Homicide: Life on the Street

[BluVinyl]

[QUOTE=theusher;22295501]

‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ Finally Gets Streaming Home at Peacock

Great news. It would only be topped by a BD release. Last year I picked up Peacock for a month to watch a college football game and check out what they had. I got another reason to go back this fall. But hopefully the remastering will also result in a BD.

[theusher]

Seems like many of the original songs are not intact and have been changed for the remaster

From Reddit:

the ending montage to season 3's Cradle to the Grave, and The Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You" has been dubbed over with something else. Also, the opening montage to the season 6 episode, Full Court Press, originally had Metallica's "Ain't My *****". That song has also been dubbed over.

Also “A Well Respected Man” by the Kinks (Bayliss cousin episode), “I Alone” as Kellerman joins Homicide, and “What a Good Boy” (Thanksgiving Episode). So basically almost none of the music is there from what I can tell.

Down to Zero by Joan Armtrading at the end of Season 5 episode 3 "Prison Riot" is changed to some generic nonsense.

I just watched Colors. The song chosen to replace “A Well Respected Man” was downright painful, knowing what was supposed to be playing there.

[JGCramp]

Originally Posted by theusher

Seems like many of the original songs are not intact and have been changed for the remaster

From Reddit:

According to an NPR story I read, “ NBCUniversal noted that it took ‘many years’ for NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution and Universal TV to secure the rights and clearances needed and to remaster the series for HD and 4K, noting the HD versions will be available Monday with the 4K version to follow. The show’s crossover episodes with another classic NBC police drama, Law & Order, will not be included on Peacock. But the episodes on streaming will include “most” of the original music.”

It is what it is. Given the choice of some changes or never getting the show released, I’ll take the changes. At least we’re finally getting this great show remastered and hopefully on disc soon.

[theusher]

It also looks like they made it 16:9 by cropping the bottom and the top of the image (at least in some episodes cases, haven't been able to compare it myself) :

[Zechs Merquise]

Originally Posted by theusher

Seems like many of the original songs are not intact and have been changed for the remaster

From Reddit:

These were on the DVDs, yes?

Yo ho ho

Originally Posted by theusher

It also looks like they made it 16:9 by cropping the bottom and the top of the image (at least in some episodes cases, haven't been able to compare it myself) :

God, WHY?!?

[theusher]

A few screenshots from the first episode of season 2 (second pic is a DVD screengrab for comparison). The show is definitely remastered, not AI upscaled. There are details on there you can't bring up with AI. I think it's just the first season which may look a bit worse. Also the framing seems to be better as its opened up on the sides and not cropped anymore.

[Show spoiler]

[Zechs Merquise]

The detail on the streaming version is definitely better. The DVD had terrible picture quality

[AlanClarke]

S01E01 is definitely upscaled video and looks atrociously cropped. The rest of the season looks great, is clearly remastered from film prints and seems to be largely opened up. Still, I don't understand why anyone would want to watch "Homicide", a show deliberately designed and shot to look like a documentary, in 16:9. Why is Universal doing this again? Why not just leave it in the original aspect ratio? I don't understand the reasoning behind any of this. Is any sane person really still bothered by 4:3 video?

[Network23]

Agreed if they are gonna remasters these please leave the option open for switching to original aspect ratio...PLEASE!!!

[Cap.T]

I just watched the first two episodes and as @AlanClarke mentioned, the first episode episode looks really bad. Complete upscale and badly cropped. The first few minutes of the seconds episode also don't look great, but after the Intro it looks pretty good and clearly HD with only an occasionally upscaled shot. The cropping is still pretty obvious, especially in Close-Ups, but not as bad as in the first episode. It's unfortuante that the powers that be, decided to offer this in 16:9 only.

[LexInHD]

Originally Posted by AlanClarke

S01E01 is definitely upscaled video and looks atrociously cropped. The rest of the season looks great, is clearly remastered from film prints and seems to be largely opened up. Still, I don't understand why anyone would want to watch "Homicide", a show deliberately designed and shot to look like a documentary, in 16:9. Why is Universal doing this again? Why not just leave it in the original aspect ratio? I don't understand the reasoning behind any of this. Is any sane person really still bothered by 4:3 video?

It goes back to the 90's and early 2000's, when non-US markets wanted widescreen syndication/broadcast masters, simply because they had widescreen TVs. This is how Babylon 5, The Shield, Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica (1978), and other shows got their widescreen masters justified during the DVD days. Now that widescreen is the defacto global standard in all media consumption displays, nobody wants 4:3 content, unless they have no other choice.

[BluVinyl]

While I would want both aspect ratios, if they did as good a job on the switch as they did on The Wire BD's I won't complain. Hopefully the BD will come out soon.

[Karate_Bullfrog]

I finished watching the pilot. Heck of a start. This might be as good as the pay network version The Wire.

The Shield ages horribly compared to this.

[thatguamguy]

I'm spot checking random episodes, and it seems like the aspect ratio is always opened up unless the shot is upscaled, which seems to happen for predictable reasons [mostly shots which have effects work done, including dissolves, but also some of the crossover stuff which was shot by the "Law and Order" crew, I would guess they never had the film for that, just the footage cut together]. For whatever it's worth, I don't actually think the opened up footage looks that bad. (The cropped upscales look HORRIBLE.)

But putting aside the aspect ratio question for a second, the entire look of the show is completely wrong. It's supposed to look blown out and gritty. It seems like they have completely abandoned all of the post-production work that was done applying filters to the footage to create the distinct look that the show was known for, now it just looks like "Law and Order".

Behind the spoiler tags are examples from episode 4-11 "For God and Country". I did not upscale the DVD footage (always the first image) but I did blow it up so it would be the same size, so this is not "reference quality" for resolution, but I think it does a good job of demonstrating the missing filters and how much they change the look of the show. (Note that I am deliberately picking shots which are most affected, shots where they intentionally blew them out with filters in post-production, this is not a random selection.)

[Show spoiler]

[badfingerboogie]

On the one hand, I'd love to check this show out on Blu, and I ended up being fully onboard with the work done on The Wire. On the other hand, the results here don't quite look as promising from what I can see, but I'd still rather that than nothing on the format - if we get a Blu release I'll probably be onboard, but at the end of the day I suspect I'd wish it had been given the same care as the remaster for the first five seasons of Law & Order coming out soon, for instance.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

I can confirm the majority of the music has been replaced, beginning with two episodes from Season 2. It is very evident in seasons 3-5. The show has never looked better, but the Peacock soundtrack makes it an entirely different show.

I have been working on restoring the original soundtrack to the Peacock version. I call this the Adena Restoration. I have completed five seasons. I am currently working on seasons 6-7.

I do not expect this to hit Blu Ray. But, even if it does, I do not expect the Blu Ray to have the original soundtrack. I can live happily with the Adena Restoration.

[Zechs Merquise]

This is available in the UK now on Sky Atlantic, and On Demand.

Pros:

- The series looks better than it ever has before. This puts the old DVDs to shame

Cons:

- Cropped
- Again, the music replacement. It's really irritating because hearing Adamski/Seal's 'Killer' in Season 2's Bop Gun and Belly's 'Full Moon, Empty Heart' in Season 3's 'Every Mother's Son' really made those episodes for me, and now the music's been replaced

The original music is on the in-print Shout DVDs, correct? I don't see why the original soundtrack couldn't have been licenced for streaming. My guess is that it's a separate set of legal rights.

Also, Sky don't have the movie or the Law & Order crossover episodes. Crossover episodes are particularly annoying because, how old is Law & Order? Long overdue for On Demand streaming in this country.

ETA: Also, for some stupid reason, Sky list the episodes in their original Air Date order, rather than the intended Production Order.

[OceanBlue]

Last weekend, while searching for a television series I discovered that Homicide: The Movie is available via Sky's On Demand/Catch up TV service (it didn't state if it has been shown on Sky Atlantic, but the channel's logo was on the screen where you download the TV film).

[iliketowatch]

Anybody buy the digital releases from FaH or Apple yet? Are they the same as what was on Peacock? If so, I'm assuming it's still cropped and a lot of the music has been replaced. Can anyone confirm?

[BluVinyl]

I just made it through the series and movie. I was generally happy with the AV of the streaming HD version and would love to pick up a BD version. Having the L&O episodes with the Homicide episodes, also getting the original music would both be improvements but I would still buy the BD version without those upgrades.