Any chance Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons will ever go Blu Ray?

[jlaavenger]

Any chance Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons will ever go Blu Ray? I ask because Target has a great deal on the Standard Def seasons now and I watched Angel Season 5 earlier and the action is extremely cool but it just doesn't up-convert as well as some of my other DVDs.

[solarrdadd]

I am a big Buffy fan and would snatch that up in a heart beat!

[Batman1980]

To be honest, I used to love Buffy and like Angel. Now I have to take frequent breaks during Buffy because the horrible dialogue hurts my head, not sure I could bring myself to make ANOTHER substantial investment in that show. For the right price I would get Angel, that's actually a show I'm putting off on getting due to blu-ray, for now.

[koontz1973]

If they can do ST TOS, then any TV show can be done. Will if be worth it for the studio to lay out the money to re-master them.

[pEgLeG]

I would buy Angel, but pass on Buffy.

[MAPdead]

Give it time they will come.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by koontz1973

If they can do ST TOS, then any TV show can be done. Will if be worth it for the studio to lay out the money to re-master them.

Not necessarily. Star Trek was shot on film. They just rescanned the old film at a higher resolution.

Shows where the live action material was shot on video rather than film will never be able to be truly HD. Technology might advance to the point where high-end upscaling could be hardcoded onto a Blu-ray, but if it's shot in a low resolution native format, you'll never see it truly HD.

The problem here is that many old shows were shot on film, but somewhere along the line, it changed to where most shows were taped. That has only really changed recently where shows that would have been taped before are not shot in digital HD. The funny thing here is that older shows (like Star Trek TOS for example) are going to be more likely to see in HD than something from the 80s or 90s. There are some from the time period that were filmed (like Seinfeld for example), but those are gonna be the exception rather than the rule. I wouldn't expect to see Buffy or Angel any time soon on BD though even if it is filmed; nowhere near enough fanbase to support it.

[TenEightyP]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

I wouldn't expect to see Buffy or Angel any time soon on BD though even if it is filmed; nowhere near enough fanbase to support it.

I am curious as to where you get your information/hard statistics for a lack of fan base for Buffy or Angel, which would prevent a release?

Here in the UK I see many series from the 60's getting a release on SD DVD, where you would expect, given the age there would be little interest, but it happens.

Maybe you will say that your "any time soon" is a disclaimer, but you could say that for many films/TV series and has little or no basis on fan base levels.

For one I really enjoyed Buffy and would like to see it on Blu. I have only ever seen series one of Angel and would welcome that too.

[AxlVanHagar]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

I wouldn't expect to see Buffy or Angel any time soon on BD though even if it is filmed; nowhere near enough fanbase to support it.

I think you're under-estimating the rabid Joss Whedon fanbase that's out there.

[DR BLU NEO]

It would be nice to get buffy and angel on blu. I do enjoy them on standard dvd.

[Jeff Kleist]

As a whole I agree, but no 1 show just outsold crazy enough to make the studios think it would be just as great to go through the trouble of making it in HD.

I would definately say that's not the case. What a lot of people forget is that TV on DVD is essentially gravy. The episodes, unless sometimes when it's a cancelled show with unaireds are paid for already, and every dollar made over the cost of producing the actual media and authoring the discs is all gravy. Many older shows like Universal action stuff that are staples, sometimes even worldwide in syndication are getting HD Masters done. The only question remaining is the willingness of the public to upgrade

X-Files came out first because the best-of videos sold HUGE, and it had strong ties to the baseline demographic for DVD at the time. The big thing here is getting costs under control. Bringing TV DVD down to $49.99 and Blu down to $69.99 I think is the butter point, because the sale prices that people are used to paying are attainable in that range, and make sure the difference is only $10 on launch day for new material.

TV does very well, and it's a very important part of the buisness (a big part of that was because many of these shows had never been available for purchase before ever. A few major players even found themselves in the pickle of having a slightly anemic TV division)

So TV doesn't have to sell piles to be very profitable. The first season of X-Files was priced at $150 (still better than the $300 a season the Japanese LD boxes were going for, or was it $400?) because they only thought they'd move 20-30,000 copies at most. It ended up moving 300,000. X-Files didn't adjust its price for a long while due to deals that were struck to allow the release (this was when people were afraid that TV releases would torpedo their syndication royalties). If there's a broadcast partner for it, then you might even see full-on HD redos of popular older series, effects and all.

If HD masters already existed of Buffy, it would be out on Blu-ray. Fox has already released Firefly on Blu-ray, a Whedon series with a significantly smaller following. The first two seasons of Buffy were shot on 16mm film and after that all seasons were shot on 35mm film, so yes Buffy would look better in 1080p.

That's definately not the case, if anything, Firefly fans are far more engaged and fanatical than Buffy fans are at this stage in the game, and Universal is raking it in on merchandise licenses. 15 episodes is much easier to do than 144. Why do you think Serenity was one of their lead HD DVD releases? Because it sold 6 million copies first week on DVD, and was actually fasttracked onto the HD DVD launch list because of it.

[NL197]

There are plenty of TV DVD sampler discs out there. Paramount has been releasing quite a few of them based on genre.

Fox could test the Blu waters with these two by doing the same thing - a couple of episodes of each show on a 'best of' or some other theme-based Blu-ray disc and see if people bite...pardon the pun. "First time in HD" would be the tag, naturally.

Not that Fox would ever consider doing that, though.

[Jeff Kleist]

The TV sampler discs are not to test the waters for releases, they're supermarket/seasonal theme fodder for impulse purchases at the checkout. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Stargate Atlantis "Fan's Choice' IS a test to see if seasons are viable, and they've been very public about this. The entire run of the show exists in HD (but a lot of SD level FX like the 2 movies had) and is in the on-deck box for a Blu release. SG-1 is unlikely to get the upgrade any time soon (except maybe the Children of the Gods director's cut which Ibelieve was redone from scratch, and may hit blu if DVD sales are good). Sci-Fi has pretty much played the show out and asking people to upgrade 10 box sets is really stretching it. It'll be over 5 and closer to 10 before the overplay the show gets is even close to wearing out.

We're years away from the market being big enough, and production prices low enough to make this viable without a broadcast partner shouldering most of the burden. Just re-doing ST:TNG like Star Trek Remastered will cost close to $100 million. Now that's totally worth it if you can collect a million bucks an episode from Sci-Fi, Channel 4 and other international broadcast partners combined. Not so much if they're only coughing up 3-400k, because then you're barely in break-even range.

(Those who want to give TNG even a shot at a Blu release, make sure ST:TOS is in your collection, because those sales DO have weight in these kinds of decisions)

[NL197]

Okay, so instead of samplers, maybe like those Trek theme-based fan collections.

They had time travel, klingon, Captain, etc.

Same idea, higher-class classification?

I imagine it would be so time consuming that it would take years to do almost 200 episodes of TNG in HD because of all the effort needed, regardless of the money involved.

[koontz1973]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The TV sampler discs are not to test the waters for releases, they're supermarket/seasonal theme fodder for impulse purchases at the checkout. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Stargate Atlantis "Fan's Choice' IS a test to see if seasons are viable, and they've been very public about this. The entire run of the show exists in HD (but a lot of SD level FX like the 2 movies had) and is in the on-deck box for a Blu release. SG-1 is unlikely to get the upgrade any time soon (except maybe the Children of the Gods director's cut which Ibelieve was redone from scratch, and may hit blu if DVD sales are good). Sci-Fi has pretty much played the show out and asking people to upgrade 10 box sets is really stretching it. It'll be over 5 and closer to 10 before the overplay the show gets is even close to wearing out.

We're years away from the market being big enough, and production prices low enough to make this viable without a broadcast partner shouldering most of the burden. Just re-doing ST:TNG like Star Trek Remastered will cost close to $100 million. Now that's totally worth it if you can collect a million bucks an episode from Sci-Fi, Channel 4 and other international broadcast partners combined. Not so much if they're only coughing up 3-400k, because then you're barely in break-even range.

(Those who want to give TNG even a shot at a Blu release, make sure ST:TOS is in your collection, because those sales DO have weight in these kinds of decisions)

So what you are saying then, if I understand you correctly, Buffy, Angel ST TNG and all of the other TV shows shot on video, can and will be released, it is only a matter of costs and or time.

[vsquared123]

Originally Posted by jlaavenger

Any chance Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons will ever go Blu Ray? I ask because Target has a great deal on the Standard Def seasons now and I watched Angel Season 5 earlier and the action is extremely cool but it just doesn't up-convert as well as some of my other DVDs.

Firefly did and Dollhouse will. So I think it's only a matter of time