TV Shows in Blu-Ray? (1 Viewer)

[Joseph DeMartino]

I thought I saw a news item saying that HBO had announced several of their series for Blu-Ray at CES, including The Sopranos.

 

[Gord Lacey]

Yup Joseph, here's the news:
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=4834

I'd love to see Band of Brothers in HD. I could care less about The Sopranos though.

I think 2006 is going to be very expensive for me (new TV, HD-DVD player, Blu-ray player...might as well get a new receiver...oh, and some movies...)

Gord

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I will be interested in seeing the failure rate once these formats come out. With the number of DVDs that barely play, I can't imagine having more data crammed onto the disc is going to improve matters, since a piece of dust or hair isn't going to get any smaller.

 

[FrancisP]

For a filmed show to be shot in HD, they have to upgrade the sets or else it looks cheesy and cheap. The problem may be that these may be that these shows would look cheesy and cheap. I also wonder if the special effects in shows like Star Trek would hold up to the greater scrutiny of HD. Once I get tv shows in SD, I don't see any need to upgrade to HD.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Uh, no. 35mm > HD, so if the original masters are available, there's a chance to upgrade the picture. Gratned, some older shows may have cut corners because they were only worried about looking watchable on broadcast NTSC, but I think most 1960s shows originated on film will look a lot better than 1980s/1990s shows originated on tape.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Yeah, I dunno. I've seen a lot of older tv shows and movies that look worse on dvd. I guess it depends on whether any real restoration work was done, and how good the piece was digitally re-mastered, yes? I have a funny feeling that for any pre-digital age shows, they'll have to go back and not only re-master but restore. Case in point: Dallas. Now, this show looks "okay" on dvd--it's within acceptable standards so that there's been little complaint over this release. But it's clear that they did almost zero restoration on Dallas, at least on the picture. (The soundtrack is clean, but a little treble-y in places, so I'm not sure). Now Dallas, as is, would probably look okay if broadcast on a standard old tv. But if you show it on dvd it looks not so good. Then, you begin to notice that the contrast is too dark and that the colors have faded in places, and that some of the shots have yellowed. And if you show it on dvd + HDTV...ugh, I'd say. Not only will you see the dvd artifacts more clearly but you'll see more clearly all the old flaws in the film itself (scratches, pieces of hair in the gate, dust, bits of brick-a-brack...you've seen them in old movies). So...in a BluRay (or better) release, if they don't attempt to restore the film to a better lustre it'll just look worse and worse.

With technology improvements, the flaws in a film are more noticeable, but the good stuff is more noticeable too...it's a fine line thing. It's all up to whoever's engineering and/or restoring the things.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Actually the situation is worse than you think. Those shows cut corners and aimed to be just watchable not at NTSC standards, but at the image quality most people were getting on 19" to 25" color TVs fed by the cheesey OTA broadcast equipment of the day. Even a standard definition set of the mid-90s could make stuff sourced from 60s film look horrible. When Deep Space 9 did the episode "Trials and Tribblations" (a time travel story in which members of the DS9 crew snuck aboard James Kirk's Enterprise during the original "Trouble with Tribbles") they ran into terrible problems (and serious, unexpected expense) when the created new digital masters from the original film elements. 60s TV technology hid a multitude of sins, including brush marks in the paint on the plywood sets (I noticed the same thing on the SD DVDs of Babylon 5, a show with a much lower budget in constant dollars.) In several scenes they had to digitally remove coffee stains from Spock's uniform shirt. All sorts of things that nobody had ever seen before suddenly popped out in eye-grabbing detail. This is going to be a major problem for a lot of old shows that strove for "just good enough" because of time and budget problems. If anything their being shot on film might work against them.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Britton]

Eh, I don't mind the problems showing up. It just adds to the charm of the whole thing. For example, it never bugged me that McCoy breaks the red railing on the bridge set in "City of the Edge of Forever" when he keels backwards after injecting himself with that drug.

 

[FrancisP]

I don't mind occassional bloopers but not every week. if the paint on plywood sets creates a problem that's going to be seen every week.

The trouble is that we don't know what's going to show up.
HD is very unforgiving. Also can anyone see studios like
Universal amd MGM/Sony bothering to clean up these shows?

 

[Alan_H]

Not if it's a disc manufactured by Universal

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Standard DVD today....Blu-Ray tomorrow.....then Polka Dot Ray the year after that....

Sorry I can't jump on the bandwagon, but I'm more than satisfied with present DVD. It used to take me 40 or 50 bulky video cassettes on about five of my book case shelves to obtain an entire TV series, but now we can have several thin little discs to house all the episodes, and take up only a few inches, which is a great space saver. And still it's not enough; we're now looking to fit an entire season on ONE disc. Okay, that's neat... but what happens in a few years when we get the next format and find we can now have FIVE SEASONS fitting on one single DVD? We'll save even more shelf space? Do we re-buy them all yet again to save another 3/4" ?

 

[Jeff Willis]

Joe, I tend to agree. It makes someone wonder when this will "slow down". We've seen the home video evolution progress from tape, 12" LD, "Standard" DVD, and now, another HD format war in progress. The reason that I'm not sure (about getting on board) with HD DVD's is that, like many here I suspect, we like/have so much of the older series on DVD already and the point that was made in this thread about HD being "too perfect" for most of what we have in our collection (ie, making the limitations of the era of older TV DVD's magnify). That would be the concern that I have with the HD format as it relates to our collections. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and the older series will look fantastic on HD DVD's. If so, then "bring them on". I ain't trying to stand in the way of progress, just have a concern about it. That's not to mention the "double-dipping" choice. I don't know it I;d be willing to shell out the $$'s to replcace my entire DVD collection for HD DVD's. "That's a lot of pennies" to give up.

 

[Eric_Connelly]

I'm waiting for it and have been for a long time.

We own a very small amount of DVD's, probably less than 50.

There are very few 'gotta haves' at our house and every single one I've plopped money down on I will buy in HD format when it comes out.

We knew this was coming so we try not to make a huge investment in regular DVD. We live in a small town with a Family Video. Thankfully due to some corporate structure they have to order X number of DVD's for new releases. Being a small town, some of those disks are never even rented.

Why they get 45 copies of Batman Begins for a population of 3,500 is beyond me. But we pick them up for $7.99 after 2 weeks and most of the time get disks that never even saw the inside of a DVD player.

I learned my lesson buying TV shows on DVD. We picked up Stargate Season 6 and it looks like complete crap. Our SciFi channel feed via cable is bad as it is and the DVD was almost the same.

After that I'm very hesistant to buy any more. TV Shows we own on DVD. The L-Word S1&S2, BSG Season 1 and 2.0, Family Guy, and a bunch of the Comedy Central stuff.

My big problem too is, I can watch it on HD on TV, then when I buy the DVD its lower quality.

I'm more interested in the HD Audio portion of things. Surround music in DVD-A is fantastic but its just not a consumer product in its current format due to problems in how it works and the investment of additional equipment to make it sound right.

I love it and to me its worth the money spent but the reaction we get from friends is they love it to until I tell them what I had to buy to make it sound the way it does.

Hopefully HD Audio on DVD will push the surround music format, simplify the connections, and integrate good bass management and the format will take off.