Question about image quality of TV shows
 

Hi! Watching "FRIENDS" Seasons 1 - 5 on DVD I notice that the transfer quality is really poor - I would think I was watching a VHS if I didn't know I had a DVD in the player! Anybody know the reason they do such a poor job on the image quality?? I mean, the original tapes would still be available I would think, right? Couldn't they do a better job? Are most TV shows which are on DVD like this?? This is the only TV show I have bought so far, and if they are all like this, it would make me think twice about buying additional ones!

Thanks in advance!

these are the ones i've seen:



The Dick Van Dyke Show
Mary Tyler Moore
Alias
The Incredible Hulk

all look excellant to outstanding.

Battlestar Galactica has material that looks outstanding as well as shots (within the same show) that are extremely noisy/poor.

The Avengers looks average
the Outer Limits looks a bit better

Buffy The Vampire Slayer looks just ok for the first 2 seasons, improves a bit witht he 3rd , and by the fifth looks alright but nothing special.

Angel is probably the best looking tv on dvd. Alias is also pretty good looking.

My wife owns all of these and they look very good to me. I see you're in Japan. Are the ones you're watching the same as my region 1 versions? Maybe different regions have different quality issues. I haven't watched them on my Mits and Panny player but on the 32" direct view and an older Panny player the colors are vivid and the image is sharp.

Re: Question about image quality of TV shows
 

It really depends on the source material. The Doctor Who discs look outstanding - and the source material is over 40 years old at times. The Babylon 5 sets often look embarrassingly bad in places, and that's only 8-10 years old.

The difference? Doctor Who has been lovingly restored frame by frame by a experianced team while B5 probably just sat on a shelf somewhere until it was time to send the tapes to the DVD mastering house.

I have found that for the most part TV shows will not be Super Huge Quality that pushes the boundries of your Home Theater setup. They will be a little bit better than VHS, and often better than I've seen in re-runs for a long, long time.

X-files looks great, as well as 24.

It just depends on how many episodes and extras they cram on the disc. In the first season of Mad About You, they crammed 25 episodes on 2 discs. :eek:

Thanks for the responses, appreciate it.

By the way - the versions I am watching are Region 1 for the person who asked that question.

Sounds like maybe they just don't want to spend a great deal of money and re-master these "made for TV" titles.

I also noticed the poor image quality on the Friends Season 1 set. I also wasn't impressed with the Simpsons Season 1. Fortunately, not all TV shows look that way - it just depends on the quality of the transfer, as with movies. For instance, all the Star Trek seasons I've seen have looked very good, certainly a lot better than on their original broadcast (TNG and DS9); whatever gripes people may have with Paramount (their pricing, for instance), they really did do a super job of remastering the episodes and making them look as good as they could. Then we have Babylon 5, which (especially in Season 1) clearly was not given the attention it needed (even apart from the CGI issue, the print is extremely dirty!)

Like the others have said, you have to factor in the source material into the transfer quality. I'm pleasently happy with the quality of the Friends sets. I wasn't expecting anything great, but it's a lot better then what Columbia's been putting out on DVD (Dawson's Creek Season 1 was terrible, Season 2 isn't much better) as well as Married With Children Season 1 not looking great. CTHV seems to want to pack as many episodes onto one disc as possible, maybe they think the public won't want to get up and change discs that often or something.

THE DEADZONE: SEASON ONE and SMALLVILLE: SEASON ONE both look very good as well.

I would say hands down, the best TV on DVD that I have seen is the Twin Peaks Season 1 box set. I don't think that the show even looked as good as it is on the DVDs as it did when originally broadcast! Superb.

Currently I only have two TV shows on DVD, Farscape and Babylon 5, and the quality between the two is like night and day. &nbsp From day one the video quality of the Farscape DVDS has been nothing but incredible. &nbsp Babylon 5, on the other hand, is a mixed bag at best. &nbsp The video quality goes from good to bad to excellent, all in the same episode.

'Futurama' looks amazing !

Sade