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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, Interesting) by quacking duck on Friday February 03 2017, @05:00PM
Releasing the B5 DVDs in 16:9 was the worst decision they could have possibly made, short of not releasing it on DVD at all.
Yes, they'd shot the original live-action in that ratio, and kudos to them for being forward-thinking, but first-broadcast was 4:3 like every TV at the time. So it's not like we were missing anything crucial by not having widescreen... but that's exactly what we lost when they zoomed and cropped any scene with special effects to 16:9, resulting in CGI that's zoomed and cut off, and terribly blurry composite shots that make it look like high school amateurs did the work. It's a huge slap in the face to the original SFX crew.
I've been trying to get my girlfriend to watch B5. She's kind of game but it's very, very hard to get through the crucial but mostly slow first season when we're now spoiled on modern SFX.
When they remastered TNG for HD, they did the smart thing and kept it at 4:3. Who cares that it doesn't "fill the screen" of 16:9 TVs, that's not how it was originally presented! If you want to warp the image (so to speak) to stretch and fill the screen, that's your choice.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday February 03 2017, @05:59PM
I guess with the B5 DVDs they had good intentions and committed themselves before they realised what the consequences would be. Looked like some of the film had seen better days, too...
When they remastered TNG for HD, they did the smart thing and kept it at 4:3.
ISTR that the re-mastered version of TOS is wide-screen, though - of course, for that they re-did all the special effects with CGI (which I thought was tastefully done - they managed to keep the 'feel' of the old FX shots and resisted the urge to load on extra detail) - but the crop-and-zoom made the live action shots look like extreme close-ups...
Funny, I remember working on an interactive video project in the early 90s where we struggled (and failed) to persuade the funder that shooting on film wouldn't give them an eternal archive copy of the product unless they fancied paying for the production company to do the whole shitload of editing, titling, framing, picture-in-picture etc. the old-school white-gloves and scalpel way. The whole design concept was based on the tricks you could pull with laservision + PC genlock overlay, anyhow (yeah, we tried to tell them about this new-fangled CD-ROM thing, too) so half of it wouldn't make sense on "proper" digital media.
(No, it wasn't the BBC Domesday project - but something smaller, a couple of years later).
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Friday February 03 2017, @11:26PM
Nope...my rips of it are 1440x1080, not 1920x1080.