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The Day of the Doctor (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special) (1 Viewer)

Lromero1396

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Bryan Tuck said:
The advertising seems to suggest that the entire series has been "remastered" at 1080p, so they've probably ruined Series 5 & 6, too. I was seriously considering buying that set, but I certainly won't now.
What's so irritating about this is not just the frame rate to me: it's the fact that the music has been adversely affected and that the performances of the actors have lost energy due to this alteration. I'll be buying the DVDs of the SD seasons and the 1080i BDs of the HD seasons. Regarding Day of the Doctor, I may just have to get the DVD, if that hasn't been slowed down as well.
So the music issues on the BDs of Day of the Doctor are apparent on both stereo mixdown systems and on 5.1 systems?
I seriously hope the old releases don't go OOP soon, since I'm really strapped for cash right now.
 

FoxyMulder

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I wonder if the UK blu ray releases are identical to the USA, if so that means we in the UK are also getting screwed.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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FoxyMulder said:
I wonder if the UK blu ray releases are identical to the USA, if so that means we in the UK are also getting screwed.
If the cinema version was 24p, it's possible they used that master for all of the Blu-ray releases. But if that's the case, it's weird that the sound on the 24p version in theaters was fine but now problems pop up on the Blu-Ray.
 

Bryan Tuck

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Lromero1396 said:
What's so irritating about this is not just the frame rate to me: it's the fact that the music has been adversely affected and that the performances of the actors have lost energy due to this alteration. I'll be buying the DVDs of the SD seasons and the 1080i BDs of the HD seasons. Regarding Day of the Doctor, I may just have to get the DVD, if that hasn't been slowed down as well.
So the music issues on the BDs of Day of the Doctor are apparent on both stereo mixdown systems and on 5.1 systems?
I seriously hope the old releases don't go OOP soon, since I'm really strapped for cash right now.

From what I can tell, the DVD is also slowed down, but I'm not sure if the audio is as affected. I'll check again later tonight.

And the slowdown is distracting to me personally. For others, it might not be as big a deal. Still, I feel like most people who would care whether or not it's progressive or interlaced would also prefer the correct speed, so I'm not sure what the thinking was in doing this.
FoxyMulder said:
I wonder if the UK blu ray releases are identical to the USA, if so that means we in the UK are also getting screwed.

From what I understand, the UK Blu-ray is also the slowed-down 24p.
Adam Lenhardt said:
If the cinema version was 24p, it's possible they used that master for all of the Blu-ray releases. But if that's the case, it's weird that the sound on the 24p version in theaters was fine but now problems pop up on the Blu-Ray.
From the reviews, it sounds like the soundtrack sounds fine on a 5.1 setup (aside from being too slow), so the muffled sound may just be a problem with the downconversion to stereo.
 

Bryan Tuck

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Lromero1396 said:
Does the slowdown actually take energy out of the actors' performances?
To me, it does in spots. Again, most people probably won't care, but to me it's kind of annoying.

Also, I checked the DVD, and although it's also slowed-down, the audio downconverts just fine. However, I really do think there's something wrong the Blu-ray audio, or maybe I just got a bad copy. The music and SFX sound downright awful in places, and I don't have that issue when downconverting any other discs.
 

Lromero1396

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Bryan Tuck said:
To me, it does in spots. Again, most people probably won't care, but to me it's kind of annoying.

Also, I checked the DVD, and although it's also slowed-down, the audio downconverts just fine. However, I really do think there's something wrong the Blu-ray audio, or maybe I just got a bad copy. The music and SFX sound downright awful in places, and I don't have that issue when downconverting any other discs.
Have you contacted the BBC about it? Has this been reported by anyone else?
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Lromero1396 said:
Does the slowdown actually take energy out of the actors' performances?
If the pitch correction on the audio is handled properly, it's something you feel rather than actively notice. The slowdown adds a full two minutes to a 50 minute episode, so the cumulative effect is that it just feels slower.

It was a real missed opportunity when they created the Blu-Ray standard not to have mandatory 25p and 29.97p playback for all devices.

And if they move to 1080p for Doctor Who Blu-Ray releases for both sides of the Atlantic going forward, they might as well just start shooting the episodes in 24p.
 

Bryan Tuck

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Lromero1396 said:
Have you contacted the BBC about it? Has this been reported by anyone else?
There was another forum, but I can't remember which, on which someone mentioned the UK edition having the same kind of audio problems. I sent an email through BBC Shop, and also to two different addresses at BBC America Consumer Products (or what I thought was Consumer Products). I haven't heard a word back on any of them, so I might be barking up the wrong tree.

I guess I could try calling the BBC Shop customer service. Does anyone know a better avenue?
 

AndyMcKinney

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Adam Lenhardt said:
It was a real missed opportunity when they created the Blu-Ray standard not to have mandatory 25p and 29.97p playback for all devices.

And if they move to 1080p for Doctor Who Blu-Ray releases for both sides of the Atlantic going forward, they might as well just start shooting the episodes in 24p.
It still cheeses me off that either the US movie studios, or hardware manufacturers (or both) deliberately left compatibility with 1080i/50 non-mandatory for the US market, while everywhere else in the world, both 60hz and 50hz framerates are supported. Certain it was to discourage us from importing things (like DVD region coding).

I'd say you can forget about the BBC shooting the episodes in 24p native. The whole reason it's shot 25p is so that when they broadcast it in the UK's native 50i, the on-screen credit rolls will be smooth and won't suffer jitter from being converted from another frame rate. I think home video is a secondary consideration.

That being said, I'm in agreement with most people here (I think) in that the UK market should be getting 1080i/50 releases and the US market should be getting 1080i/60 conversions. Correct-speed sound should be more important than progressive vs interlaced.
 

The Obsolete Man

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Though I haven't watched this Doctor Who special on DVD yet, I know exactly the kind of slowdown you're all talking about.

Red Dwarf X is affected by this. The music is slowed down and sounds horrible, the voices are pitched lower, and I don't know if the first episode of the season is supposed to run 31 minutes, but it does on the DVD.

Now I wonder if buying the set from R2 will provide a watchable copy without the R1 mastering screw-ups. Plus, it comes with the reversable cover that fits in with series 1-8...
 

AndyMcKinney

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The Obsolete Man said:
Though I haven't watched this Doctor Who special on DVD yet, I know exactly the kind of slowdown you're all talking about.

Red Dwarf X is affected by this. The music is slowed down and sounds horrible, the voices are pitched lower, and I don't know if the first episode of the season is supposed to run 31 minutes, but it does on the DVD.

Now I wonder if buying the set from R2 will provide a watchable copy without the R1 mastering screw-ups. Plus, it comes with the reversable cover that fits in with series 1-8...
The R2 DVD should play at the correct audio speed, as does the R2 Blu-ray disc which I own (it's encoded at 1080i/50hz, as it should be for the UK market). The R2 DVD will, of course, be PAL/50hz.
 

AndyMcKinney

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The Obsolete Man said:
Though I haven't watched this Doctor Who special on DVD yet, I know exactly the kind of slowdown you're all talking about.

Red Dwarf X is affected by this. The music is slowed down and sounds horrible, the voices are pitched lower, and I don't know if the first episode of the season is supposed to run 31 minutes, but it does on the DVD.

Now I wonder if buying the set from R2 will provide a watchable copy without the R1 mastering screw-ups. Plus, it comes with the reversable cover that fits in with series 1-8...
This is happening on TV broadcasts, too. The US syndicated HD version of Doc Martin: Series six also suffers from this horrible 24p slowdown. It's apparent from the very first second, when the opening theme music is pitched quite noticeably lower than before. The pitch on several of the voices, especially Ian MacNiece, stick out like a sore thumb. It's obvious these episodes were simply converted and not pitch-corrected. It really takes me "out of the show" and makes me not to even bother watching the rest until the Region 2 DVDs come out in March. Episode 2 (they've only shown two so far) was especially bad in this regard.

Series five (the first to be shot in HD) wasn't affected by slow-down. Presumably it was either converted to 1080i/60, or was (shudder) upscaled from a PAL master. Either is preferable to what's being supplied to PBS affiliates this time out.

I hope people complain loudly about this to their local PBS stations. I did.
 

Lromero1396

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So the UK BD of Day of the Doctor is not effected by the slow-down? Is it region-free?
 

Bryan Tuck

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Lromero1396 said:
So the UK BD of Day of the Doctor is not effected by the slow-down? Is it region-free?
No the R2 Blu-ray is also slowed-down. Apparently only the UK DVD (and I guess any other standard-def PAL versions) run at the correct speed.

This has also apparently happened on the new Sherlock Season 3 Blu-ray release as well. However, I caught part of the PBS broadcast of one episode, and it didn't appear to be slowed-down.

At any rate, if the Doc Martin broadcasts were slowed-down, they apparently made their 1080i broadcast master from the slowed-down 24p masters, instead of converting directly from 50i to 60i, which really doesn't make any sense at all.
 

AndyMcKinney

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Bryan Tuck said:
No the R2 Blu-ray is also slowed-down. Apparently only the UK DVD (and I guess any other standard-def PAL versions) run at the correct speed.

This has also apparently happened on the new Sherlock Season 3 Blu-ray release as well. However, I caught part of the PBS broadcast of one episode, and it didn't appear to be slowed-down.

At any rate, if the Doc Martin broadcasts were slowed-down, they apparently made their 1080i broadcast master from the slowed-down 24p masters, instead of converting directly from 50i to 60i, which really doesn't make any sense at all.
Bryan:
Is this happening only on the US blu-ray of Sherlock, or has this been reported for the UK release as well? The reason I ask is that the UK got proper 1080i/50 versions for series 1 and 2, while everyone else got 1080i/60, so I'm desperately hoping they don't pull another "Day of the Doctor" on us.

If this is supposedly happening on the UK release, I'm going to repost it on Roobarb's so hopefully some UK fans will raise a stink with BBC Consumer Support.

EDIT: I've just asked some UK members of Roobarb's if they can confirm if the UK blu-ray is 24p or 1080i/50. I'll report the findings.
 

Bryan Tuck

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AndyMcKinney said:
Bryan:
Is this happening only on the US blu-ray of Sherlock, or has this been reported for the UK release as well? The reason I ask is that the UK got proper 1080i/50 versions for series 1 and 2, while everyone else got 1080i/60, so I'm desperately hoping they don't pull another "Day of the Doctor" on us.

If this is supposedly happening on the UK release, I'm going to repost it on Roobarb's so hopefully some UK fans will raise a stink with BBC Consumer Support.

EDIT: I've just asked some UK members of Roobarb's if they can confirm if the UK blu-ray is 24p or 1080i/50. I'll report the findings.
I'm not sure about the UK release of Sherlock. I think The Day of the Doctor may have been a special case (at least for the UK), because the Blu-ray 3D spec doesn't allow for 50i or 60i (although I still don't understand why the 2D version had to be slowed-down also).
 

The Obsolete Man

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AndyMcKinney said:
This is happening on TV broadcasts, too. The US syndicated HD version of Doc Martin: Series six also suffers from this horrible 24p slowdown. It's apparent from the very first second, when the opening theme music is pitched quite noticeably lower than before. The pitch on several of the voices, especially Ian MacNiece, stick out like a sore thumb. It's obvious these episodes were simply converted and not pitch-corrected. It really takes me "out of the show" and makes me not to even bother watching the rest until the Region 2 DVDs come out in March. Episode 2 (they've only shown two so far) was especially bad in this regard.

Series five (the first to be shot in HD) wasn't affected by slow-down. Presumably it was either converted to 1080i/60, or was (shudder) upscaled from a PAL master. Either is preferable to what's being supplied to PBS affiliates this time out.

I hope people complain loudly about this to their local PBS stations. I did.
The sad part is, after I posted the other night, I took a two dollar chance and bought episode 2 of Red Dwarf X from Amazon streaming.

It was perfect. The sound was right, the episodes ran at the proper 29+ minutes due to not suffering from the conversion problems... so I picked up the rest of the season to watch. Now, why the SD streaming versions of the episodes Amazon received are correct while the physical DVDs that cost twice as much are screwed up is anyone's guess.

And, hearing that this is happening to so many other British shows, I guess I'll just start buying the R2 versions of all these shows. They're usually out before the R1 versions (3 months between the R2 and R1 releases of Call The Midwife S3), and they don't suffer from these stupid mastering/authoring errors for no good reason.

What is this called, anyway? We have PAL Speedup, is this NTSC Slowdown?
 

AndyMcKinney

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The Obsolete Man said:
What is this called, anyway? We have PAL Speedup, is this NTSC Slowdown?
Maybe the Amazon streaming ones came from the PAL DVDs (since all computer displays can handle PAL/NTSC)?


As for what we "call" this: I considered calling it that myself, but as it's HD rather than SD, I'm currently going with 24p slowdown.
 

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