Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1 Blu-ray March 26, 2013 Review

[Lincoln6Echo]

Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete First Season Blu-ray

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season One Blu-ray Review

TrekCore is reporting thru Tweets from TPTB, that Season 1 of ENT will be released on Blu-ray sometime in 2013. But with one minor (depending on how you look at it) caveat, in that the VFX will be most probably up-scaled 720p renders. For mainly two reasons...(1) that's they way they were done, and (2) supposedly 1080p renders would look too sharp and contrast too much with the live action stuff.

I can attest to that, as I just watched the "Iron Sky" (space Nazis on the moon film) and all the space battle shots just looked too sharp. The spacecraft looked too good, if that's evenly possible.

In comparison, recent shows like Battlestar Galactica VFX were rendered in 720p, and Stargate: Atlantis VFX were rendered in 480p, and were both up-scaled to 1080p, and both look fine. So, this shouldn't be that big of a deal.

[Sons Of Sparda]

Kinda surprised they would choose to release this series being the ratings for the show were never that good. Would rather see Deep Space 9 on blu ray.

[double_l4488]

If this is official, you would think they would put on Deep Space Nine or Voyager before this.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Sons Of Sparda

Kinda surprised they would choose to release this series being the ratings for the show were never that good. Would rather see Deep Space 9 on blu ray.

enterprise was shot in HD, DS9 was shot like TNG, so muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch less work to toss it on blu-ray than DS9... + don't underestimate trekkies, the ratings for Enterprise weren't that good but on home video it did extremely well

[Sons Of Sparda]

I have seen the whole series. Liked it except for the last season.

[Sons Of Sparda]

They are most likely still restoring all the Next Generation episodes so I could see why they would bring out Enterprise first than.

[aimforsilence]

Holy Shit! Thats awesome news! I always wondered what the delay on getting this out was. I mean it was all done in HD so.. its not like TNG, DS9 or Voy where they have to look through film and do the whole 10 yards. Very excited to rewatch this from front to back. Love all things Trek!

[aimforsilence]

Originally Posted by Sons Of Sparda

They are most likely still restoring all the Next Generation episodes so I could see why they would bring out Enterprise first than.

According to an interview i read a few days ago. they are just finishing up on Season 3 and moving on to season 4 of TNG. I guess it takes roughly a week to do an episode, from what the interview was saying. But it'll be nice to get more trek next year! Pump for more TNG and for ENT to makes its way!

[chip75]

Originally Posted by morriscroy

More generally, are there any sci-fi or fantasy shows which have all the vfx done in native 1080p (or higher)?

It would depend on the studio and the channel. Maybe stuff like Game Of Thrones is rendered in 1080p and other big budget shows in the last few years?

This may seem an odd question but if the show was created in 720p why don't they release it like that? Would it cause any problems?

[d514]

Not the entire show was created in 720p, just the special effects.

I had no problems with the special effects on Battlestar Galactica but I'm afraid Enterprise will not look that good.

Here are a few screenshots of the pilot released in 720p on iTunes:
http://imgbox.com/g/eJI8e3wU7r

The real life scenes will probably look a little better on Blu-ray but the special effects look rather bad on these screenshots, more like SD.

Well, I guess in the end the 25 year old TNG effects will look better than the 10 year old ENT effects...

[Cap.T]

Originally Posted by chip75

It would depend on the studio and the channel. Maybe stuff like Game Of Thrones is rendered in 1080p and other big budget shows in the last few years?

This may seem an odd question but if the show was created in 720p why don't they release it like that? Would it cause any problems?

Doug Drexler who worked on the Special Effects for TNG, DS9, Firefly, Serenity and Battlestar Galactica posted this very intersting take on 720P vs. 1080P CGI on his blog a few years ago:



RE: CGI@720 VS 1080

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the fact that the CGI on BSG is rendered “only” at 720 and upscaled to 1080 for the final. Everyone should understand that render time was the LEAST important factor in this decision.

The fact is, at 1080, the CG just came out WAY too crisp. When intercut with the live action (or even composited), the CG popped off the screen and didn’t match the look and feel of the rest of the show. I’m sure all of you have had the experience of watching computer generated material on a flat panel or other high quality display and noticed just how razor-sharp it can look. It can often appear unaturally crisp.

This was the case with BSG. In tests, footage rendered at 720 and upscaled later naturally took on a slight softness which made it a much better match with the live action footage. THIS was the most important deciding factor in going with 720 (the break in render time, you could say, was a happy side effect).

The over-sharpness of CG is actually something I’m always fighting even in my own projects. It’s one of the things that “gives it away” if you’re trying to make a render look photoreal.

When I was creating images for the “Ships of the Line” Star Trek calendar series, one of the little tricks I came up with was to manually trace the edges of the ships in Photoshop with the blur tool – it made a night and day difference in the overall perception of the ships looking real. In reality, objects in photographs simply do not have those razor-sharp edges, which is what you get “out of the box” with anything in CG. Rendering at 720 and adding a little bit of grain goes a long way towards combating that effect.

If I were to supervise the visual effects for a movie RIGHT NOW, I would probably do something similar and render at a slightly lower res. Nearly every time I’ve either done or witnessed tests of CG, the results are always the same – you can get away with MUCH lower resolution than you think.

When I was working on Serenity, there was a lot of arguing between the Lightwave and Maya artists about texture resolution. The Maya folks, who had worked on a lot of big movies, swore up and down that, for a movie, your texture maps had to be AT LEAST 4k or else the models would look like crap.

The Lightwave artists, who had mostly come from TV projects, said that was bullshit and lower res maps would hold up just fine.

But something had to be done, because 2 gigs of RAM was the maximum our machines could utilize at the time, and the shots were choking on all those hi-res image maps.

So, we all agreed to do a test. We rendered 4 versions of identical shots in which the models had image maps of 4k, 2k, 1k and 512 pixels. Then we went to a theater and screened them all to see what differences we could visually perceive.

My favorite moment was hearing the Maya guys in the back go “wow, I can’t even see the difference between the 4k and 512 versions!”

Yes, the Lightwave folks walked out of that test screening very smug.

We deciced to use 1k maps for everything, and if an object got REALLY close to camera, we’d up it to 2k.

I think we did render everything at 1080, but I’m sure, even for a movie, you could get away with 720 and upres it. No one would know the difference.

In fact, the upcoming Blu-Ray release of FIREFLY is going to be interesting. All the effects on that show were rendered in standard def only! So it’s going to be a mish-mash of 1080 live action and 480 CGI. Will anyone notice? I bet not.

[ChuckT43]

Sold. This will be my first time through this series.

[Lincoln6Echo]

Originally Posted by ChuckT43

Sold. This will be my first time through this series.

It's actually pretty good. It actually became my favorite Trek series once it was done and all over with. I watched it for the first time on the DVDs. I believe what made it good to me was that it went back and established a lot of the early Trek universe (aliens, etc.) in a much more serial way than TOS ever did with its more episodic "planet of the week" approach. For example, it dealt alot with the Vulcans, which made you appreciate their appearances/references in all the "later" movies and series more. It also dealt a lot with the Andorians, which were barely touched upon in TOS. And even the Klingons...using "modern" Klingon "make-up", but in order to explain why they appeared the way they did in TOS, they came up with some sort of a disease or something (I can't quite remember).

But as for tech goes, it felt like the series wasd more of a "submarine drama in space" rather than your typical Hi-tech Trek series all the other ones were, because, quite frankly, the NX-01 was a rather cramped, just a handful of decks, starship. Plus discovering all the armament and defense tech that we're all familiar with.


It'll be fun watching it again on Blu-ray.

[troysayshi]

Originally Posted by ChuckT43

Sold. This will be my first time through this series.

The first couple of seasons are very miss with only a handful of episodes that stand out. The last two seasons however are fantastic. Tis a pity the same can't be said for the first two. Of course it was too late and the inevitable cancellation happened.

[Whirlygig]

Do want. Now. Will buy. W00t!

[Filmmaker]

Originally Posted by Sons Of Sparda

I have seen the whole series. Liked it except for the last season.

What the sweet f#@k just came out of your mouth?!?!

[Sons Of Sparda]

Originally Posted by Filmmaker

What the sweet f#@k just came out of your mouth?!?!

Did not care for the last season. Especially the last episode. Use to watch it every week.

[troysayshi]

Originally Posted by Sons Of Sparda

Did not care for the last season. Especially the last episode. Use to watch it every week.

That last episode was an absolute abomination no doubting that, however the rest of the season was fine.

[un4gvn94538]

Ill take it

[Troy73]

So happy this is the next Trek series to be released. Been saying for a while that this series should have been out. It just makes sense to get this out and on shelves in time for the new feature film. I hope the fans support it. I think it's a good sign that we will see DS9 and/or Voyager series starting around 2014.