Once again, overseas might be coming to the rescue. There's a "best of" release of Rawhide that just came out in Germany. It's only 4 episodes, but maybe if it sells well they'll start doing full season.

I could see Buffy, Angel, and X-Files getting eventual blu-ray releases. They are popular cult shows and should do well.

The DVDs of these shows are of varying picture quality and have some glaring errors and quality control issues (some scenes missing from Buffy and Angel episodes, OMWF being non-anamorphic, that one XF ep that looks like it came from a third generation EP VHS).

I wasn't aware that they were redoing the special effects in Buffy; with all of the dustings and morphs that seems like quite an undertaking. I have been unimpressed with some of the HD Buffy I've seen. Some scenes look too bright, especially ones that are taking place at night (such as the scene in Buffy's bedroom with Angel from the episode "Angel").

I don't know how many average consumers really notice/care about upconverted SD content. For example, my in-laws have a 46" HDTV which shows SD 4:3 content stretched to fit.

For some reruns in HD, the picture quality still looks awful.

For example, offhand I can't tell whether the daily NCIS reruns are in legitimate HD resolution or just dumb sd->hd upscales. (I don't have any NCIS dvds for comparison).

In general I agree about the current expectations of the average viewer. However, the average TV size at the time most watched these shows was probably between 20" to 25", and now it is between 40+" to 60". The syndicated prints are continuing to age to where they look worse and worse each year. So when combining increased screen size, deteriorating existing prints, and the fact there will be more and more HD content and less and less SD content for comparison, I don't think SD will have much of a market left. Now my perspective is still a few years down the road yet.

What CBS has done for many of their shows is to re-transfer them from the original film elements to create new masters. If the quality of the most current CBS DVD's were used for syndication that would probably be just fine going forward, since they are that much of an improvement over the old masters. But if one is going to go to all that trouble they might as well just create new HD transfers, and that is what CBS did.

That's the fault of the series, not the broadcast. For a show as popular and long-running as NCIS, it has seriously terrible production values. It's still shot on 16mm film (allegedly for "consistency" with the early seasons), but even for 16mm it looks awful. Most scenes are shot with gauzy filters on the lenses to distract you from noticing how old the cast is. The show often looks like it's been upconverted from VHS.

Given the rushed production schedules of most television programs, shooting 16mm invariably leads to poor-looking picture quality.

So far the only tv show I thought which looked a lot better on bluray than in their original first-run hd broadcasts, is the revived Hawaii Five-0. Very big difference especially in picture quality of the wide shots of Hawaiian landscapes.

For many other tv shows on bluray I've been watching, so far I've found that many of them looked "less noisy" and somewhat "sharper" than the original hd television broadcasts. (Such as Breaking Bad, Person of Interest, Fringe, The Blacklist, Nikita, House MD, The Office, etc ...). Not as big of a difference like H50.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Since so few average viewers care about it, I'd assume that as long as advertisers are willing to pay for commercials, you'd think that they'd be fine with upscaled masters, especially since in one of history's cruelest ironies, lots of 1.33 shows are now being cropped to 1.78. If anything, I would assume HD masters would be aimed at the collectors who are the kind of people who'd pay for them. Though with Blu-ray sales so low, maybe not.

MTV2 and the Disney Channel show Boy Meets World in HD, and as the show was shot on videotape, I am 100% certain there aren't any HD masters for it, so they'd obviously have to be upscales. I sort of assume some stations just take what they get.

Well, OLED isn't looking affordable at the moment .

That's a pretty huge expense for creating masters just for reruns though. The show would have to have a pretty big audience. Scanning the film in HD is one thing, cleaning it up is another, but when FX shots frequently have be redone, I'd assume that's expensive and time-consuming.

According to the IMDb, it was shot on Super 35 for most of its early seasons before switching over to 1080p/24 fairly recently. That said, anything which keeps Kodak in business is OK with me if it is still shot on 16mm . I've only ever seen an episode or two, but it looks like the show uses mostly simple sets as a procedural and its directed just functionally.

16mm was fairly common for TV production once upon a time, especially since the resolution of TV was so low and you didn't need the extra space for sound. These days TV seems to be shot pretty exclusively on digital formats. I don't think that any show besides The Walking Dead still shoots on film anymore now that True Blood and Breaking Bad are over, and I doubt that The Walking Dead will be next season. Even Mad Men transitioned over despite the creators objections last season.

TV tends to fairly functional in how its shot because it's designed to be seen on a smaller screen, especially back in the day. Most existing shows already have HD masters, so the difference between them and their Blu-ray releases would presumably not be very substantial.

I saw the smiley face regarding the OLED comment, but the truth is LED and LCD are still relatively cheap even in the bigger sizes, so i still think the average consumer will have larger screens going forward (i.e., 50+" screens).

Whether the expense to create HD masters could be considered high for older shows is no longer relevant for CBS since they are probably 90% done with their key classic catalog. This includes titles such as The Fugitive, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith Show, Rawhide, and Perry Mason to just mention a few from the 50's and 60's that are complete. Gunsmoke and Bonanza are both continuing with scheduled releases for season 12 of Gunsmoke 12/2015, and season 8 of Bonanza in 07/2015. What has been transferred to HD is all contained within the CBS syndication bible. They all appear to have been remastered/cleaned up as well. Obviously the older shows don't have the lower resolution FX to redo like ST:TNG.

CBS didn't go to all this trouble just to downconvert them for DVD releases, so it must be primarily for future HD syndication and streaming, and potential blu-ray releases. CBS has never been the cheapest on the block either with their DVD releases, yet they still release them, many times as volumes with a higher than industry average price. I think they will potentially continue with blu-ray releases at some point.

Good point.

On a tangential topic, wonder if CBS has done any 4K restorations yet. (Such as Sony doing a 4K version of Breaking Bad).

http://www.cnet.com/news/as-promised...nt-on-netflix/

I would assume they future-proofed their TNG masters given the massive cash outlay.

I know they're going to want me to buy the set a third time