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Remastered Star Trek: the Next Generation Blu-ray a Huge Leap Forward
MojoKid writes "There's been no new Star Trek TV series since Enterprise limped off screens in 2005, but the huge success of the 2009 Star Trek movie and the gradual growth of Blu-ray has caught CBS' attention (CBS acquired ownership of the Star Trek franchise in 2006). The broadcast company is preparing to release Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-ray with substantial improvements (article contains comparison image shots). The DVD boxed sets that exist today were created from the taped broadcasts that were shown in the early 90s. Rather than repackaging that material, CBS has gone back to the original film stock and started from scratch. The difference is enormous. CBS has released a preview Blu-ray titled Star Trek: The Next Generation — The Next Level with three updated episodes; the show's pilot (Encounter at Farpoint), Sins of the Father and The Inner Light."
might have to get a blu ray player for this
3 'remastered' episodes of a 20 year old tv show... Big fucking deal.
Look i liked star trek. It was entertaining. But the special effects and visuals were never the draw there..
And hollywood wonders why they have trouble selling shit anymore... They haven't done anything new or orginal for two decades.
In all fairness, they are remastering all the episodes. Those 3 episodes are just for providing a preview of what to expect
Why would you have to buy a dumb DRM-laden playback device with your hard-earned money when you could download a 720p torrent, probably BEFORE it is released, for free? ;)
I bought BSG (the recent version) on DVD but later found a BR pack containing everything on sale - so I decided to snag that. While I rarely buy something on BR that I already own, I must say the improvement in certain scenes was quite noticable. The "inside" scenes weren't really improved, but the difference in space was rather surprising. When I first watched them on DVD, I thought they were great, but when I saw them on the BR, I saw just how much difference it made. The stars in the background actually twinkled, and the overall darkness in space was much more apparent.
While I won't be rushing out to get everything on BR just because it looks this good in BSG, it was certainly a nice eye-opener - even with such a new series.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Just remember that if you have a Blu-Ray drive, you need to make sure your entire setup is HDCP compliant or it will downsample as a form of punishment. This is especially troublesome for your typical Slashdot reader who has a home-brewed unusual setup.
But the easiest solution I've found is to rip out the copy protection altogether. There's a (commercial) program for Windows called AnyDVD HD that automatically strips out copy protection from DVDs and Blu-Ray discs on the fly, within a few seconds of inserting the disc into your drive. The program isn't cheap, but this way you don't have to worry about copy protection getting in the way of playing the fucking disc you paid for.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
...and a higher resolution, significantly reduced compression artefacts, you can avoid the change in pitch associated with the PAL conversion process...
I recently went back to them on netflix. There's a ton of them when you look at all 7 seasons together, so you have to be selective. Just make sure:
a) Riker has a beard
b) Zipper is in the back
c) Polaski, anyone named Crusher, and maybe Jordy isn't the major focus of the episode. (Its ok if its Crusher & Picard, Jordy & Data, etc).
d) Watch anything with Lor
e) Watch anything with Borgs
f) Watch anything with time travel/time loops/etc
g) Holodeck episodes are trouble. Is it the old west? Skip. 1800s you can probably keep. Riker playing in a jazz club? Fast forward just a bit.
h) Q episodes generally can't miss.
i) Picards are a must, but not if it involves him trying to awkwardly woo someone. Stay away: Kirk for the ladies, Picard for solving issues without a double fisted hammer blow to the back. (Exception: The episode Q takes him to his past, see rule h. There he does wooing and double fisted hammer blows, but you also get to see one of the most ridiculously obvious stunt double scenes ever)
In general season 1-2 25% watchable, 3 50%, 4-7 90%.
Most of the effects were done in post which means in this case "not on film". They shot and edited it on film, but then effects had to be added in. Since the theater wasn't the target it would be expensive to do them all to a new film transfer, then take that back to Beta. Instead they just did the effects straight to video.
So even if they aren't going to change the effects at all, they still have to get redone or there wouldn't be any.
Also there needs to be some digital effects done anyhow just to deal with problems masked by the original format. Even on DVD, you can tell, for example, that the trubolift doors are painted wood, not metal. Couldn't see it on broadcast because the resolution is so shitty, but it is visible on the original tapes and thus on DVD. On Blu-ray, it'd be downright obvious. So that is the kind of thing to clean up before the release.
I'm sorry, but this is not correct. Absolutely nobody in that period was working on TV CG at greater than 1080p. The exact resolution would depend on what exactly they were using, and AFAIK, I don't know anybody who worked on TNG to ask about workflow details. But, I do work with somebody who worked on early Flame and a lot of people who were Lightwave artists during the B5/SeaQuest days. It was all done in SD at the time.
Remember, TNG started in the 80's and ended in 1994. During the TNG era, PC's ran DOS. Irix based Flame workstations cost most of a million dollars and had less power than an old iPhone. Amigas were the kings of TV effects. Nobody had the memory or storage to keep rendered HD frames around for no reason. There was no way to broadcast that resolution, no medium to sell it on. Nobody had displays that would show 1080p. At that point, Lightwave had a serial port tape deck control feature so that you could render frame-by-frame directly to video tape under the assumption that you didn't even have the storage space for your few seconds of 640x480 SD. Even the film guys, with much bigger budgets than TV, were a long way from having the available storage to do things like a full Digital Intermediate. (It didn't happen until O Brother Where Art Thou.) As late as 2000, a lot of film projects were doing VFX at less than 1080p resolution, even without trying to do a full DI.
Certainly, in additional to all that the geometry was less detailed than it would be today, and shading and compositing was simpler. It was still amazing for the time, and I'd love to see a "cleanup only" version of TNG which didn't try to add new CG effects. At this point, it really just has to be appreciated as a product of the time in which it was made, rather than trying to recapture the sense of awe you remember from watching it all those years ago by (mis)using modern CGI.
Despite what Hollywood and their senators want you to think, ripping off copy protection from something you legally bought is not the same as piracy.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Did you write those words with the idea that Wil Wheaton might read them?
There was nothing mean about that. The fiction character Sheldon in the OP had a problem with Wil, and the post you are responding to references that.
From Wikipedia: "He also used to idolize fictional prodigy Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation for qualities of the character Wesley Crusher he found similar to himself, but Wil Wheaton's surprise cancellation of an appearance at a Jackson, Mississippi Star Trek convention in 1995 soured him to both the character and actor."
If *anyone* would get a chuckle out of the reference, it is Wil Wheaton.
People know he is a nice guy, that is why I nominated him for "Tyrannical Overlord" in this Slashdot poll.
Oh, so there is a pop culture reference here I didn't get. Your explanation still doesn't tell me who this "Sheldon" is, but a Google search for "Sheldon Wil Wheaton" suggests that you are talking about a character from The Big Bang Theory.
Sorry, I haven't seen that show so I missed the reference. I've heard that show is good.
P.S. When I put references in, I try to remember to hot-link them. I wouldn't have misunderstood had the GP done something like this:
Wow, reading that link, it seems that the fictional Wil Wheaton as shown in the show is actually a terrible person. Kind of like how the fictional Bruce Campbell as shown in My Name Is Bruce is a terrible person.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Dude, Chill.
The post I wrote that about (GGP) was talking about Sheldon (from the Big Bang Theory). Wil Wheaton is his arch-enemy.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
There were some episodes with Wesley that many fans accept. I never saw "The First Duty" but I heard good things about it, for example.
Maybe that was because in that episode Wesley is part of a cover-up to hide his involvement in the death of a cadet. Now I wonder, were the bad Wesley-heavy episodes bad just because Wesley was being an annoying know-it-all whiz kid? Let's see!
* The Naked Now [S1E03]: terrible. Characters thrown in ridiculous situations before they were developed enough for us to care (eg. Data and Tasha getting it on). Wesley saves the ship via magic ("It would take weeks of laying out new circuits!" -- "Why not just see it in your head?").
* Where No One Has Gone Before [1x06]: at best decent, at worst terrible. Wesley again saves the ship via magic (The Traveler compares him to Mozart in "time energy and propulsion").
* Justice [1x08]: at best decent. Slow; Picard tramples on the Prime Directive. Wesley's not terribly annoying, though maybe that's because he's under a death sentence the entire episode.
* When the Bough Breaks [1x17]: reasonably good. Wesley's super-human abilities aren't brought up, though his "perfect little man" qualities are annoying.
* Coming of Age [1x19]: reasonably good. Wesley actually loses in a test of technical and other skill. The second plot is Picard-heavy, so that brings the whole episode up a notch.
* The Dauphin [2x10]: at best decent. Wesley is awkward in his teenage romance; it's odd to make an episode revolve around such a poor plot device.
* Peak Performance [2x21]: good. Wesley is paired with La Forge to do super human feats of engineering, which makes him less annoying than if he were doing it all alone.
* Evolution [3x01]: good. Wesley screws up an experiment and creates a new artificial intelligence.
* Remember Me [4x05]: good. Wesley again screws up an experiment, this time almost killing Crusher. He has to work magic with the traveler to save her.
* Final Mission [4x09]: good. Picard-heavy; Wesley's just sort of there most of the time.
* The Game [5x06]: decent. Wesley saves the ship (yet again), but only with Data's help.
* Journey's End [7x20]: decent. The plot was heavy-handed and Wesley was again described as Mozart. He was also an annoying snot for the first half of the episode, though Wheaton pulls that off extremely well.
Wesley was at his worst in The Naked Now and generally when he was being superhumanly brilliant. All three of the episodes based around his mistakes were good (I'm not counting Justice here, since he hardly made a real mistake). He was also pretty good when paired with La Forge. And as usual, Picard has the ability to bring up the quality of an entire episode just by having a plot line. Episode quality generally increases with season number.