Well I stand by my previous remarks, that's for sure.

That's just hyperbole. At worst, one 10 second SFX shot was less visible in theaters.

However, your bringing up of Dracula does bring up an interesting parallel. In both instances, you assert the legitimacy of one version based on nothing but your own preference. You make outlandish claims based on zero actual evidence, such as your assertion that Buffy and early Angel were shot for 16:9, or that the Dracula BD is not the image that was originally intended to been seen in theaters. Meanwhile, the other side for both of these arguments have testimony from people actually involved in the productions: Joss Whedon for Buffy, and Kim Aubry for Dracula.

In short, your arguments for both boil down do "I prefer this version, therefore it is legitimate," which is just hokum.

*Grabs a lawn chair and a bag of popcorn*

Like I said, to debate this with Josh is pointless.

It's not easy always being right. You should consider yourself fortunate that you'll never truly know this burden.

I doubt anyone will ever know the burden of always being right. Everyone's wrong on occasion, some more than others.

Fixed. Much more accurate now...

Wow, aren't you so clever? That was just AMAZING how you took that one word and made it into the opposite word so that the sentence means like the total opposite. How did you ever think of something that brilliant? My mind was just totally blown. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...

Ugh. Girls, GIRLS! You're BOTH pretty!

Two theories:

1. They don't know which season to start with. It's impractical to issue complete series box sets, later seasons aren't as popular as earlier ones and earlier ones won't show as much improvement visually.

2. Criterion is negotiating behind closed doors for release rights.


You'd think they could AT LEAST put out 'Once More With Feeling' to replace the non-anamorphic mess on the US set.

This is my own ignorance at play here, but has Criterion ever released a tv series? Either way, I don't see Fox allowing anyone else, even Criterion, to release this.

I do think that Fox themselves will eventually release this as individual seasons, but it will take a few more years so the Blu-ray market can grow and the demand for tv shows (particularly older ones) will increase exponentially. Also, I think they'd probably need some other angle to tie it in: e.g. From Joss Whedon (director of the box office smash Avengers) comes Hi-Def Buffy, etc.

I was being sarcastic there (with mayhap a trace of insane wishful thinking thrown in for good measure) but, yeah, Criterion have released a TV series (well, mini-series, anyway): 'Tanner 88' - issued first on laserdiscs and then reissued on DVD. I'm not sure that Joss Whedon has the same arthouse clout that Robert Altman once commanded, but he's certainly head and shoulders above the Beastie Boys and Michael Bay, and Criterion found it in their hearts to give them a good home.

But no, I really wasn't being serious with that theory.

Ah, okay. I gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

I love reviving dead threads...

***

A quick question (possibly followed by a quick "you dope!" response--be nice!)...

I work in TV animation post-production as an Avid editor, and it's been common practice at most studios that because of the impermanence of the videotaped outputs of digital editing systems, even the pre-Avid stuff, to also "go to film"–ie., transfer the the highest resolution (and one would imagine the fullest aspect ratio, as well) digitally available to at least 35mm (or very probably higher) film stock for archival purposes, *after* all the effects have been laid in.

I find it hard to believe that the WB...or was BtVS at Fox by s4?...wouldn't have done just that--created film archives of the 16x9 versions, and one hopes to a nice fat film stock built for it. I know for a *fact* that WB TV animation was outputting HQ film archives by the time we were working with QuickTime 1920x1080 source files (2000/1), and believe it to be corporate policy across the board. One would hope that Fox did the same thing, but Fox isn't known to be the brightest spark.

So I live in hope of beauteous BDs of both of Buffy and Angel, sooner or later.

***

That having been said, those of you with the capability to play PAL DVDs on your current device (say, an upgrading OPPO, a rare thing of beauty) should purchase BtVS UK seasons 4-7 posthaste. (And Angel season 2–up.) Even though you can see the occasional boom mike or lens cutoff, a good PAL transfer looks awfully darn HD when upgraded properly. (And if we do eventually get US 16x9 BDs, one would hope that they fix all of that.) I was lucky enough to get the beautiful original UK boxed sets (the "book" versions) for dirt cheap at Amoeba Records in LA, before most of us realized we could hack our DVD players and Amoeba was selling PAL mostly as curiosity. I'm talkin' like $15 per set. Well done, me!

But they're often on sale at Amazon.co.uk--well worth the occasional check-in.

Buffy and Angel were always Fox productions. Buffy was always composed for 4x3, per Josh Whedon. Angle was always designed for 16x9. These shows, including X-Files, were composed on video at 480i, and will require significant restoration and re-composition of the visual effects. These shows are in the same situation as Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it becomes a issue of cost to re-edit and create new effects.

Fox is not known for splurging for this stuff, so I wouldn't hold your breath for BDs of these titles.

fitprod

It sounds like WB TV animation was ahead of the curve, although this may have to do with the content (animation vs live action) and the different production costs involved in transitioning to HD.

All evidence points to Buffy and Angel being shot on film, which was then transferred to video in SD and edited, with FX shots rendered and composited in SD as well. Printing the final SD master to film would provide a possibly more rugged copy, but not any higher quality.

Fox wasn't alone in this, and it depended a lot on when the show started, what the network demands were, and the budget for the production. Scrubs started in 2001 as an ABC TV production, but was transferred and edited in SD until 2008, since NBC didn't want to pay more for an HD version of the show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_...elivery_format

This is interesting, since I always assumed that the PAL transfers of US TV shows would simply have been upconverted from NTSC masters. It seems doubtful that the PAL copies contain any image detail not in the NTSC ones.

Angel wasn't always designed for 16x9. The first two seasons were shot for 4x3, then switched to 16x9 for the rest of the series.

I was under the impression that:

• Season 1 was shot and aired with the 4:3 aspect ratio in mind.
• Season 2 was shot with the 16:9 aspect ratio in mind, but aired in 4:3 (at least here in the states).
• Season 3 and forward were shot and aired in 16:9.

Also, as I've seen discrepencies in this thread...

• The first two seasons of Buffy were shot on Super 16. The remaining five seasons were shot on 35mm.
• Angel was always shot on 35mm.

I also thought the last season of Angel was the only season that was mastered in and for HD as The WB just started to broadcast shows in 720p (IIRC) that year.

Hmm...

fitprod--if you mean that the shows were *shot* at 480i, I respectfully don't think so, after BtVS season 3. Joss did indeed always *intend* all seven seasons of Buffy for 4x3 presentation, but I own the UK versions of BtVS seasons 4 through 7 and Angel season 2 in true 16x9--despite intentions, Angel season 1 is 4x3 in the US and UK. (A 16x9 aspect ratio is possible, to be sure, with 480i, but not with the picture quality that one can plainly see in the UK PAL versions.)

But bear in mind that Avid editing, especially in the earlier years, was primarily used to spit out an EDL (edit decision list) at the end of the cut (the tape outputs from Avid back in the early 2000s went only as far as Digibeta), and said EDL could then be used at various post-production facilities to create a master that was as large and pretty as the source materials would allow. Effects were typically laid in at this point; mockups could be done in Avid, but downrezzed AfterEffects shots were the best that could be output to tape *from Avid*. The major studios began around this time to be intensely aware of wanting the highest resolution of any program (even animation) produced to be the end result, ie., the archival copy.

Jay G.: if new masters for the UK DVDs were struck from the archival film, they'd have been better simply because of the 625-line/50 Hz nature of PAL vs. the 525-line/60 Hz NTSC. I've A/B'd them (at least the BtVS DVDs), and they're distinctly better looking.

And despite Fox having been the production company for all of the BtVS series, WB has strict "film out" standards, so they'd contractually require the best possible quality, so at least BtVS s4 would've been protected by that. But I'm tellin' ya...seasons 4-7 in PAL look substantially better than the US versions.

But in all honesty, I doubt that we'll ever get true BD versions of either of them, after some thought. I went to Amazon to look at the WB animated shows ca. the early 2000s, and none have been released in Blu-ray (and lord knows that DC would push for them). Yes, it could be done, if Fox got behind the effort to do so, but I doubt it's high on their list of priorities. (They've always been far too busy messing up every show that Joss has ever brought to them to start showing due deference now.) So, as I said in the original post, for the best quality, I'd get the UK PAL DVDs of BtVS 4-7 and Angel 2-5. Seriously--they're gorgeous when upscaled properly.

It's not until season 3 that Angel was shot with 16:9 in mind.

From a review quoting Tim Minear:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/7211/angel-season-two/
Even Josh Z acknowledges that Angel Season 2 is officially supposed to be 4:3 :
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/3707293-post29.html

I believe you're correct about the film stocks, and Angel Season 5 being in HD, although according to this thread, Season 5 was mastered and broadcast in 1080i:
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forum...unt-as-hd.html

I'd bet it was mastered at 1080p24 since that's the standard, but that's nitpicking.

I can't believe there's any kind of controversy over Buffy's aspect ratio. Joss Whedon himself included a note in the season four sets saying that 4:3 is the creator preferred AR for BTVS.

Also happened in a fourth season episode of BTVS; I think it "This Year's Girl" when they found a dead demon hanging in the woods. There are a couple of guys in the shot holding a boom mike. This is the 4:3 image, and really obvious. I wondered who they were and why they were holding a big pole.

I don't care about what the creator "prefers"...I only care about how they actually aired on TV, and those later seasons were indeed 16:9 (they are shown that way on Hulu as well!). Joss only directed a small number of those shows (four or five a season?), and my guess is the other directors of those latter seasons framed them for 16:9 exhibition.

And if Joss preferred 4:3 so much, why did he shoot "Once More With Feeling" 16:9?!

If only Kubrick had directed a few Buffy/Angel episodes we could really get this framing issue going.

Well, I'm sure they were shot 16x9 to play nicely for syndication down the road, because it's a standard part of whatever post-production pipeline they were using, and/or because of international demand.

That they were shown in 16x9 doesn't prove anything. Why is the creator's intent invalid? If a direct-to-video movie were somehow misframed, would you argue that that's the way it should be seen because that's how it was originally released? You're just trying to justify filling your screen, the same as the pan-and-scan/open matte crowd did with 4x3 DVDs twelve years ago.

It's television, and Joss was the showrunner. Directors on TV series are fairly low on the totem pole, with the showrunner making all the key creative decisions. The directors of photography were pretty consistent throughout, with Michael E. Gershman shooting pretty much all of Buffy.

Listen to the audio commentary: he wanted it to be a big, widescreen musical.