Will Star Trek TNG (the TV series) ever make it to Blu-ray in high def?

[quitemouse]

Will Star Trek TNG (the TV series) ever make it to Blu-ray in high def?

[FlipperWasIrish]

I am not positive, but I remember reading here somewhere that they will not be ported over.

Do a search on TNG and you may find the old thread about this issue.

[Al_The_Strange]

It'll only be a matter of time until every single "Star Trek" video is released on Blu-Ray. I wouldn't be surprised.

I'd be more interested to know if any of the "fan collective" sets would be re-issued in high-def.

[un4gvn94538]

DS9! DS9! DS9!

[MAPdead]

I think the studio will release it down the road, maybe when the next movie comes out.

[iori]

I probably wouldn't be able to afford it if it did.

[Wdm81]

TNG through voyager were edited on video meaning in order to get a true hi def bluray Paramount would have to go back to the orginal film and re edit every episode

i also think visual effects would need to be re done aswell

Thats alot of money for paramount to put into a series...which sucks because TNG on blu would be awesome

[cathexist]

Originally Posted by Wdm81

TNG through voyager were edited on video meaning in order to get a true hi def bluray Paramount would have to go back to the orginal film and re edit every episode

i also think visual effects would need to be re done aswell

Thats alot of money for paramount to put into a series...which sucks because TNG on blu would be awesome

Yep, that's what I was thinking all of TNG was edited on video.

[Blu-rat]

Given that the DS9 ep "Trials And Tribble-ations" is only an upconversion in the upcoming TOS season 2 Blu-ray set (see this Trekmovie article), I think we can assume CBS won't be putting any effort into moving 24th century Trek into the Blu-ray realm.

[kdn1221]

I hope they do. I want all Star Trek series: TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT.

If Paramount were smart, they would figure out how much it would cost to create new masters, give it a year or two for the cost to go down. By then, the technology should be more available and everybody knows that would drive down cost.

They should then work a contract with a company like Lowry on a bulk discount for all of the series with a specific delivery schedule that will allow to continuously publish the sets. Release each season of each series, may be one per quarter, at a reasonable price. They should make their money in volume sales.

[Monolithium]

Originally Posted by un4gvn94538

DS9! DS9! DS9!

Booyah!

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Wdm81

TNG through voyager were edited on video meaning in order to get a true hi def bluray Paramount would have to go back to the orginal film and re edit every episode

This would be a laborous task, but it should be easily possible. Even if they didn't keep good cut logs, it wouldn't be impossible for them to rescan and rebuild the proper cut.

i also think visual effects would need to be re done aswell

They redid the effects for the original series without even having to. I don't think that's a very big hurdle for them to overcome.

Thats alot of money for paramount to put into a series...which sucks because TNG on blu would be awesome

It would be a costly ventuer, but TNG would sell like hotcakes. Put a hefty price tag on it and they'd make back their investment I think, not to mention the fact that the show could air in HD in syndication as well.

Originally Posted by Blu-rat

Given that the DS9 ep "Trials And Tribble-ations" is only an upconversion in the upcoming TOS season 2 Blu-ray set (see this Trekmovie article), I think we can assume CBS won't be putting any effort into moving 24th century Trek into the Blu-ray realm.

That's Deep Space 9 though (not as popular as TNG), and it's an EXTRA on that set. I believe there has been word that they completed a proof of concept episode of TNG already, and they reused some filmed footage from an episode of TNG in Enterprise.

[Astalder]

Eh I wish they would but ya, being edited on video is the roadblock I think. Same roadblock that's standing in the way of a lot of good 90's TV (i.e. Buffy).

I would pay quite a price for a studio to reedit every episode and do a true high quality remaster of Buffy. I wouldn't pay it for Star Trek though, but I know tons of people would given its fan base.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I think CBS (which has the rights to the television shows) will eventually release TNG, but it will take time, money, and effort to do it right.

[al cos.]

Well they managed to get Twin Peaks into hi-def, so it's not impossible. Is it just because there were so few Peaks episodes and it had little or no effects, compared to the 100s of hours of 90s Trek?

[benbess]

Could someone who knows a bit more about this try to explain a few things to me?

OK. First: why does cbs own the rights? Why would Paramount sell something as valuable as that? Strange.

Second: if it was edited on video, and distributed in syndication that way, why did they even bother to shoot it in 35mm? Wouldn't that have been more costly? And wasn't the whole idea of distributing it in video to save money? Anyway, I remember thinking even in the late 80s that picture quality for TNG didn't seem to me as good as classic trek, even on an old fashioned regular tv. It just looked like video rather than film.

Somewhere, paramount (or cbs?) has reels and reels of raw film for TNG. Given all the episodes that were made for the various Trek shows from 1987 to 2003 (or whatever) there must be just shelves and shelves of it, filling up a few rooms probably. So, Third: What state is that film in, does anyone here know, either in terms of preservation or probably more importantly in terms of organization?

Fourth: So, assuming they can find all the film, they would then have to put it together to edit together a new master for each episode, right? How hard is that? Has it ever been done for any other tv show that was on video? Has anyone ever taken a video show, gone back to film, and then made it into HD? If, and it's a big if, all of the film is there and can be found, I assume you could put it together for a whole lot cheaper than you could ever film a new episode of an hour long program. It sounds labor intensive, but once you get a bunch of tech guys and gals in some rooms putting together episode after episode it might only cost--I have no idea really--but maybe $100,000 per episode. So, for the 26 episodes of the first season (which as we all know was probably the worst, but that's beside the point), might cost--rounding up--c.$3 million. Or am I totally off base?

Say I am off base, and it would cost--if it even is possible--$5 million per season. Well, they sold the original series as a boxed set for a list price of more than $100. With a fan base like this show has in the long run you might sell a million of the sets, although it would take years for that to happen as blu is adopted more widely.

So that's a gross income right there of $100 million dollars. Say $40 million of that goes to the retailers, and $10 million is what it costs to actually make the things. That still leaves cbs/paramount with $50 million. Take away the cost of $5 million to re-edit and remaster the 35mm to blu, and you've got a 45 million dollar profit.

Yeah, I know, I made all these numbers up off the top of my head. Maybe they are all wrong.

But say it costs double what I said to reedit the episodes and even fix up a few of the special effect, and you get a total cost of $10 million. And say it only sells half of what I said, it still looks like there some room for a hefty profit of several million dollars.

Plus, of course, they can resell the show for syndication to HD net or whatever broadcast venue wants them. See Star Trek all over again for the first time, and all that. Heck, it could probably be resold on dvd as well as the "new remastered version..."

Am I missing something? Somehow I think someone with a better figures that I've come up with is going to crunch the numbers (if they haven't already) and start production on this if it's possible. The question is, is it possible?

[Rik1138]

Originally Posted by benbess

Could someone who knows a bit more about this try to explain a few things to me?

OK. First: why does cbs own the rights? Why would Paramount sell something as valuable as that? Strange.

Paramount owns CBS. They didn't sell off the rights, it's just a different 'department'.

Originally Posted by benbess

Second: if it was edited on video, and distributed in syndication that way, why did they even bother to shoot it in 35mm? Anyway, I remember thinking even in the late 80s that picture quality for TNG didn't seem to me as good as classic trek, even on an old fashioned regular tv. It just looked like video rather than film.

That could be due to the quality of film-scanning equipment back then. Telecine bays in the 80's probably only did SD resolution, especially for television (and 20-30 year old technology). That probably had a lot to do with it.

Originally Posted by benbess

Somewhere, paramount (or cbs?) has reels and reels of raw film for TNG. Third: What state is that film in, does anyone here know, either in terms of preservation or probably more importantly in terms of organization?

Organization I can't say, but the studios have been pretty good in the last few decades about keeping film in proper storage (climate controlled and such). At least, for their theatrical releases... Hopefully the same applied to TV...

Originally Posted by benbess

Fourth: So, assuming they can find all the film, they would then have to put it together to edit together a new master for each episode, right?

It's not just editing, but all of the special effects were created in SD resolution, and many of the 'assets' were very low resolution (like bitmap graphics, texture maps, etc used for 3D graphics), so they'd all have to be re-created. (And much of those digital assets probably don't exist anymore.) So, they would have to take all the raw film, re-edit it and then re-create all the special effects in HD. Not impossible, of course, but that does add a significant extra cost. And then, they have to decide to try to make the effects look exactly (as close as possible) to the original, or maybe update them a little...

It's not impossible, and it's probably not even prohibitively expensive (at least for TNG, a series we all know would sell extremely well), but it is a significant amount of money. If it's done, it will probably be done slowly. Season 1 first, and then Season 2 _if_ Season 1 sells well enough to justify it. (Shouldn't be a problem with TNG, but I'm not sure how well DS9 or VOY would sell.)

The Animated Series and Enterprise are probably the most likely to get released next. TAS is just film scanning and it's ready, and it might already be done (the ep on Season 2 of TOS is from a true HD master), and I think most (if not all) of ENT was done in HD...

I suspect it will start to happen eventually, but not very fast.

Rik

[benbess]

Originally Posted by Rik1138

Paramount owns CBS. They didn't sell off the rights, it's just a different 'department'......

I suspect it will start to happen eventually, but not very fast.

Rik

Hey Rik--thanks for your answers. I actually heard from someone on another discussion board who seemed to have some inside stuff on Star Trek TNG in HD. He said his company had been hired to make a new HD master using the original film elements as a test. He said it looked fantastic--as if it were filmed quite recently rather than 22 years ago. But even though what they did looked great, his company didn't get the job. And then there was a management shakeup at Paramount. Anyway, they are still looking at it apparently, but it may take a while, and this guy estimated that it would cost maybe $150,000 per episode to re-do the show in hd, which comes to about $4 million for the first season alone. It seems clear that they would earn that money back, but that's a lot more than it would be for a normal show that's already completely on 35mm. And for the whole show's run of 178 episodes you're looking at something like $30 million bucks (rounding up)--and so it really adds up. The one thing he said that distressed me a bit is that they were likely to make it widescreen. Given that it wasn't filmed that way, you'd obviously lose the tops and bottoms of the image a bit, which would be a serious mistake, imho. They released the original show at 1.33, however, and it's selling like hotcakes, and so maybe there's hope.

[AintNoSin]

Originally Posted by Rik1138

Paramount owns CBS. They didn't sell off the rights, it's just a different 'department'.

Technically, Viacom owns both Paramount and CBS.

[SpaceDog]

I think there is value in making the effort to recreate TNG in high definition. I don't think they'll go to the effort anytime soon though.

If they released Enterprise in HD, I might actually give the series a once over. I still haven't watched most of DS9, but I may cave on that well in advance of HD since it would likely not be recreated until after TNG.