TV On Blu-Ray Why Do Alot Of Ppl Think Alot Of TV Won't Make It To Blu-Ray

[Zaranyzerak]

Originally Posted by JamesKurtovich

A lot of TV shows were shot with videotape and thus will never benefit from hi-def. The only thing I see is fewer discs, meaning smaller packaging, which is something I'd like.

The other benefit would be they can bump up the bitrate so there isn't any pixelization (which has plagued many a TV show release in the past...). That, plus fewer discs, is something I would welcome on Blu-ray.

Just because DVD is capable of the same resolution of an analog SD master tape, doesn't mean that's the quality we GET a lot of the time with those old videotaped shows... Bitrate is just as much a factor as resolution, and I've seen some pretty awful transfers of shows on DVD that would benefit from a bitrate boost on BD.

Originally Posted by brps3

I would be curious to see how the re-mastered original ST would look on blu-ray.

TNG I think would look great.

I cant wait for Babylon 5 to appear on blu-ray. It was mostly CG so I think it would look pretty good.

Except for one thing. The only footage from B5 that would benefit from HD is the live action shots (which exist on film, and were shot in 16x9). The effects shots (this includes ANY overlay or title effects mixed with live action shots) were made in 4x3 at SD resolution. To have some idea of how B5 would look on Blu-ray, just check out the current DVD releases. ALL re-framed for 16x9. The non-effects shots look great, since they were all re-transferred from the original film. The effects shots, however, look AWFUL. They've essentially zoomed in and cropped the frame, so any time there's so much as a title graphic overlay it looks all pixelated and fuzzy.

Love the show, but if they were going to do the live action shots in 16x9 to make them "future proof," they really should have done EVERYTHING that way. It really suffers in picture quality as a result...

As for TNG, there's another problem - while it was SHOT on film, all the editing and post-production effects were done on videotape. So the only complete masters of the episodes would be the standard def videotape masters. With TOS, all the episodes were in final form on FILM. So the HD transfer was quite simple (without taking the CG effects re-dos into account).

To do a HD remaster of TNG would mean re-transferring all of the original film elements, and re-creating the digital effects that were originally done on video in HD. I'd love to see them do that, sure, but I don't see it happening any time soon.