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All of your points here are spot on. I was thinking of Star Trek: The Original Series as well when I read this article. I'm pleased that they included, on the B

All of your points here are spot on. I was thinking of Star Trek: The Original Series as well when I read this article. I'm pleased that they included, on the Blu Ray, the original episodes as well as the "remastered" ones. I think in the future we'll come to regret our remasters because they make the product itself anachronistic. I'd much rather see the wires in "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) and appreciate the film as a product of its time than to hide the work those effects artists did with other effects that themselves will eventually become dated. My only addition to your comments here is to echo your sentiment about the diminishing returns of higher definition: putting more pixels in a display doesn't necessarily result in a better viewing experience. In my small apartment, the viewing distance from my eyes to the screen is about 10 feet. Consulting the Optimal Viewing Chart[0], I find that in order to justify a 4K TV I'd need to purchase a 75-inch TV. I think 1080p restorations might be the final frontier, at least for me. http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-television-graph-size.png http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-televi...

beloch 11y ago
One convenient thing about TOS is that everything was done optically and the prints that were scanned for broadcast were still available. They were able to go back to the film without being forced to redo all the editing and effects, as was necessary for TNG, which was composited and edited on tape. As you say, they were wise to include the unaltered versions on the Bluray releases. The "upgraded" effects are certainly interesting, but far from subtle! If you want to see the unaltered version of TNG you are forced to go back to the DVD's. Fortunately, the restorers were meticulous in recreating the original special effects as faithfully to the original as possible, even to the point of bringing in a lot of the people who originally did those effects in the 80's and 90's. Practically nothing sticks out as being as out of place as the upgraded effects that were done for TOS do. Even though a lot of what we see in the HD release of TNG is entirely new, it blends in seamlessly. Extremely impressive work! TV of the late 80's and 90's seems destined to be a bit of low-resolution dip for for the foreseeable future. The TNG restoration was expensive and CBS Paramount hasn't yet gone forth with restoring Deep Space Nine. It may simply be too expensive to give most shows the same treatment. An added problem of the late 90's was the advent of extensive use of CG effects in television. DS9's restoration will be complicated by this, and another great example is Babylon 5. The models, animation files, etc. for this show's CG effects were lost, so they'd need to be recreated from scratch if the show was ever to be restored in hidef. Even the DVD releases suffer from poor quality due to this.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Maybe future superresolution techniques will let us restore some of the old SD video, although CGI that was never rendered at high resolution probably won't gain anything.

beloch 11y ago

One convenient thing about TOS is that everything was done optically and the prints that were scanned for broadcast were still available. They were able to go back to the film without being forced to redo all the editing and effects, as was necessary for TNG, which was composited and edited on tape. As you say, they were wise to include the unaltered versions on the Bluray releases. The "upgraded" effects are certainly interesting, but far from subtle! If you want to see the unaltered version of TNG you are forced to go back to the DVD's. Fortunately, the restorers were meticulous in recreating the original special effects as faithfully to the original as possible, even to the point of bringing in a lot of the people who originally did those effects in the 80's and 90's. Practically nothing sticks out as being as out of place as the upgraded effects that were done for TOS do. Even though a lot of what we see in the HD release of TNG is entirely new, it blends in seamlessly. Extremely impressive work! TV of the late 80's and 90's seems destined to be a bit of low-resolution dip for for the foreseeable future. The TNG restoration was expensive and CBS Paramount hasn't yet gone forth with restoring Deep Space Nine. It may simply be too expensive to give most shows the same treatment. An added problem of the late 90's was the advent of extensive use of CG effects in television. DS9's restoration will be complicated by this, and another great example is Babylon 5. The models, animation files, etc. for this show's CG effects were lost, so they'd need to be recreated from scratch if the show was ever to be restored in hidef. Even the DVD releases suffer from poor quality due to this.

nitrogen 11y ago
Maybe future superresolution techniques will let us restore some of the old SD video, although CGI that was never rendered at high resolution probably won't gain anything.