From the Earth to the Moon

[ShinyDiscs]

Originally Posted by Warbler

Why? and this doesn't seem like nit-picking to me, not if the release is accurately described above.

I think my post makes it very clear why. I was at great pains to compare the new release to the old, point out the significant price reduction and explain this was an excellent series.

If people can't be bothered to read and are perfectly happy to cut their noses off to spite their faces there's really nothing I can do about that.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Warbler

Why? and this doesn't seem like nit-picking to me, not if the release is accurately described above.

People often assume that if they boycott a product that the manufacturer will automatically know the reason why they did so. Boycotting the blu-ray release might just as likely, or even more than likely, send a message that there is little demand for physical media releases and especially so for catalog titles. The action being proposed, boycotting, does not guarantee that the intended message will be the one that they get.

My copy just arrived and I'm looking forward to the anticipated upgrade over my dvd edition.

[Warbler]

Originally Posted by ShinyDiscs

I think my post makes it very clear why. I was at great pains to compare the new release to the old, point out the significant price reduction and explain this was an excellent series.

you mean this post?:

Originally Posted by ShinyDiscs

I bought the original signature DVD edition and started watching it again a few weeks ago, but gave up half way through because on a 65” screen and 4:3 ratio it didn’t look great.

Cracked open the UK Blu-Ray edition this evening and found it a huge improvement. OK, they could have done better, but I’d take this over the DVD set any day. That cost me something like USD80 as I recall. This new set cost me £20.

It’s a great series so if you haven’t seen it it’s a steal at the price. Nit-picking over the quality of the FX or saying “Don’t buy to teach HBO a lesson” seems to be pretty ridiculous to me. I’m happy with my purchase, especially for the price. Purchasing it if you haven’t yet seen it seems a total no-brainer to me.

Yeah you did state the price was a lot cheaper, but it is not like I have the option to pay more for a better release. And " I was at great pains" Really? Saying that the an HD blu ray looks better that a 4:3 DVD, does not mean my complaining about the handling of DNR or the bad specials is nitpicking and/or "pretty ridiculous".

[Warbler]

Originally Posted by Vilya

People often assume that if they boycott a product that the manufacturer will automatically know the reason why they did so. Boycotting the blu-ray release might just as likely, or even more than likely, send a message that there is little demand for physical media releases and especially so for catalog titles. The action being proposed, boycotting, does not guarantee that the intended message will be the one that they get.

My copy just arrived and I'm looking forward to the anticipated upgrade over my dvd edition.

That is a good point. But one would think it would be pretty obvious that you put out a very bad release and people boycott it, the reason is probably because it is a bad release. Also it is possible to send an email to the studio explaining the boycott.

[Geoff D]

Anyone else spotted the grading error in Episode 2? Near the end, when Joe Shea is remembering the Apollo 1 crew giving him and Storms those gag photos, the black and white is supposed to transition back to colour on the final dissolve from the crew to the photo, with the last shot of Shea in colour (it's kinda the point of that visual device, B&W for 'memories' and colour for 'now') but on the HD it stays in black and white until the end of that sequence, the colour re-appearing on the cut to Betty Grissom sparking up a loose.

The most grievous error to end all errors? No, but it's somewhat indicative of the slapdash nature of this remaster. And I had a feeling that the black levels would be much darker on the DVD and so it proved, the image is very dense indeed but if it feels too crushy-crushy in SD then the HD remaster is far too thin and milky in the blacks, the contrast is now shot to hell for Blu-ray. For the remaining episodes I'm gonna raise the gamma by a good few notches to thicken up the low end.

I think I figured out just why so many shots look as processed as they do, numerous opticals aside, as the corresponding sequences on the DVD have a fair bit of 'flutter' in the grain which they've decided to, ah, even out for the remaster.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Warbler

That is a good point. But one would think it would be pretty obvious that you put out a very bad release and people boycott it, the reason is probably because it is a bad release. Also it is possible to send an email to the studio explaining the boycott.

People always think that their reasoning is obvious- and it is to them. I also very much doubt that HBO considers this to be a "very bad release."

Sending your explanation to HBO's customer service and expecting it to reach the studio decision makers AND for them to then correlate that with the sales data for this release AND to also extrapolate from your email that your reason is the reason for most people not buying a release is highly improbable. It is much more likely that they would just assume that there is little to no interest in physical releases of catalog content, especially given that disc sales in general are declining and have been for years.

I recommend supporting physical media releases that interest you as much as possible particularly in the declining disc market that we are in.

[Rizor]

Started watching this. It's alright. Some DNR, messy compression, some upscaled archival footage. But I never thought this'd be on Blu-ray, so I'll take it. Still very watchable on a 32" 1080p screen. I've watched worse recent catalog releases. Dunno if I wanna test it upscaled to 4K.

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by Warbler

Saying that the an HD blu ray looks better that a 4:3 DVD, does not mean my complaining about the handling of DNR or the bad specials is nitpicking and/or "pretty ridiculous".

You haven't even seen it for yourself, you've said you're not boycotting it, and yet you're complaining about how it looks--and your "knowledge" about how it looks is all based on one person's written impressions about it.

Just do us all a favor and stop posting about this release. You're not bringing anything useful to the conversation.

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by ShinyDiscs

I bought the original signature DVD edition and started watching it again a few weeks ago, but gave up half way through because on a 65” screen and 4:3 ratio it didn’t look great.

Cracked open the UK Blu-Ray edition this evening and found it a huge improvement. OK, they could have done better, but I’d take this over the DVD set any day. That cost me something like USD80 as I recall. This new set cost me £20.

It’s a great series so if you haven’t seen it it’s a steal at the price. Nit-picking over the quality of the FX or saying “Don’t buy to teach HBO a lesson” seems to be pretty ridiculous to me. I’m happy with my purchase, especially for the price. Purchasing it if you haven’t yet seen it seems a total no-brainer to me.

Yet it DOES looks great, like every pre-1953 film shot 4x3 does. Movie theater screens are larger than your TV and old films looks just fine, so your argument is invalid.

[goshikisen]

I bought the BD set on the way home from work today and just finished watching the first episode. Perhaps I'm easy to please or not discerning enough but I found the image quality to be perfectly fine for 90% of what I saw. I also found little to take issue with when it came to the effects. I liked what they did with the Gemini portion of the episode, very convincing. Is it perfect? No... but I found nothing that didn't mesh well with the quality and vintage of the original series. Glad I made the purchase....a definite upgrade on my DVD set.

[AmishParadise]

I scanned the cover art this evening. Thought I'd share the images with anyone interested.



I did contribute these to the Blu-ray.com database. Well, versions pictured on a Blu-ray case.

Looking forward to watching this over the course of the next week. Will be projecting this at 150" diagonal. Will no doubt be a significant improvement over the DVD's.

[ElectricPeterTork]

Originally Posted by goshikisen

I bought the BD set on the way home from work today and just finished watching the first episode. Perhaps I'm easy to please or not discerning enough but I found the image quality to be perfectly fine for 90% of what I saw. I also found little to take issue with when it came to the effects. I liked what they did with the Gemini portion of the episode, very convincing. Is it perfect? No... but I found nothing that didn't mesh well with the quality and vintage of the original series. Glad I made the purchase....a definite upgrade on my DVD set.

Same here.

Was there the occasional "video game" shot? Yeah. But 90% of it was fine.

I'd be more likely to complain about tight close ups after the reframing than effects, and IIRC that was in the last DVDs, too.

[Warbler]

Originally Posted by noirjunkie

You haven't even seen it for yourself, you've said you're not boycotting it, and yet you're complaining about how it looks--and your "knowledge" about how it looks is all based on one person's written impressions about it.

Just do us all a favor and stop posting about this release. You're not bringing anything useful to the conversation.

Where have I said I am not boycotting it? I don't think I've made my mind up one way or the other yet.

[Indiana Jones]

Originally Posted by Warbler

That is a good point. But one would think it would be pretty obvious that you put out a very bad release and people boycott it, the reason is probably because it is a bad release. Also it is possible to send an email to the studio explaining the boycott.

This is by no means a very bad release, it has issues but it’s still far superior IMO to the DVD set and while the new CG might not be all it could have been it’s still serviceable at its worst and fantastic looking at its best.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Anyone else spotted the grading error in Episode 2? Near the end, when Joe Shea is remembering the Apollo 1 crew giving him and Storms those gag photos, the black and white is supposed to transition back to colour on the final dissolve from the crew to the photo, with the last shot of Shea in colour (it's kinda the point of that visual device, B&W for 'memories' and colour for 'now') but on the HD it stays in black and white until the end of that sequence, the colour re-appearing on the cut to Betty Grissom sparking up a loose.

The most grievous error to end all errors? No, but it's somewhat indicative of the slapdash nature of this remaster. And I had a feeling that the black levels would be much darker on the DVD and so it proved, the image is very dense indeed but if it feels too crushy-crushy in SD then the HD remaster is far too thin and milky in the blacks, the contrast is now shot to hell for Blu-ray. For the remaining episodes I'm gonna raise the gamma by a good few notches to thicken up the low end.

I think I figured out just why so many shots look as processed as they do, numerous opticals aside, as the corresponding sequences on the DVD have a fair bit of 'flutter' in the grain which they've decided to, ah, even out for the remaster.

I hadn’t noticed that grading error but while I have watched the show a number of times over the years I don’t remember each scene in detail but I thought about putting on the DVD to compare certain scenes to see how much of a difference there was but in episode 7 there were a few scenes of upscaled footage so the quality difference was made apparent and I am even more grateful they released this in HD despite its issues.

Regarding the look of the remaster I could be completely wrong here but might this be a similar situation to the BD remasters of ID4 and The Matrix where the colours/black level/contrast are off but are displayed accurately on the UHD and as the show was remastered in 4K HDR perhaps something was not handled correctly when it came to creating an HD version from the finished 4K files?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Rizor

Started watching this. It's alright. Some DNR, messy compression, some upscaled archival footage. But I never thought this'd be on Blu-ray, so I'll take it. Still very watchable on a 32" 1080p screen. I've watched worse recent catalog releases. Dunno if I wanna test it upscaled to 4K.

It should look great on a 32" TV. On a 65" from 8ft away? Not so much. Still watchable as you say, but the variability of the remastering stands out way more.

[Naiera]

It's going up on my 108" screen when I get the UK release late this week or early next

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Indiana Jones

I hadn’t noticed that grading error but while I have watched the show a number of times over the years I don’t remember each scene in detail but I thought about putting on the DVD to compare certain scenes to see how much of a difference there was but in episode 7 there were a few scenes of upscaled footage so the quality difference was made apparent and I am even more grateful they released this in HD despite its issues.

Regarding the look of the remaster I could be completely wrong here but might this be a similar situation to the BD remasters of ID4 and The Matrix where the colours/black level/contrast are off but are displayed accurately on the UHD and as the show was remastered in 4K HDR perhaps something was not handled correctly when it came to creating an HD version from the finished 4K files?

Yeah, it's almost got a kind of ungraded look to it as the skin tones are this kind of pale orange, the blacks are milky AF and the highlights are so flat. I'd love to see this in HDR.

[Indiana Jones]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yeah, it's almost got a kind of ungraded look to it as the skin tones are this kind of pale orange, the blacks are milky AF and the highlights are so flat. I'd love to see this in HDR.

Yea it definitely has an unprocessed look to it which I have to wonder was it a deliberate choice to give it that period look or another error, regardless it is certainly annoying when they go to the extra effort of mastering in 4K with an HDR pass but they don’t release it (Wrath of Khan )

Something else I noticed while watching Episode 7 yesterday was that the upscaled footage had these horizontal lines through the picture, not sure if these were present on the DVD or if it’s an artefact of the upscale but would like to know the reason for it, assume like with TNG there were instances were the OCN couldn’t be located or was too far gone so they had to resort to SD footage to fill the gaps which is understandable but those lines

[jenx56]

Can anybody confirm whether the digital copy includes iTunes and/or Vudu? (I saw one person said it's Vudu only). Thx.

[alexdg1]

Originally Posted by jenx56

Can anybody confirm whether the digital copy includes iTunes and/or Vudu? (I saw one person said it's Vudu only). Thx.

It's Vudu only.