ScissorPuppy

Yes, it's completely possible to get a high quality 16x9 image from the 35mm film. (Most 1.85:1 Hollywood films film the full frame and crop the top and bottom). The question is would/should they do it? No, it wasn't framed that way. Then again I guess you could say it wasn't really meant for HDTV to start with, so by "upgrading" your changing it already. With that said, having watch the first four seasons on dvd this year so far, I'd say that there was a lot of empty space at the top and bottom for most episodes, most probably wouldn't notice the cropping if they did go 16x9.

gmanca

Personally, I don't care about framing issues, missing out on images from the edges. Television shows rarely have anything happening on the edges anyways and I wonder if that because many CRT's would cut off the edges either by overscan/warping or the physical case blocking the edges.

Doctorossi

I thought I was the only one who noticed that Voyager had a totally fantastic premise and then completely dropped it in favor of The-Next-Generation-at-its-most-formulaic after a dozen episodes.

Nick Martin

I don't have the other Trek shows on DVD to compare, but if you look at the DS9 seasons 4 - 7 title sequence:











None of which are visible on a 4:3 CRT TV.

milo bloom

Right, when filming for widescreen, the viewfinder on cameras has lines that tell the director/cameraman where the top and bottom of the image should be. So it can be matted down without losing info.


However:

Er, no, apples and oranges. You can easily present 4x3 material in HD, and the fact that TNG was originally filmed on actual film means there's potential for a big resolution upgrade. If they're actually going back and rescanning all the film elements, and then redoing the FX in high def, it is an upgrade and a "change", but that's no call to crop down to 16x9. We've had a 16x9 TV as our main display for over 6 years now, and we still watch a lot of 4x3 material (we're just discovering classic Doctor Who, so we're watching old

Hi, welcome to the internet. Pr0n is over there, bitching about Star Wars over here, and I'm sorry but the promise of punch-and-pie was, in fact, a lie.



Seriously, yes, Voyager squandered it's premise within the first few episodes. That's why Ron Moore went and made the rebooted Battlestar Galactica which took that premise, and cranked it to 11.

Doctorossi

I thought the cake was a lie?

It did? I must admit some ignorance to that show but, from what I've seen, it didn't look like the same premise to me.

milo bloom

Those are all FX shots, which will necessarily have to be redone for HD anyways. It's the live action footage that will need to be clear on the sides.

Not precisely the same, but Moore had worked on TNG, DS9 and (briefly) Voyager. He grew frustrated that the producers of VOY abandoned the premise that the show had been sold on. The Battlestar reboot was sort of his way of doing a "small group of people on the run with limited supplies in space" kind of show. It was also a way of telling stories closer to the original premise of the 1970's version of Galactica, which started off pretty good, with the humans running from the evil Cylons, but then the first regular episode has them finding the casino planet.

ScissorPuppy

I think you missunderstood my post. I am aware you can have a 4x3 HD image. I was just saying if they redo special effects in with modern CGI the line of altering the original versions has been crossed, matting it for modern day "full screen" would just be another alteration. My preference would be to keep it at 4x3, Paramount will probably go this route as well. This was their choice with TOS, although all the new CGI footage was rendered at 16x9 (4x3 safe) in case they ever changed their mind.

gmanca

Exactly; I was speaking of live action of TV shows in general. I haven't lost anything from watching Seinfeld in 16x9.

jjcool

Every season set I have on blu ray was had for $20 or under.

jjcool

Are you saying that $150 a season wasn't overinflated?
$70 for a season of TV is definitely overinflated.

jjcool

It's because of lemmings like you that blindly pay these overinflated prices for these sets, that studios think they can price stuff higher and higher. TNG will do great on blu, if they priced it well.

No wonder no one seems to like you.

You are wrong.

But see the expert above. These "have never hit the $20 price point." So you must not have gotten them for less than $20.

milo bloom

So the 'bits is saying the four eps on the sampler disc will be the two part Encounter at Farpoint (eh, it's the pilot), The Inner Light and Sins of the Father. Kind of an odd selection IMHO.

Anubis2005X

As great as The Inner Light is, I think I'll be passing on this...

gmanca

Interesting; I get the idea with doing Encounter at Farpoint with it being the pilot and having a lot of the necessary flybys but I don't get Sins of the Father. The Inner Light has two points going for it, the establishing matte shot of the city and the space probe, where as Sins of the Father also has an establishing matte shot of the Klingon home world and a Klingon vessel.

Those two are too similar to show the work they've done. If they were going to do another B-level episode, they should have done Peak Performance.

Eric F

FYI: The Animated Series is now available for streaming in HD on Netflix (and it looks really good). I had no idea they had HD masters of this.

I guess it's time to sell my DVD set.

Double_Oh_7

They should have picked episodes that would really demonstrate the potential of Blu-ray... Yesterday's Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds, etc.

banthafett

Id only get rid of it, if the Blu comes in a sweet ass box.

E Unit

Official announcement. Sounds like they're making a full blown effort on the entire series, remastered picture and recompositioned special effects.

http://www.startrek.com/article/the-...launch-in-2012

"Star Trek: The Next Generation will be released in high-definition Blu-ray, starting in January with a sampler of several popular episodes, followed by a season-one set to be released later on in 2012, and subsequent seasons beaming down after that. Each of the 178 episodes spanning The Next Generation's seven seasons will be transferred to true high-definition 1080p for release in the Blu-ray format and, eventually, for runs on television and digital platforms in the U.S. and across the world. Star Trek: The Next Generation will, as fans know, be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2012.

"Fans have been clamoring for a high-definition release of Star Trek: The Next Generation," Ken Ross, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CBS Entertainment, said in a statement. "Transferring the series to high-definition presented difficult technical challenges, but our team has come up with a process to create true 1080p HD masters with true HD visual effects. We can’t wait to show fans how pristine the series looks and sounds with our upcoming Blu-ray releases."

CBS is, in fact, returning to the original film negatives, a mother lode of material encompassing 25,000-plus reels of footage, and editing the episodes together precisely as they were when they originally aired between 1987 and 1994. Visual effects will not be upconverted from videotape, but instead will be recompositioned. The freshly cut film will ultimately be transferred to high definition with 7.1 DTS Master Audio. And all of the work is being done in conjunction with respected, longtime Star Trek figures Denise and Michael Okuda, who are on board as consultants."



Shitty title for the sampler though - "A Taste"??



<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/av35kFHdS50" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Jay G.

The title for the sampler appears to be "The Next Level" with the subtitle "A taste of TNG in High Definition".

E Unit

Yes, I am aware of that. They should have just left it at that though, "The Next Level".

Eric F

Time to sell my DVD set.

Shazam

Holy shit. This is, hopefully, going to be awesome.

Supermallet

Cannot fucking wait. Wish they had announced pricing, though.

banthafett

The sets are going to be expensive, but they will be mine. Whats gonna suck is the time between releases.