Star Trek TOS Season 2 HD-DVD- March 25th tentative release (1 Viewer)

[FrancisP]

It sounds like Toshiba was licensing it rather than Paramount releasing it. I have the first season coming and I have no regrets about ordering it. It is a shame that it did not get through the second season at least. As to bluray, my attitude is simple, NO SALE. Not even for Star Trek.

 

[Jari K]

The "s1"-set has both "CBS DVD" and "Paramount Home Entertainment" logos. Haven´t seen "CBS DVD" listed before in the DVD/HD-releases (perhaps I´ve just missed something)..

 

[Douglas Monce]

CBS is technically a separate company from Paramount, the parent company being Viacom. Paramount Home Video is supposed to handle all theatrical films and CBS is supposed to handle the television library. Star Trek was their first HD title. This is one of the reasons that there was no announcement about Star Trek feature films on HD, they are handled by separate companies.

Doug

 

[Nelson Au]

The news that surprised me, as I had not seen it before, is that Toshiba was invested in the HD-DVD manufacturing of the Remastered Star Trek. So licensing, as mentioned above is probably the right way to describe it, as CBS was paying for the Remastering of the episodes for the 40th Anniversary and syndication broadcast.

This will be interesting to see how this falls out. I don't have an investment in whether it's HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. I do own S1 on HD-DVD. Either format will be fine, as long as we find out Star Trek TOS will finish it's release onto HDM! Since it's BD now, I hope S1 will be re-issued so all 3 seasons are consistant. As with all new technology, this is just part of the bumps along the road.

 

[Jason_V]

I can't imagine CBS not reissuing the first season in BD. I mean, how many times was TOS issued on DVD? The original 40 volumes, then the season boxes... The HD DVD version is only one for HDM. There has to be another.

 

[Nelson Au]

Yes, just a matter of when. Don't forget laserdisc and videotape. I still have my LD's of Trek!

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I think there's a lot of confusion here because of a poorly worded article. Toshiba has nothing to do with Re-mastering Trek, this is being done entirely by CBS and they'll continue to do it and sell it into syndication as it has gotten great ratings. This was put in motion before both formats were even in place.

It would seem Toshiba, as far as we can tell from the news, was only paying for/ or actually performing the encoding of the episodes for their HD-DVD release, in an effort to promote their encoding technology.

 

[Doug Schiller]

Very hard for me to beleive. I would have thought they are 98% done with this product being so close to release date. What is there to pull? Box art?

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Even if Toshiba was paying just the costs of putting it on HD-DVD (interactive features, encoding, packaging, and disc replication) that is still a lot of upfront money to try to recoup on sales of Bluray that CBS will now have to pay for. CBS has the advantage of hard sales numbers and price points to make a decision. Even if we give Bluray double the number of S1 sales over HD-DVD, is that enough to make a profit worthy of the effort or should they just hold off until later? The days of Sony and Toshiba subsidies are over and we are back to almost strict profit/loss/opportunity cost decision making on releases.

 

[ReggieW]

I will wait until I hear something official on this from CBS. IF S2 is done, then I think they should go ahead and release it. Afterall, it is a combo release, so it can easily be stocked in the SD-DVD section as S1 was at some retail outlets. I personally think CBS might as well finish S2 & S3 since they double as the SD release anyway (unless CBS has plans of doing a SD only release down the road). The only thing is that CBS will have to drop the msrp by at least $50.00.

.....They'll also have to start releasing these sets on BD at some point in the future.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Actually we weren't close to the release date. The date had been pushed back from March 25th to "sometime this summer".

Doug

 

[Paul Arnette]

On top of that, the release date of the prequel movie itself has been pushed back to summer 2009. Therefore, it could be quite a while before we see either Star Trek TOS S1 or 2 on Blu-ray Disc.

 

[Nelson Au]

By that reckoning, the new Star Trek film would be released on blu-ray in November of 2009 (I almost wrote HD-DVD!). This is based on what I've seen as a 6 month period after a film opens to when it's released on DVD. Though Transformers was released in July 3rd, if that's correct and was on DVD and HD-DVD in November, four months between film and HD-DVD. I guess time frames have shrunk.

So Star Trek 2009 could be on BD in September or October. And that could mean TOS S2 and S1 could be on BD at a similar time if they decide to tie the releases together to cross promote. And by that date, the Remastered Series will have completed it's syndication first run on broadcast. This is just conjecture on my part.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Considering that was done after the Warner announcement for all we know that was code for "HD-DVD is dead but we don't want to let the cat out of the bag just yet and we are not sinking another dollar into it."

 

[Douglas Monce]

I'd like to see them releasing season three on blu-ray by the time the movie comes out. I'm assuming they can find a way to adapt the interactive features to blu-ray's java format.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Possibly. But the encodes of the episodes themselves are probably already done and are usable on blu-ray as well as HD DVD, the issue is adapting the interactive features.

Doug

 

[Chuck Anstey]

But we are now back to the question of who owns those encodes? Toshiba may have given CBS the money to get them to do the "killer app" so CBS owns them or Toshiba may have paid for the rights to produce it on HD-DVD and they may own the encodes.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I doubt that Toshiba owns them. More likely is that was one of those "incentives" that got Paramount to go HD DVD exclusive.

Doug

 

[Paul Arnette]

True. However, I can't imagine Toshiba not 'selling the rights' to those encodes to Blu-ray Disc should they own them. Afterall, they're pretty useless to Toshiba otherwise.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I doubt that there are any "rights to the encodes" to speak of. If anything it would be in Toshiba's best interest for CBS to use the same encodes as it's a format neutral matter and they could still very well sell their kit or w/e it is for Blu-ray use.