Just finished watching an 8 minute promo for the release of the re-mastered 1st season of the original series and it looks pretty frickin' pehnomenal to say the least!

So is it a forgone conclusion that Paramount/CBS will go back and remaster TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT all for HD DVD re-issues?

www.startrek.com -Linky for the promo for those who are interested.

ENT would be no problem since it was shot in HD. The rest would require probably as much, if not more work than the TOS.

If Paramount sees the potential for profit, then yes. I think it will depend upon the sales of this first set.

They are enhancing a Gorn to blink his eyelids?!?! Paramount is raping my childhood, or something.

Some kinda cool stuff, but Star Trek series don't come cheap.

I could be wrong, but I really don't see them doing anything to the other series. The changes to those series would be much more subtle and I don't think it would be profitable.

Here's the direct link for media player stream: http://www.startrek.com/startrek/videoview?id=2305833

The problem with the other series ("Enterprise" may be an exception to this) is that, although they were shot on film, the film was immediately transferred to SD video for all of the post-production work, including editing. And the special effects were rendered in SD. So, every episode would have to have its original camera negatives transferred to HD, then the editing would have to be done over, and the effects would have to be redone. I don't even want to think about what that would cost or how much time it would take.

(i've already stated my opinion..)

Do you have a link for all of that? Does the film not still exist?

Regardless, I think the OP already understands what you said. I think his point is that they did all of that with TOS, why wouldn't they do that with the other series.

Amazon.com has a pre-order price of $138.95. That's very reasonable

No, no, no. I don't think you're understanding. TOS was shot and edited on film. Any effects work was done on film. Thus, all Paramount had to do was clean up the film, add the new effects, and it's ready to go.

TNG, DS9, and Voyager were shot on film. Then, all of the footage was transferred to SD video for editing and FX work. So, the only footage Paramount has that would gain any kind of benefit from being transferred to HD is the original raw footage, unedited and without any of the effects that were added in post. So Paramount would have to clean up pretty much all the raw footage, and then edit and add FX from there. My big worry is that they may decide to change some of the cuts if they're already bothering to re-edit it.

Does anyone know if Paramount even kept the raw footage around?
Hollywood has such a great track record of taking care of the final elements, who knows WTF they did the raw material.

Considering how much of a cash cow ST is for Paramount, I'd assume they did. On the other hand, this IS Hollywood. If Fox and Lucas could let Star Wars degenerate, who knows what's happened to the raw TNG footage.

I wouldn't bet on that though. Don't forget Paramount is the studio that didn't want to clean up what was left of The Godfather!

I was under the impression that ENT didn't switch over to HD until midway through its second season. It was always 16:9, just not HD.

The first season has aired in high-def on HDNet, so high-def masters are definitely floating around.

(I believe the first season was shot on film, and for budgetary reasons, the show switched to HD cameras from then on.)

As Adam said, it's on HDNET, and the quality is identical to season two. So, I'd assume, even if they didn't shoot specifically in HD, they have HD masters.

The Godfather never has and never will make as much money as the Star Trek franchise.

Fox and Lucas didn't "let" "Star Wars" degenerate. The film negative was stored in a state-of-the-art archival facility with perfect climate control conditions. You couldn't ask for better treatment. However, the movie was shot on a Kodak film stock that turned out to be highly unstable. The degradation was inevitable.

To answer The Cow's question, I'm sure the film negatives for TNG still exists, but as someone else said, it's the raw, unedited footage.

Thanks! I didn't know the edits came after the transfer.

I think some people (like myself) would view anything over $100 as NOT reasonable....
Then again, just IMHO....I would never pay over $100 for a season of ANY show, high-def or not...even for my favorite show of all time, Buffy....most I have ever spent was almost $70 (and actually, that was for ST:TOS when it came out in season sets on standard DVD)....

My other beef is with the combo release....I wish they'd just kill all those discs right now, anyone from Paramount, Warner and Universal listening? (Probably not)

Tough call. This really looks fantastic, but the price is really high. At the same time, I don't want it to fail and they don't release the other seasons, etc. But I don't mind waiting the price out.

Thought about ordering it to see if the 10% off might apply. It didn't. Hopefully they fix that.

They'll apply it if you email them. I'm sure it will get added on in a few days.