Is Star Trek: The Next Generation Destined For Blu-Ray? - Page 10

Yes, but for some reason, we keep buying the same music, movies, and tv shows that we already own
over and over again as the technology changes.

VHS
Laserdisc
DVD
HD-DVD
iTunes
BluRay

At some point, one makes a personal decision when you own enough different copies of the same thing!

Exactly. Which is why I'll be watching VHS tapes and DVDs for many years to come. I think it's great that people can continue to purchase new technologies if they so choose.

Has anyone done a comparison regarding TOS to determine if the widescreen version includes anything extra on the sides or if the just chopped from the top and bottom?

It really comes down to the "street" price and not the MSRP. But I haven't paid $80 for a single season of any TV show in my collection to date (DVD or blu-ray), so why would I start now. Even the blu-rays of Star Trek TOS and Twilight Zone I picked up cost less then $50 a season, and these went through extensive restoration. And the DS9 DVD's for under $35 a season. So for me $50 is the cut-off for a single season of TNG blu-rays or anything else. Regardless of the initial pricing, i feel pretty certain these will make it under the $50 s a season before too long.

And personally I've never understood the argument comparing pricing now to early days to determine what is reasonable or not. Just because I might have been willing to spend $100 for something back in the 90's has no merit on what I find reasonable today. It all depends on the going market at the time, especially since there is competition for my dollars. In general, the pricing for video was higher back then, then it is now. So if a single season of TNG cost $80 and other titles of equal merit to me are much less, then I will put a priority on the less costly titles.

Fair enough!
 

 

I added this to the review thread but thought I would share it here:

 

 

 

 

Also, this from Trekcore appears to be the Season One cover art...I like it!

 

^^^

That is a very nice comparison. Thanks for sharing it. Nothing there would convince me to go blu-ray, though.

That being said --

It's become quite apparent to me that over the years, I've had much more trouble with DVDs freezing and/or skipping than I ever had with VHS tapes doing anything similar (in other words, breaking down to some extent). I own four DVD players (both regular and multi-regional), and it's a bit cumbersome to have to switch between players in order to rectify freezing and/or skipping problems.

Question: Are there ever any freezing and/or skipping (or comparable) problems with blu-ray? If the answer to this is that the medium is virtually indestructible, then I could eventually see myself making the switch for that reason, but not necessarily because an image is more clear or has (e.g.) better coloring.

Nice to see the comparison. Thanks Neil! It appears most of the opticals are still the same. With the exception of the energy beams and the shield that Q puts up are new CGI effects. The shots of planets from space appears to be the same optical, not a new CGI in one shot from Encounter at Farpoint. The darker shots from Sins of the Father will be interesting to see given the better contrast levels that they'll likely have.

Scott, the only issues I've had with blu ray stem from firmware in the player. As newer discs came out, older players might not have the firmware needed to play the discs, so they may on occasion requite updating. I got my player in 2008, a Sony. And so far, I've only updated it once and I've not had any issues. I figure since Sony is one of the companies pushing blu ray so hard on us, their players had better be good! (I just remembered, I have had a hi-cup with one episode of Mad Men on blu ray. But that's it)

I take care of my discs, I never lend them out. So my discs are indestructable from that point of view. But accidents do happen.

I can understand your reluctance to add blu-ray to your home system. Discs are expensive, but they are coming down fast. Players are getting cheaper all the time. And the cost to replace so many season sets of TV shows is expensive. I only target Star Trek, so I limit my purchases. Plus a few other TV shows. And I am getting copies of favorite movies too on blu ray. And I never sell my DVD copies. I like the fact that I can still play them on my older systems in other rooms. For me, the upgrade to the blu rays of Star Trek TOS are well worth it to me. It feels like I'm almost there on the sound stages at Desilu in 1966. Yes clarity is expected, but color depth is much more amazing to me.

And I'll likely do the same for TNG. The DVDs of TNG look far worse then the DVD's of TOS did.

As an aside, I plan to upgrade to an Oppo blu ray player. Those players are very well regarded for video performance and audio. And can play a greater number of formats. So it will be my hi fidelity CD player and DVD, blu ray and SACD and so on. Of course, you'll need a new pre-amp or receiver to decode the new audio formats. So it never ends.

It's a good comparison, but you have to remember that's a heavy compressed Youtube.. so even then, you're not seeing how good this should really look.   :)  I'm hopeful next tuesday brings me some nice bounty from Amazon!

Nelson,

Thank you. Much appreciated!

I tell myself that everything is relative. I try to remember how the early episodes of TNG looked on my antenna-driven television back in the late eighties. Compared to that, the DVDs look fabulous! But I agree, they pale in comparison to the TOS DVDs.

But then, think about how TOS looked on those antenna driven late 60s TVs. Most were still B/W, and you know that the color sets at the time were nowhere near "reference" calibrated with those light gray shadow mask tube faces and the brightness cranked to 100.

At least with TNG, there was a greater chance of a lot of TVs (though certainly not all) were on cable.

I took a look at the sampler today and the new cover design is on the slipcover, the actual case is a slim keep case. So, hopefully this is the way season one will be also.

Watched classic next gen episode The Inner Light tonight with the family. The HD looks amaaaaazing!! It's better than it ever was before. For me and my wife it was a two tissue episode at the end. The kids liked it too!

From a strictly technical point of view it doesn't matter whether there had ever been considerations for a widescreen remastering of the Next Generation back in 1987 or not.

Fact is that unlike the original series the "action safe" areas in the 35mm camera viewer for shooting TV on film were considered and respected. TNG director Robert Legato stated that explicitly in an interview in CINEFEX # 37.

Thus, the TNG directors made safe that crucial information would only be contained within the "action safe" and "title safe" areas.

What we 'unfortunately' have seen on DVD (and now on the Next Level BD) is the original image from the D1 tapes with all those areas that contain no crucial information and which (at least general) audiences did not see because the overscan of average 4:3 tube television sets cropped off visual information on all four sides of the image.

Many people have either forgotten their original viewing experience from the 90's or have grown so attached to all this insignificant visual information (I can live without looking at the crutches of Data, Worf and Geordi sitting at the Ops command bridge consoles) that they now can't and won't let go of it.

For any widescreen reformatting it is inevitable that the top and bottom parts of the 1.37:1 negative image would be trimmed but would only result in a loss of insignificant picture information we were not even meant to see in the first place (!)

Comparative studies between the original D1 image of the TNG episode "Ménage a Troi" and the widescreen image that had been extracted from the 1.37:1 camera negative for use in an episode of ENTERPRISE (1.78:1 aspect ratio) have revealed that a TNG widescreen aspect ratio of 1.66:1 is definitely possible without interfering or compromising any artistic considerations in terms of picture composition.

Of course, all the extra insignificant visual information at the left and right side of the image is still there (so all the 4:3 purists only loose half of the extra information) but in my opinion it is absolutely preferable to display this extra information on a 16:9 HDTV screen rather than to look at the black void of these big pillarboxes that come with the current 4:3 version.

For those interested, the complete first season is coming to Blu-Ray on July 24. The 13 seconds of missing film from “Sins of the Father” have since been located in a mislabeled box, and the standard definition video will be replaced for the version of the episode in the full season set.

It will be interesting to see these in July. I think the first season had a few good episodes, the second half of the season is stronger. I look forward to it. And the following seasons will be highly anticipated.

With this scheduled for July (earlier than expected), perhaps we'll see the second season before the end of the year. 

That sounds great, I just hope they haven't lost anything else (or, at least, do a season-by-season inventory early enough so that if something is still missing, they'll have enough time to search for it before they feel the need to do an NTSC insert again).