Doctor Who: Tom Baker Complete First Season (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

The old series actually runs at 50FPS (aside from Spearhead from Space of course) so that would be a complete disaster.

It's 50 interlaced fields (every other line) alternating each second, which translates to 25 frames per second -- it's the same thing being described in different terms. NTSC expressed this way is 59.94.

Plenty of SD/PAL 576i/50 material or even HD 25fps looks perfectly fine being transferred to US standards IF it's done correctly -- not perfect, but it can be quite good. It all depends on the conversion competance

Agreed.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Unfortunately there is currently zero information about this release.

The original listing showed up on Best Buy, as a March release. That was pulled, and other retailers showed an October release. Now they’re back to a March date.

And big questions.

Is this HD, or SD on a Blu-Ray?

likely, SD upscaled to HD.

If HD, is it 1080p or 1080i? 50i or 60i?

unfortunately, 1080p/24fps is likely (could be pitch-corrected, but also perhaps not)

If HD, will it just be an upscale, or will the film segments be rescanned at HD resolution?

The only film from season 12 that exists is the title sequence, so, no.

Would any upscaling be from the UK or Us versions?

Surely from the UK digital masters.

Will any of the prior extras be included? Any new extras?

Anybody's guess, there.

So much unknown

so true.

 

[David Norman]

l
unfortunately, 1080p/24fps is likely (could be pitch-corrected, but also perhaps not)
.

The pitch correction is the one thing I think we can count on. That seems to be the one thing that BD has pretty much done on almost
all major releases compared with DVD releases from the old days.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

The pitch correction is the one thing I think we can count on. That seems to be the one thing that BD has pretty much done on almost
all major releases compared with DVD releases from the old days.

Probably from the BBC, but I have seen releases where the sound was not pitch-corrected, the series 7 blu-ray of Doc Martin being a prime example. It was not pitch corrected for blu-ray or US television. The distinctly lower pitch on all voices is very aggravating (everyone sounds worse than 'drunk Trump' from Jimmy Kimmel). The only way to get normal sound is to buy the UK DVD release (which is in PAL/50hz).

This is the exact opposite problem you get with PAL DVDs of feature films. Instead of PAL-speedup, we've now got 24fps slowdown!

Also, even though pitch-correction fixes the voices, it is my understanding that it does not fix the music, so if you're finely-attuned to how a show's music is supposed to sound, you will notice a difference.

I don't understand the US's obsession with making everything progressive rather than interlaced (which is why we're getting these 24fps discs instead of 60i). I know I'd much rather have interlaced video with audio at the correct speed than something that has to be slowed just for the sake of making it progressive format.

 

[David Norman]

I guess maybe the exception. I haven';t gotten to S7 or 8 yet. I looked at a couple reviews for the BD and nobody mentioned the audio wasn't the correct pitch. It's also very unusual with Acorn who normally have produced very nice discs

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Probably from the BBC, but I have seen releases where the sound was not pitch-corrected, the series 7 blu-ray of Doc Martin being a prime example. It was not pitch corrected for blu-ray or US television. The distinctly lower pitch on all voices is very aggravating (everyone sounds worse than 'drunk Trump' from Jimmy Kimmel). The only way to get normal sound is to buy the UK DVD release (which is in PAL/50hz).

Oh, no, the BBC can screw up, too.

The R1 Red Dwarf X DVDs I bought had everyone sounding they were on quaaludes, just like Doc Martin season 6 had. And that was when I switched to R2 releases for both, foregoing the possibility of HD in the future.

But, both shows aren't exactly fully available on Blu anyway, so it wasn't a major decision.

 

[David Norman]

Oh, no, the BBC can screw up, too.

The R1 Red Dwarf X DVDs I bought had everyone sounding they were on quaaludes, just like Doc Martin season 6 had. And that was when I switched to R2 releases for both, foregoing the possibility of HD in the future.

But, both shows aren't exactly fully available on Blu anyway, so it wasn't a major decision.

Although rumors are flying that Red Dwarf S 1-5 or maybe 1-8 may be possibly released on Bluray toward the end of the year.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Although rumors are flying that Red Dwarf S 1-5 or maybe 1-8 may be possibly released on Bluray toward the end of the year.

Of course, like this season of Doctor Who that we're talking about, those could only be upscales anyway. All of the BBC-produced episodes are standard definition (though series 7 and 8 are widescreen).

I have the Region B blu-rays for all the "Dave" episodes (Back to Earth forward) because I didn't want to get slowed-down episodes. Those discs are all 1080i/50.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Do all the Pertwee episodes still exist?

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Do all the Pertwee episodes still exist?

Yes. All out on DVD, too.

A few have had to be colorized or chroma dot recovered due to where and how they were preserved, but they all still exist.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Do all the Pertwee episodes still exist?

Yes every Pertwee exists but its a technical hodgepodge in that department. Original tapes only exist for 4 individual episodes and about 1/2 of another across the 50 produced. Some rather poor quality NTSC conversion copies were located in Toronto, Ontario that are the current masters for two additional stories plus the other half of that aforementioned episode. The rest are kiniscopes which have had the color signal from some off-air recordings made in the US (the NTSC conversion tapes of those are long lost so don't ask) overlaid on top of them, or decoded from phosphor dots burned into the original kiniscopes (in the case of The Mind of Evil 1, these dots were filtered out back in 1971 and the whole thing was recolored manually from scratch). In addition it was decided later on to overlay the chroma from a couple of those surviving NTSC serials on top of the Kiniscopes when they were judged to be of superior quality and higher resolution than the NTSC conversions.

Season 9 is the only Pertwee season to survive entirely on tape and even boasts the earliest Doctor Who story to be complete on its transmission master with Day of the Daleks but a little over 1/2 of again exists on those poor quality NTSC conversions. The BBC didn't start archiving Doctor Who regularly until season 10 and even then still managed to lose the master tapes for two whole episodes from that and 11 (namely Planet of the Daleks 3 and Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1).

 

[MishaLauenstein]

Some rather poor quality NTSC conversion copies were located in Toronto, Ontario

Poor quality? Surely they are, at worst, broadcast quality, as that is what TV Ontario was using them for.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Poor quality? Surely they are, at worst, broadcast quality, as that is what TV Ontario was using them for.

Unless they were somebody's OTA home video recordings. I was never much into Doctor Who, but I do have memories of viewing a few of the Tom Baker episodes on TVO in the mid seventies. It is a shame that so many episodes of vintage British programmes no longer exist in any form!

CHEERS!

 

[Lord Dalek]

Poor quality? Surely they are, at worst, broadcast quality, as that is what TV Ontario was using them for.

That doesn't make them any less technically inferior to the PAL masters though. These are copies of copies and they're loaded with artifacts that the BBC just can't fix even though they poured a million pounds into trying to reverse the original conversion without adding additional motion artifacts.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Unless they were somebody's OTA home video recordings.

There were off-air NTSC recording that were used as the basis for colour restoration on the stories that didn't exist in colour at either the BBC or TV Ontario (including "The Ambassadors of Death" and others). Those off-airs came from recordings off of WNED in Buffalo, NY during the earliest US syndication of the show by Time-Life, which was carried on only a handful of stations.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Steve Roberts (who was part of the DW Restoration Team who oversaw all of the classic series DVD releases) had this to say on Roobarb's forum today:

Just to put your minds at rest, any plans for Classic DW on Blu-ray would be based on separate 50i and 60i releases, depending on territory.

So, regardless of whatever is done with the US release, he is saying that if a UK release ever happens, it will be a proper 50i release there.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

The UK version of this boxset is available for pre-order, with artwork and list of "new" extras (including "The Tom Baker Years").

 

[Blimpoy06]

I had "The Tom Baker Years" on VHS way back when. It's quite long. A two tape set. It has Tom Baker commenting on each each story of his time as The Doctor with episode clips. I wonder if they will have the complete program, or just his first year covered by this set.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I would assume it's the complete programme rather than just the S12 content, based on the description in the list of extras

The Tom Baker Years VHS release on disc for the first time

That seems to suggest the whole thing to me, rather than just an extract.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Steve Roberts also said that the US release should be 1080i/60, not 24fps. For those with worries about "NTSC-slowdown" in the soundtrack and any loss of the shot-on-tape look, let's hope that Steve is indeed correct on this.

The Restoration Team are involved in this, so unless there's some major foul-up, we should expect the same level of excellence that they have given to the classic series DVD range.

As for 24fps being used for the previous upscales from the New Series (worldwide, not just in the USA where there might've been an argument for it), we should remind ourselves that the Restoration Team were not involved in any New Series releases.