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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."
They should have done episodes that would really show off the process. I would have picked Best of Both Worlds, Yesterday's Enterprise and either The Pegasus or All Good Things... because they are the best examples of what the series has to offer and would benefit from the effects uplift.
You're also forgetting the source material doesn't even look that great so no amount of messing with it will ever produce a bluray image even as good as most recent films and I doubt there would be much difference even at 720p..
You're also also forgetting they're releasing them 4 episodes at a time and being greedy, Paramount will probably want well over $120 for a season.
You're also also also forgetting file-sizes mean nothing. They could fill the black bars on the sides (yes, sides) with uncompressed nothing just to fill up the disc.
TNG was shot on 35mm film which has higher resolution than a 4k TV 5380 x 3620. If they do the scan with a 4k scanner and use good software then we should have something good. TNG is not as old as star wars and the film should preserved better than the star wars film. I don't why people always decide to scan the originals sometimes the copies are in much better shape. If you ever seen the remastering of the original series then you know what i am talking about.
I don't why people always decide to scan the originals sometimes the copies are in much better shape. If you ever seen the remastering of the original series then you know what i am talking about.
I would have to agree that you need to consider that some copies are likely in better shape than the originals, but in the case of TNG, I don't think that is the case due to the production system that was used when it was produced.
Star Trek: TNG was originally filmed with 35mm film stock and then transferred to a conventional videotape editing system before broadcast. The original negatives were barely touched and mostly left in their original archived state, where Star Trek was already considered a very lucrative franchise and something worth preserving as well (so it wasn't treated like yesterday's trash heap either).
The largest problem I would see is syncing the audio with the video and getting the correct scenes matching with the stuff that was put into the production version of each episode. That shouldn't be too difficult as such information was recorded when the films were originally edited, but it would take some effort to organize everything, and certainly take time to remaster each episode in this manner.