Visual effects are then recompositioned
Remake it so!
Captain's log 65209.2, CBS has officially confirmed Star Trek: The Next Generation will be heading to Blu-Ray in 2012. And, in celebration of the show's 25th anniversary, each of the 178 episodes throughout TNG's seven series will be remastered in 1080p HD. TNG will be available from January, starting with a sampler of …
Star Trek DVD boxsets were prohibitively expensive, even second hand they can go for as much as £15, compared to the £5 <other tv show> boxset next to them.
Ok, they did have the funky plastic bump case.
The TOS movie BluRay was even worse costwise when it came out.
I think these TNG BluRays will, if history guides us, not have that many units sold...
although undoubtedly some Trekkies will up in arms at the loss of the soft-focus look that came to typify the converted-from-NTSC UK terrestrial broadcasts. It'll be interesting to see how well the sets and make-up bear up to being viewable in far greater detail than originally intended
That soft-focus look was what made the original broadcasts unwatchable to me, though the oh-so-PC and condescending storylines helped a little as well! I much preferred Voyager... ;-)
Maybe I can now give them a second chance now (once the price drops to a reasonable level of course).
It was filmed on 35mm and converted to both NTSC and PAL, this way you don't get video conversion problems, so familiar of 1980's American news clips on UK TV. This was a very common way of making anything of any mid-to-high budget in the US.
As a foot note - see The Day Today for the 'larious US TV news sections.
The first series wasn't as good as the others, granted, but it did set a lot of stuff up, storywise. Sinclair's acting was bad, but in a funny way rather than a God-awful way. B5 just didn't work as well with the stand-alone episodic format, so once the main storyline got going it was much improved.
And compared to Star Trek? Much as I love the Trek and its cheesy dialogue, wooden arms-by-the-side acting, and tendency to resolve all problems in the last 5 minutes of the show with concentrated technobabble, it just doesn't come close to B5.
B5 definitely has its crap moments, but they are heavily outweighed by the good stuff. Riker incompetently firing one shot at a BoP and getting his ship destroyed, or Sheridan dive-bombing a ship full of nukes into Za'ha'dum, before throwing himself off a cliff because his balls are solid titanium?
...in order to meet the director's original vision;
Jean-Luc now has CGI hair.
Wesley now has a genetically enhanced monkey that sits on his shoulder, wise-cracking and introducing moments of slapstick levity.
Data walking about is now accompanied by the sound of steam-pistons; an oversight saw this removed prior to the original broadcast.
The Borg only start to assimilate people after the TNG crew were mean to them first.
well i guess ill be buying this on import in order to get avoid the upscaling costs. And i shall echo the worries of others about the 16:9 strech.
Maybe they can take the future frame when the camera is panning to add in the extra bits at the side from 4:3
maybe some temporal-shifting is in order.
the new effects just looked daft on TOS. why do they have to do it?
from what I've read the plan with B5 was to always to re-render the computer effects for when it was released on future formats, but I'm glad they found it too expensive to bother (they also apparently filmed with widescreen stock, ready for 16:9 presentation later, but everything was framed for 4:3 so it looked naff in 16:9 anyway, though I wouldn't mind seeing it for myself)
I love TNG*: if it's on TV I have a hard time tearing myself away from it, though I don't love it enough to get it all on disc, just because of the time commitment for watching them all again.
* the early episodes are awful on so many levels (men in miniskirt tunics??), but seem to have a strange charm that I can't explain.