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Robert Meyer Burnett, the producer and editor of the bonus features found on the Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise Blu-ray sets and long time Star Trek fan, explains why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager are not available in HD or 4K Ultra HD and may never be in a lengthy interview.
Unfortunately, this meant, unlike TOS and The Animated Series, there would be no 35mm finished negative of TNG... and the series would only ever exist on videotape at NTSC resolution. The same would hold true of DS9 and Voyager. Enterprise though, shot in 2001, would be future-proofed, shot on 35MM and finished in HD, with the VFX created in CG at 720p, until the fourth season, which abandoned film altogether.
[...] TNG, DS9 and Voyager could not be rescanned and released in Full HD, as the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution. With worldwide markets rapidly converting to HD, modern Trek, with the exception of Enterprise, would simply no longer be shown anywhere. With TNG still the most successful Trek series by a wide margin, Paramount and CBS desperately wanted to figure out a way to not let their crown jewel get thrown onto the scrapheap of history. Something had to be done.
So a radical notion was proposed...why not go back to the original negative and REBUILD the entire show, from the ground up, in High Definition? In the history of television, this had never been done before. Essentially, all 178 episodes of TNG (176 if you're watching the original versions of "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things") would have to go through the entire post-production process AGAIN. The original edits would be adhered to exactly, but all the original negative would have to be rescanned, the VFX re-composed, the footage re-color-timed, certain VFX, such as phaser blasts and energy fields, recreated in CG, and the entire soundtrack, originally only finished in 2 channel stereo, would be remastered into thunderous, 7.1 DTS.
[...] From 2012 through 2014, the seven seasons of TNG, along with 5 single discs (two-part episodes cut into feature presentations) were released on Blu-Ray, with over 50 hours of newly-produced special features. The restoration remains an absolutely astonishing achievement in the annals of television and anyone watching the new versions of the episodes, can only marvel at the vast difference from the originals. Everyone involved at CBS Digital and the various other Post Houses who participated in the project deserve a hearty round of applause from fans the world over. At least the fans who appreciate and understand just how much work was done.
Unfortunately, during this same time, the popularity of streaming services skyrocketed, and popularity of physical media began to diminish. Sales of physical discs dropped 10% a year across the board, the younger generation thought putting discs in machines was too 20th Century and even the loyal Trek fan base asked themselves, "why do I have to buy TNG YET AGAIN?" I bought the VHS tapes, the Laserdiscs and the DVDs, so do I really need the Blu-rays...? I don't even have a Blu-ray player. Won't it all be on Netflix anyway?" The absolutely justified high price-point of the initial Blu-ray seasons also didn't help sales.
Ultimately, the final result of all the effort put into the restoration itself and the newly-created special features were ultimately disappointing. The disc sales didn't match projections and continued to suffer as more and more people turned to streaming, where Star Trek was already widely available. Sure, the newly-remastered episodes of TNG have quietly replaced the original versions, but nowadays, very few people even notice, as they expect HD to look great.
Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager would require at least the same amount of time, manpower and money, but neither show was ever as popular as TNG or TOS. So, how can CBS be expected to shell out probably 20-million dollars per series to remaster them into HD?
It's a lengthy but good read that applies to all pre-HD television shows from the '80s and '90s. It also sadly explains why we'll likely never see Babylon 5 in HD or 4K Ultra HD.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday February 03 2017, @03:33PM
n/a
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Friday February 03 2017, @03:35PM
Uh, no, no it isn't. If you have terrible eyesight and/or terrible equipment, perhaps.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday February 03 2017, @03:37PM
I don't need to eyegasm every time I turn on my TV. DVD quality is just fine.
If, on the other hand, you have a 976" TV where each millimeter contains 25 pixels, sure, DVD ain't gonna cut it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 03 2017, @03:46PM
720p looks significantly better than 480p (there is also 720x576 [wikipedia.org]), especially when viewing on a laptop.
720p is a great minimum resolution that ignores two jumps in quality, 1080p and the amazing super duper 4K (ignore NHK fiddling around with 8K).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday February 03 2017, @04:05PM
You are correct, sir!
I gasm over TOS because!
I tried watching TNG, but it is sooooo bad, especially the first season.... Could not do it. Would much rather watch B5 over TNG.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 03 2017, @05:27PM
WTF? TNG is a fantasic show. However, you have to skip the entire 1st season and much of the 2nd one too. It's seasons 3-5 and some of 6 that are great.
You're not going to get much argument about the 1st season of TNG. It was truly terrible, and it's amazing how much they were able to turn it around by season 3. We can thank Rick Berman for that. He's the one who saved TNG from Roddenberry. Roddenberry was just like Lucas: great with high-level ideas and overall vision, horrible with execution and details.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday February 03 2017, @11:23PM
Okay, thanks!
When it first came out, i had sooo much hope, 'cause.... Star Trek!!!!!, but then it all went sort of WTF on me, so i stopped watching.
Maybe i'll skip to season 3.... hrmmmm....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 06 2017, @04:21AM
Yes, please, skip right to season 3. If you really want, you can watch season 2 too, but be aware that Dr. Pulaski is annoying as shit (which is why she was replaced with Crusher in season 3), and the show still hadn't really hit its potential yet, but it was better than s1. Season 1 was simply awful, especially the first episode (Encounter at Farpoint), and also the 4th (which was horribly racist, really surprising for something from Gene Roddenberry).
3-5 were the "golden years" for TNG. Gene wasn't involved in the fine details any more, golden boy Wesley was on the way out (and wasn't so annoying when he was around), the rest of the characters had really fallen into place, and they had a lot of really great stories. But watch out because after a while they started running out of ideas, and then around season 6 it seemed like every episode was about one of the main characters going crazy. Then there was that totally wacky episode in season 7 where Data gets possessed by a bunch of personalities from an alien computer on a ship that looks like something the Mayans or Incans designed; really really weird and terrible plot but to be fair it did really show Brent Spiner's acting talents.
Also skip the episode where Riker gets stung by a plant on some swamp world and then spends the whole episode having flashbacks. That one is really awful; even the episode's writer said so. I think it was in season 3, but I'm not sure. It was a "bottle episode"; the studio was restricting their budget so they came up with an episode full of flashbacks to save money.
(Score: 3, Informative) by termigator on Friday February 03 2017, @06:16PM
For you it may be fine. At least on 50" screens and larger, DVD is clearly inferior, and I have had family members with less anal eyes than mine notice the difference. Not only is the resolution limitations noticeable, but color range, where DVDs are in NTSC, is limited. Many focus on just resolution when there are other factors that affect overall picture quality. You may need to do a side-by-side comparison to finally realize the difference in quality.
Clearly, there is demand for HD since even streaming services like Netflix has put in the resources to provide HD content. Where the real battle is in level of HD quality between streaming and physical media (like bluray). For the masses, it appears streaming is good enough, where it is better than DVD with the convenience factor of not having to mess with physical media. For many, convenience trumps quality.
For me, I still purchase physical media since I picking about video quality, along with being able to get maximum audio quality and capabilities. However, my purchasing is not as frequent as it was years ago since for many shows, I can live with streaming quality.
I do wonder if the asshat studios stopped putting ads at the beginning of movies on physical media, if sales would improve. Streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Prime) have no such crap. Since convenience appears to be a major factor in folks decision making, making the physical media experience more convenient may help. IIRC, some of my older bluray movies (I think Time Warner ones like the Matrix) would start playing the movie immediately when popped in.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday February 03 2017, @08:40PM
Streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Prime) have no such crap.
Actually, for me at least, that has changed for both of these services just in the last week. I've seen commercials before or after shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime now.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by charon on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:04AM
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @03:38PM
He probably doesn't use the same Monster-branded cables that you do.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday February 03 2017, @04:36PM
I used to have no problems with watching VHS, but now I find it almost an unbearable low-resolution mush because my "norm" for media is now 720p/1080p, compounded by doing my own video shoots in 4K, editing them on a 4K screen, and down-rezzing if/as required from there, but DVD/720p is (just about) hanging in there - mostly because my home TV setup sits about half way between what is generally considered optimal for 720p and for 1080p viewing - 4K, let alone 8K, simply isn't worth it with the space I have despite the visual improvements it affords. As a result, for most TV shows I'll generally compromise on a 720p download which is usually fine once you're engaged with the content, but for those shows that are visually impressive, like to hide clues/details in the background, or for movies it's now 1080p or better all the way for me.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday February 03 2017, @08:18PM
My guess is that the OP has a DVD player and (at best) a 1080p screen, so simply hasn't been forced to the next rung on the ladder by default and is content with what they have via a form of ignorance is bliss - and much cheaper too!
While I thank you for your perspective, this particular passage comes across as a bit condescending. I too don't care enough to go for super high resolutions when I'm watching a screen. It doesn't mean I can't tell the difference -- I certainly can. But I don't watch MOST movies/TV for the visuals alone. I'm mostly interested in a compelling story, good acting, etc.
I have a friend who did film editing, and about 15 years ago he built a house with a large theatre IN IT. I don't really know exactly what the screen size was, but it was enormous. He had the works -- soundproof walls, cushy theatre seats installed in a few rows, a popcorn machine, etc. Sure, if I had a setup like that in my home, I'd likely be motivated to buy the highest quality available.
I consider myself a little bit of a "cinema buff," or at least I have a pretty substantial knowledge of the history of cinema and know quite a bit about it... though I don't watch movies every day. But I have a relatively small TV for the comparatively small amount of viewing I actually do at home. It's fine for the room size I have it in and for my needs. Are there some films with amazing visuals I'd like to be able to rewatch on a big screen sometime? Sure -- but making my TV a few times larger and paying extra for BluRay isn't going to really give me that theatre experience anyway.
And yes, I can understand how if you work with HQ editing all the time, the quality difference may be more noticeable and more annoying. But I've spent time watching HD and greater resolution, and I can certainly tell the difference, though I simply don't care for most of my viewing experience.
I also have some old recordings of classical music that were made many decades ago, some with "really bad sound" by today's standards. But some of the performances are incredible nonetheless -- the audio quality isn't what's important in making them so. "Quality" has many metrics.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday February 04 2017, @12:03AM
Either way, you're right about the quality aspect - I noted it in my post too; once you are engaged with the content, the resolution doesn't really matter that much for most shows and 720p is plenty for pretty much anything that doesn't put a lot of emphasis on visual elements given today's typical TV setups. In fact, with most living room setups and screen sizes, 720p is often much closer to the "sweet spot" for viewing distance than 1080p is (although there's obviously a YMMV factor involved), which is why my TV is "only" 1080p while my main monitor is 4K - so it may well be you're not really "missing out" anyway.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Friday February 03 2017, @04:39PM
On a 40inch LCD TV (6 years old now), DVD's still look just fine, as do older standard dev TV shows, yet it also displays a beautiful 1080p picture as well. I haven't make the jump to B-R yet, and probably won't for the foreseeable future, the jump in quality just from 1080 just doesn't seem worth it to me. Add to that a lot of older stuff that's been remastered in 4K has this weird flat appearance with no picture depth and it's no thanks. Until there's the killer show/movie that I need to see in 4K, I'll just keep plugging along as is.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @10:40PM
As someone who mostly only watches over the air on my 42" relatively new Samsung TV, while I like and appreciate the HD local channel broadcasts (yeah, they pop), I'm not really put off by watching shows on MeTV, etc., that are at best only in standard res, NTSC, even if they did come from a crappy film-to-tape conversion.
It helps if I care about the show I'm watching.
I like the eye-tease of the 4K TVs in the stores, but, like 3D movies, etc., my brain really doesn't care too much after the first few minutes.
And, yes, I notice it in short bites, but caring about it goes away quickly.
Unlike OTH broadcasts, though, I do notice and it does annoy me the compression artifacts from Cable and DBS feeds that are just there in their shows. Sure, some more than others. But it's there. And, yes, I notice the resolution artifacts in Netflix streaming, too. But I just don't care about that, either. Beats buffering.
TBH, I'm impressed by some of the actual detail capture by some of the old black-and-white TV shows that MeTV et al show now, but suspect some of them may have been remastered at some point along the way ("Perry Mason" vs "Judy Garland Show"). It's interesting also seeing the output from how TV camera tech progressed in the 50's and 60's too.
But I bought my TV to have a TV (and to stop moving around a 250 lb 32" CRT), not to impress myself or others socially with my humble-brags of the new TV I bought.
I don't really care that I spent "$$$" (but wouldn't buy a Vizio, Insignia, etc. TV, either), nor do I perceive that I'm somehow "wasting" my TV or my "investment" by showing such below-plebian claptrap on it. Again, after 5 or 10 minutes, my eyes and brain really don't care if it's DVD or Blu-Ray or black-barred SDTV 480p. And, I'm guessing yours doesn't either. You've just convinced yourself that it matters.
So, yeah. I'm a strong vote for the "WTF is this first-world problem complaining about? Get over yourself already."
But Samsung's remote controls? Almost as bad as Comcast's, DirectTV's, etc.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tempest on Friday February 03 2017, @04:42PM
Just wait a few years and your senses will go down hill. I save a lot of space with higher mp3 compression because I can no longer hear the difference :)
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Friday February 03 2017, @06:28PM
Depends which question you're asking I think. Technically better, yes. As someone with great eyesight, a nice colour-calibrated TV, HTPC and blu-ray ripbot, I'm a sucker for my hi-def gubbins.
But it's not the visual quality I'm watching, it's the content. To my eyes, a 480i MPEG2 turd still looks as shitty as a 4k 3D HDR H.265 Dolby 7.2 turd.
One of my favourite films I've re-watched recently was Richard III [imdb.com], out in a sumptuous BFI restoration blu-ray where it looks utterly stonking and lets the outstanding production design stand out. But for years before that it was out of print on DVD (copies of which would exchange hands for £150-200, way more than I was willing to pay) and all I had of it was a crummy 4:3 VHS (which I fed into a capture card to turn it into an MKV many moons ago); still loved watching it despite the video and audio quality being shit.
(As a corollary, there's plenty of stuff that's also been butchered in being converted to HD - 4:3 originals being cropped to 16:9 and very heavy DNR are exceedingly common)
Not saying that good visuals don't enhance a great story - Bladerunner's a perfect example - but they're certainly not a substitute for it. DVD is far from perfect, but it is "good enough".
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday February 04 2017, @01:15AM
Yes, it is. There have been numerous perceptual studies done on good-quality SD (so not NTSC) vs. HD (and I'm not at home so can't dig up a list of refs, try Google, these are controlled double-blinded studies), and the vast majority of people couldn't tell the difference under normal viewing conditions even before any upscaling was applied, good-quality upscaling makes it even harder to tell. Sure, there'll always be the golden-ears types who may be able to pick which is which, or who walk right up to the screen and check for MPEG artefacts at 10cm viewing distance, but for most people DVD-quality SD == HD.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday February 03 2017, @05:17PM
Can't say I get the fuss at all to be honest.
And could you not just sell the Blu-Ray with the best res you can manage without having to interpolate / whatever, even if that's not 4K? Surely the Blu-Ray player can just upscale it for you. So long as you're honest about it, are people really going to care that much? At least they then get the series available for them on the technology they want to use?
But, I find the whole resolution thing hilarious. Before DVD, I *do* remember thinking that VHS was fuzzy and detoriated and could "blur" the image. But before HD, I can never once remember ever thinking "Oh, if only there were more pixels so I could enjoy this programme". DVD was fine. HD versions were really no better. 4K is just getting into petty ridiculousness in my opinion. If you want to buy it, fine, that's up to you, but really? When you bought your HD TV back in the day, did you really think "Well, this is better but I STILL NEED MORE PIXELS!" - no. You were cooing over it for years before 4K even existed.
It's literally oneupmanship and imaginary advantages. And there are brands of TV that I have confirmed, in proper blind studies, that are WORSE at showing SD content than their SD model equivalent. Literally, they make the SD look worse so the HD looks better by comparison. But put them next to a good SD TV showing the same signal and the SD TV looks better.
Literally - tell me now the res that you want, that you will never improve upon, the refresh rate, every state you can imagine. And when it comes along and then is succeeded again, I'll come and ask if you're happy or want to upgrade. Because the person who says they want to upgrade in that situation is just kidding themselves.
I settled at DVD res. I'm quite happy to watch a movie on a phone or hear an MP3 in the car. Anything "better" is literally a waste, my devices can't show it, or I won't buy the HD version (e.g. Google Play / Amazon Prime, I always watch SD when it's an option) and I'm happy.
What you've done is bred in yourself an unconscious bias that means you're unhappy unless you're spending ridiculous amounts of money on content and devices over and over again.
To me, I probably wouldn't choose to watch a VHS, but if it was the only option I'd be fine with it. Hell, it's probably how I watched whatever it was in the first place.
But anything past DVD, it's a waste.
To me, the only "revelation" in display technology was when I could plug in a VGA cable at 1024x768 and the TV was able to perfectly display it, without need special scaling adaptors or to be knocked back to 800x600 or lower to work properly.
Along with, when I first bought a bog-standard, SD, analogue Hauppauge WinTV PCI card and plugged into my computer with SuperVGA screen and a decent aerial. That felt like 8K TV back then, the picture was pin-sharp and radically amazing con.
Since then, I've never be impressed by any display technology improvement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @05:39PM
I personally CAN tell the difference between DVD quality (I guess 576 lines), 720 and 1080).
Admittedly, there are only particular types of scenes where 720 vs 1080 makes a difference, and it's more on the lines of an "oooh" factor and pure delight at seeing some details, it doesn't affect the storytelling.
If I'm watching something with friends/family, such that there are at least 4 people watching the same regular living room screen (70-80 cm diagonal), I can no longer tell the difference between 720 and 1080.
I agree that for most TV DVD quality is good enough. Especially if they were filmed in the 80s and 90s.
But if you're going to watch something with explosions or waves breaking or similar, the image is significantly better in HD.
To be honest, I'm not sure in what context a resolution of more than 1080p would make sense, for a movie.
I'm of the opinion that stopping the movie to look for details in a snapshot is not part of the movie watching experience (and I think that's where more than 1080p would actually make a difference).
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday February 03 2017, @08:38PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday February 04 2017, @04:15AM
You're reading it wrong, from the summary, "videotape at NTSC resolution" which is probably professional Beta tape or better at 480i analog, basically DVD quality.