment, then there's no good reason that the item shouldn't be shipped to any country that Amazon themselves will ship to. The "unable to ship to your address" on a "fulfilled-by" item is, IMO, idiotic in the extreme.
I don't know how many times I've placed an item in my UK shopping cart, only to go halfway through checkout only to be told to remove the item from my basket or change my address.
Another fault I see with Marketplace is that there is on incentive to buy multiple items from the same seller. At least on eBay's similar site (half.com), you get to deduct a dollar from the shipping fee for each additional item you order from the same seller.

 

[Comp625]

I've been going through another DS9 marathon blast the last few months. I'm up to S6 now and just saw In the Pale Moonlight and His Way.  I'm watching on a 50" plasma and an upscaling Sony blu ray player. And I've been watching mostly in the daylight in a bright room. It holds up pretty well in those conditions. During the night club sequences during His Way where Odo and Vic are on stage and the blue spot light is on them in the smoke filled room, the image does suffer. Detail is harder to render. But overall, it's still very watchable.  Later, in Vic's room when he's talking to Odo, detail is better looking, the room is brighter lit. I look at hair and fabrics. As the Romulan Senator said, the upscaled blu ray version of DS9 on the TOS S2 season set of Trial and Tribble-ations is a "Faaaake!" It was watchable though, it's tolerable and I usually get into the story and forget about it. Interesting comment above about how TOS had relatively few effects shots compared to the modern series,. that's true. I can image what a hassle it would be to find original filmed pieces for The Best of Both Worlds. You'd not only need all the live action, but blue screen shots where Picard is standing in the front of the view screen when he tells Worf to tell the Admiral that they've engaged the Borg. Or when he's Locutis and in front of a process shot of the interior Borg ship behind and in front of him.  For now, I'm pretty happy to have the sets of every Star Trek series. And elated to have my favorite series, TOS in HD with and without the enhancements.

My girlfriend and I have been rewatching The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine via Netflix, and the strobing (a.k.a. shimmery) effect is AWFUL. I define this strobing effect as a weird flickering that is VERY apparent during horizontal camera pans. For my own curiosity, I bought a DS9 episode from Amazon VOD for $1.99 -- "The Search, Part I" to be exact (since it features some gorgeous visual effects). Low and behold, NO STROBING EFFECT!! This whole time, I thought it was my TV (Panasonic 46" GT25 plasma) or my player (PlayStation 3) causing the strobing - phew!! Also, my receiver shows Multichannel 5.1 PCM through Amazon VOD, whereas it reports PCM 2.0 upmixed to Dolby PLII when watched on Netflix. Not to mention, the image quality of the DS9 episode seemed ever-so-slightly sharper on Amazon VOD instead of Netflix. Maybe sharper isn't the right word, but rather, Netflix's quality seemed like they recorded it off of TV back in 1994, while Amazon VOD's seem ripped straight from the DVD collection. Question 1: Since the PS3 upscales DVDs, how does TNG or DS9 look when upconverted? Would anyone be willing to take high-quality screen caps of an episode on DVD upscaled and compare it against a screen-cap from Netflix and/or Amazon VOD? I am tempted to plop $200 +/- for the DS9 box set, especially knowing that a remaster won't even begin until at least 2015. Question 2: Is there a fix for this strobing, even if temporarily? I've toyed with every setting on the TV and PS3. Unfortunately, nothing seems to fix the strobing and it only affects certain (older) Standard Definition titles in NetFlix.

 

[Harry-N]

I'm pretty much a DVD guy, with only limited experience with streaming, and I've never used Netflix or Amazon VOD. The DS9 DVDs are not great, but on my upscaling Blu-Ray player and 55" TV they are quite watchable. There isn't any studdering on horizontal pans that I can recall - no worse than on any DVD. The worst part of DS9 on DVD is the digital after-effects of noise reduction. There are a lot of dark scenes in the series - lots of caves on the Planet Hell set - and just dark places in general. When they applied noise reduction for the DVDs, on these dark scenes, you'll occasionally be focused in on a shadowed face. As the face moves in speech or reaction, you can see the blocky effects of this noise reduction as part of the face moves while the rest is locked in. That said, I'd still recommend the DVDs over other methods, but that's just me. I get full 5.1 sound (or stereo is an option too), and find the series quite watchable. It also seemed to improve as the series went on, so Season 7 looks better than Season 1. The same applies to TNG on DVD. The latter seasons looked better. Harry

 

[Ethan Riley]

Just wanted to know if anyone had picked up the new boxed set. It's only about 80 bucks on amazon right now. Does anyone have it? Is the quality any better than the older versions?

 

[jcroy]

IIRC looking at the discs on the computer, the timestamps on the discs in the low-budget shelf-friendly complete series set, date back to the early-mid 2000s.

They appear to just be straight represses of the old discs.

So nothing new here, other than the packaging and lower price.

 

[jcroy]

To be more exact, the season 1 and 2 discs had timestamps from December 2002 and January 2003. The season 7 discs have timestamps from September 2003.

These are most likely just straight duplicates of the old DS9 discs from 14 years ago, repackaged into several of those large 20-21 disc cases.

 

[BaconFat]

I sure wish they'd distribute a high quality HD version of DS9. Besides watching the original Star Trek, DS9 was the only other franchise series I watched. Used to make sure I was always home on Saturday just to watch it.

 

[Carabimero]

I sure wish they'd distribute a high quality HD version of DS9. Besides watching the original Star Trek, DS9 was the only other franchise series I watched. Used to make sure I was always home on Saturday just to watch it.

You can look forward to a DS9 documentary next year. All signs point to excerpts from the show being presented in HD. This appears to be shaping up into a first class show on par with FOR THE LOVE OF SPOCK.

 

[bmasters9]

IIRC looking at the discs on the computer, the timestamps on the discs in the low-budget shelf-friendly complete series set, date back to the early-mid 2000s.

They appear to just be straight represses of the old discs.

So nothing new here, other than the packaging and lower price.

Somewhat like that all-in-one of The Munsters-- is that right?