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

[Rachael B]

1. There's not even a dozen narrow HD-DVD's....Casablanca, Adventures Of Robin Hood, the 2 Bob Hope HD-DVD's, and Trek. That's all that I know of.

2. Warner has certainly released Combi discs. The first one I remember buying was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang back in the early days. They released several others along the way. Here at the rear end of the format, all their releases are Combis.

The central premise of my case is that the mass market wants playback versitility and values that over other features. If you don't give that creedence, well you don't. That must be where you're spinning...? I might add that Tartan Video in the U.K. has released some BD's that came with DVD's of the film included. Somebody else besides me thinks consumers want playback versitility.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I don't think anyone could really argue that versatility isn't a virtue, but I don't think it's a major concern for most, nor was it the purpose of HD-DVD combos. They were conceptualized as a trojan horse, so that SD watchers could build up an HD library while they bought their SD titles, and then one day say "Damn, I'd better get an HD-DVD player." In theory it was smart, but the way they implemented it was laughable.

Again, I don't think portability is bad, but combo discs that come with $5 and $10 premiums aren't doing anyone any favors. And for Trek, I guarantee you'll see better sales on both sides with separate HD and SD releases as consumers will no longer have to pay the worthless premiums to their respective content.

 

[RickER]

I dont want Blu-ray combo discs. I loath 2 sided discs. I understand your point Rachael. But, i like a place to put my fingers when i set a disc. I like to be able to read what side is what. I dont want layer problems, like DVD-18s have. If Paramount will put Trek on LD, and they did. Then they will put it out on Blu. I bet sooner, and not later.

 

[Rachael B]

It's my understanding that Sony has, on paper, single-sided Blu hybids that can contain either CD or DVD content. I would think that the same marketing research that led Paramount to issue their first Combis, Star Trek, would cause them to wish for a Blu hybrid. I think I have a better than 50-50 chance in predicting they'll offer the reformulated Trek on DVD before Blu. I hope I'm wrong though.

 

[RickER]

opps!

 

[RickER]

Yea, the last page over says season 2 will be on DVD, in Aug. i think it was. So i bet its a 90% chance that the DVD will be out before the Blu-ray. I wont own it on DVD...i would have if season 1 was a DVD ONLY release and not a combo.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Superman Returns was also a combo disc. I believe there were a few others but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

I have to disagree. Before when I bought a combo disc it only cost me an extra $5. Now when I buy a movie I have to buy it twice, once on blu-ray for $20 to $25 and once on SD-DVD for around $20. It costs me twice as much.

And its not worthless at all. A combo means that I can watch that movie anywhere that I go. If its a blu-ray I can watch it in my home theater and thats all. I can't watch it in the bedroom because there is only SD there. I can't watch it while waiting at the airport because my portable player is SD only...etc.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Have you ever REALLY had a problem with a DVD-18? I've got hundreds of them and have never had a single problem.

Doug

 

[RickER]

Yep, the last one was Adam-12. Its the only one i can remember off hand, cause it craped out not even 6 months ago. You could see the disc was turning a purple color at the outer edge. It played fine when i bought it, and didnt have any funky color.
someone posted this week that a disc of the original Battlestar Galactica had fizzled out as well for them. Mine is fine.
I bet money you have more than one of your hundreds...im talkin DVD-18s, not 14s, has rotted off the hoof and you wont know it until your enjoying it. right before it pixalates to an abrupt stop.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Possible, but most of my 18s are TV shows and I watch them fairly regularly and haven't run across a problem with any of them yet.

Doug

 

[TravisR]

Not to go too far off topic but I basically share that thought and I think alot- but NOT all- of it just 'The sky is falling' worrying. I've had a problem (and seen many reports of problems) with the first seasons of Dragnet and Alfred Hitchcock Presents so you might want to check those two out if you got them.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I don't have Hitchcock, but I do have Dragnet 1967 (and several over Universal shows on DVD 18s) and watch them quite frequently. (huge Dragnet fan) So far so good. I do realize that there have been some problem releases, but I think those are more batch problems than a wider issue with DVD 18 as a whole.

Doug

 

[Jari K]

At least I have. Disc is loose on the case and that´s all you need basically.. Of course, Blu-ray now has a much better protection (layer) vs. SD DVD/HD DVD.

But this is so cool. We have "BD doomsday" going on in several threads, "Fox pricing" in some, and now the old "combo-debate" is back also (even when Blu-ray doesn´t have combo-discs!).. I love it.

(seriously, no wonder why the "SD DVD-forum" is more popular.. Let´s face it, it´s this "debate"-aspect that keeps the HD-forums going.. Sadly..)

 

[Douglas Monce]

Probably has more to do with the fact that there isn't all that much new to talk about with blu-ray at the moment. What would you prefer to talk about?

Doug

 

[Jari K]

Is that a trick question, Doug?

By all means, if you want to debate about the "combo-releases", be my guest. I ain´t stopping you. But wake me up when you have some "real news" about ST S2 in Blu-ray..

 

[Douglas Monce]

Not a trick question at all. If you have something more interesting to talk about, please lead the way.

Doug

 

[Nelson Au]

Interesting argument going on here. From a Joe 6 pack point of view, I totally can see and I can agree that they don't really care about any hi def media discs. I think they are still getting their heads around the idea of an HDTV set. And probably don't like that old material doesn't fill the screen.

The idea of the combo discs did makes sense for veratility. I was able to watch my HD DVD of Star Trek S1 on my home office system with an ancient 480i DVD player, and I liked that ability.

Rachel, I had not known that some European BD releases include an SD disc, that's a great idea which I'd think would not add much cost and hopefully is not costing the consumer a premium.

It will be interesting to see what the details of Season Two SD Star Trek Remastered will be. If the price is not too bad, I'll probably add it to my collection because I see it as part of the HD-DVD collection, as the content is the Remastered version. I'm willing to bet that it will have more Billy Blackburn home movies. It will probably have the StarFleet access as either text or audios during the playback of the episodes. My sense is all that content had been created for the HD version. August 5th, 2008 so far is the release date.

As for a blu ray version of TOS Star Trek, it will come! And like HD-DVD, I'll buy a BD player when the time comes. If not sooner for JJ Abram's Star Trek.

 

[Rachael B]

I don't know how big a distributor Tartan Video is....I never googled them. I saw a story last year where they put out 3 BD's that came with the DVD also. I do recall that I would of liked to have had one of them but the BD's were locked to wee-jun Bee. As best I recall, it was costing consumers a premium. It seems like the sets were about 10 Pounds Sterling more than most BD's.

I don't believe cost for Tartan or anybody else are much of a factor. It's my contention that prices for 5" discs are arbitrary. I've heard insiders over on AVS say repeatedly that the biggies don't want 2 format sets because the consumer could resell one or the other. I think it's safe to say that the biggies want to flip folks off DVD to the format that's so far hard to record....of course, the insiders never talk on that point....it's between the lines.

So, I think this is an idea that will not happen for us unless Blu debuts a hybrid. I also think Trek will be on BD eventually. Even if Blu stays a minority format in Estados Unidos, along the lines of Laserdisc, it will do much better in Japan.....which also loves Trek. I'll wait for BD's and not spring for any DVD only release. I'm not short on Trek to watch. Between LD, DVD, and HD-DVD, I have all the episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9, and Enterprise. I can well afford to be patient.

 

[Paul_Scott]

I watched the the sd side to the Corbomite Maneuver the other night to see if I could still get excited about S2 &S3 in only an sd release ( because I don't think we will see many 10 discs sets coming out on Bd from a studio that isn't getting subsidies on rep anytime soon).

I've never watched any of these seasons on DVD before, and don't know the series chapter and verse like some longtime fans do. For that reason I was very enthusiastic to own them from the couple syndicated viewings I had. Watching the HD sides late last year, I didn't remember being awed all that often- nor did the content itself engage me again as much as it had 20 years earlier. While I enjoyed it, even the lowball $106 I paid seemed a bit hard to recocile for my needs. With that in mind, and because I still would like to see the rest of the shows, I thought the sd release would make a lot of sense for me. Watching it, it seemed that there was still plenty of detail on display (it is after all a tv show and executed mostly in close-ups and medium shots), and the new effects seemed to intergrate even more smoothly with the resolution hit. 15 minutes in I got very curious as to how much I was actually missing 'cause it honestly didn't seem like all that much. I flipped it over at the commercial break and had to sigh. While I had a difficult time seeing any one 'detail' that wasn't already visible on the sd side, the content now had a sensation of vibrancy and immediacy that was instantly apparent. I couldn't quantify it, or list subtle details I saw now that I didn't on the other side, the 'sense' was just fully there. After 2 years of catalog on Hd, I should have known exactly what to expect. I still forget. If this ends up with a price point equivilent to other CBS shows of the era like Mission:Impossible I still may have to bite just finally see the material again. But I won't be enthusiastic again until there's a bd release. Which may be a while.