Star Trek TOS DVD/HD-DVD coming (1 Viewer)

[Sam Favate]

There's just no way I will be picking this up for this kind of money. I could see paying maybe $75 for the season- but even that is steep -- especially for a show that I've now bought once on video tape and twice on DVD!

And double-sided discs for my trouble? You have to be kidding me.

Sorry, CBS Paramount, but no way.

 

[Mark Talmadge]

Bill Hunt also said that the pricing for the first set was overpriced as well for not offering the DVD side as a special release for fans.

 

[Jack Johnson]

Of the newly mastered episodes I've seen, I found the color timing to be abysmal. Fruity, weird...not unlike those garish cubes of space food the crew orders up from the replicators. I found it not at all faithful to the original look of the series, and I don't know whether they were shooting for that, by the look of it; it smacks of a drastic re-think in terms of the classic look of the series.

New effects: Weirdly self-conscious, not drastic enough to be an "enhancement," and yet not subtle enough to NOT call attention to themselves. What was the point, because they just took me out of the story only to remind me I shouldn't bother to take notice. Distracting and pointless changes. It feels like they really wanted to go a lot further, and didn't, so they shouldn't have done anything. Either respect the integrity of the show, or don't, but don't try these bizarre-o half-measures. I would not place these changes in the same ballpark as the tweaks made to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as the aim there was faithful completion (which worked marvelously), whereas the original series tweaks are a half-hearted school of upgrade.

The only interest for me was the improved image clarity, but that's the full extent of any improvement.

I think these new transfers are an absolute disaster. I'll be snapping up the original dvds before they're retired.



--Jack

 

[Nelson Au]

I know I am not going to change the minds of those who don't like this Remaster project, and I am not going to try.

But the way the process was described at the begining of this project they took the camera negatives and transferred them to HD tape. They said they went back to the Red Green and Blue film emulsion layers when scanning and claimed to clean out the majority of the dirt this way. The scratches and hairs were removed and because they said they used the original film negatives, the colors and contrast are as we've never seen before. So I think we are simply used to seeing the older transfers, which look a tad faded to me now on the current SD DVD's.

Color-wise, the show was garish in a sense, the sponsers wanted bright colors to sell color TV's. Seeing it now remastered is like watching a whole new Star Trek and the part that is more exciting is seeing the remastered live action. The CGI is not really all that amazing, it simply does it's job, and has been doing a competent job recently. But seeing the live action is really great! Are the colors right? They look right to me.

 

[Jack Johnson]

I wonder if the negatives had degraded, as I suppose there could've been some drift over the years from original intent?

At any rate, I'll take another look at one of these episodes with that in mind and see how it plays. The chief problem is with flesh tones; with my properly calibrated set, I should be able to have color saturation at a proper level without peoples' faces going purplish, pink and beet red... Switching back to an earlier master, there is no comparison: The new masters look, unfailingly, like cat vomit. But I will give them another look.

 

[Nelson Au]

The one color that stood out the most in terms of flesh colors is Nimoy's. With the yellow-greenish make-up he had as Spock, he looks the most changed.

 

[Will_B]

Until we see the shows on disc, we won't have a good sense of the colors, since the broadcast signal is subject to the whims of every piece of equipment that is carrying the signal to your home. Remember that the acronyn ntsc is known (facetiously) as "never twice the same color".

 

[Jay Pennington]

?

This isn't three-strip or successive exposure Technicolor. One negative, with all the layers together as one piece of film. You don't get dirt on one color and not the other. All the dirt is on the surface, not between layers.

I guess what they were getting at was that they used RGB filters to scan the film three times and thus have greater flexibility in the color correction. But a piece of dirt on one of those scans is going to be visible on the others.

 

[Mark Talmadge]

All I know is that Paramount is screwingt fans once again by overcharging fans for a Star Trek DVD based set. There is no way in Hell that I'm going to buy this set, so another 10 years are going to pass by before I consider buying any of their sets. I have yet to buy a single set and I'm so sick to death of Paramount and their pricing structures for their DVD sets.

 

[Nelson Au]

Jay, I pretty much quoted what a technician said from one of the promo videos that came out at the time of the Remasters premiere. I thought it was odd too and didn't make sense.

 

[alphanguy]

I think people's problem with this new Trek CGI stuff is that it tries to "improve" what was originally done, which didn't have anything wrong in the first place. If the changes were to fix a continuity error, then most everyone accepts that.... such as what they did to Space:1999 (Testament Of Arkadia) when they are flying and landing, the sky is blue, but then they used a stock shot (money saving maneuver) from another episode after the landing when they disembark, where the sky is orange. On the R2 set, they simply corrected that scene and made the sky blue, fixing a continuity error that was on the original print. If this was the only type of thing that was done to Trek, then most would accept it, I think alot of fans feel theyv'e gone too far. Personally, my biggest problem with objects such as ships done in CGI, is that in the the deep space scenes, the areas of shadow on the spacecrafts aren't DARK ENOUGH, areas in shadow should be nearly black. And the planets don't look right, either. Like in Space:1999, where they airbrushed the planets onto glass slides... the CGI planets lack a certain "glowing" quality that you can only get from a semi-transparent medium, not to mention the lack of atmosphere haze on those planets which have one. The computer geeks have yet to truly master the look of how light REALLY falls upon an object, because theyr'e technonerds.... not artists. So there you have the crux of your problem, you have techies doing a job which used to be done by an ARTIST.

 

[TravisR]

You can debate the merits of replacing the original effects but just because they're using a computer to create an effect doesn't render it any less of an artform than doing a model.

 

[Michael Rogers]

To me, the Space:1999 example is worse then Star Trek. That continuity mistake was a part of the episode and they changed it and made it the new official version. I'm not too bothered by it since in the final analysis, it is a small detail but the I object to the principal that you can digitally change continuity and other errors and it still can be considered an "original version"

In the case of Star Trek, it is an alternate version and the original is still available. Well kind of, the DVD's have newly produced 5.1 stereo soundtracks that Paramount seems to want to take the place of the original mono versions. I will always remember that in shows like Balance of Terror, there was no sound to the proximity phasers in the original version. Also, most first season shows failed to have a sound other than music for the exterior ship traveling shots. The new soundtracks make sure that there is engine sound for the ship that wasn't always there. In that aspect the show is forever changed from the 60's version. I would like it if they had an option for the original sound, but they don't.

 

[alphanguy]

CGI is less of an art form, because it's not done by artists. An actual object will always be just that... while a "rendering" of an object will also be just a "rendering". It's like the difference between cool whip and real whipped cream, those with discrminating tastes can tell the difference. And I think the Space:1999 example is a fine example, Gerry Anderson didn't INTEND for the sky to be orange in "Testament Of Arkadia", it was the last episode shot and they simply had no money to shoot a new disembarking scene, and the technology didn't exist to correct such things in 1974. If CGI is used very carefully, and in limited doses... it can be a great boon. But as with all good things, people get slap happy with it and carry it too far.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I'm stupefied at the ignorance in this comment. Tell me, what sort of slack-jawed yokel criteria are you using to determine that the people who work so diligently in this modern era of visual effects work are not, in fact, artists? And then could you please explain how when something is a simple "rendering" of a real object, that is somehow is no longer art? Or does it not occur to you that paintings and drawings and even photographs of real fake spaceships are in fact just "Renderings" and that the objects themselves have not mystically transported into your personal field of view?

 

[TravisR]

So the guys at Pixar or ILM or WETA aren't artists because they use a computer? I don't think you'll convince too many people of that.

Whether you like or dislike CGI is a matter of opinion but saying that they're not artists is just incorrect.

 

[Paul Padilla]

Most high end CGers are trained artists who learned to apply their skills on the computer. They are not techies who are trying to be artists. But the bottom line is the unmitigated arrogance of judging art of any kind to be "lesser" is just sickening.

 

[alphanguy]

It's just a matter of real vs. fake. Let's get right down to it, shall we? It boils down to the same thing everything else in this world boils down to: MONEY. It's cheaper to poke some buttons than to put forth some actual creativity and physical movement. That Zagar And Evans song may come true sooner than we think! and all kinds of things are judged to be "lesser" like how Wal-Mart is "lesser" than bloomingdales. Same concept, different application.

 

[Paul Padilla]

Let's stay on point. Quality of tangible goods have nothing to do with subjective aesthetics.

Creativity is completely unrelated to method or medium. Photography was considered unartistic by many classically trained painters when it first started being used. The thought was, "How much talent does it take to use some chemicals and take an exact image of an actual scene?" Preference is one thing, but utter dismissal is another.

 

[TravisR]

You're misinformed. Just because it's made on a computer, it's not automatically cheaper than building a model. CG can be tremendously expensive. While CG can be abused, the main reason to use it is because it enables you to do things that couldn't be done in any other way and when it's done right, it has added to many films.