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Woochifer
06-17-2009, 12:33 PM
I've seen the Star Trek movies (w/ the original cast) numerous times, both in theaters and on home video. They are definitely not reference quality. But, the even-numbered movies are among the favorites in my collection, so when Best Buy put the Trek Genesis trilogy (II, III, and IV) on sale this week for $30 on Blu-ray, I did the double dip. The entire six-movie set is also on sale for $65 this week.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is probably the only Trek movie I considered for Blu-ray purchase, because that was the only one where Paramount did a full restoration, and it's easily the most rewatchable of the Trek movies. Watching Trek II last night, I did not expect to be wowed by the picture and sound quality, because frankly the original film stock and sound elements were not great to begin with.

But, I did expect a nice improvement in the picture and sound quality over the previous DVD releases, and to that end, the Blu-ray succeeds. The Blu-ray of Trek II brings the home viewing experience that much closer what I saw the multiple times I've seen the movie in theaters (including a 70mm screening).

Generally, I think that Blu-ray releases should aim for emulating the theatrical film-look as much as possible, and that means preserving as much of the fine detail as possible, and not overly filtering the film grain. DVDs had to resort to a lot of noise reduction and edge enhancement due to the format's lack of resolution.

For the trilogy as a whole, this is a mixed bag.

With Trek II, I think that Paramount did a good job with preserving the look of the original film presentation. It probably leaned a little bit towards the "clean" look, but a very good amount of the film grain and fine detail remains intact. This is probably as good as Trek II is going to look.

Unfortunately, Trek IV (haven't seen Trek III yet) seems like got a heavier application of noise reduction. The movie still shows the limitations of the original source, but it also looks more two-dimensional. Basically, it looks more like a very good DVD upconversion than something done at native Blu-ray resolution. Yes, it's a big improvement over the DVD version, but it does not seem like it benefited from the remastering as much as Trek II did.

Soundwise, it seems that Trek II also got a nice reworking with the new 7.1 mix. I can only get the 640k DD track (which includes the EX flag), but that mix has a noticeably more immersive and directional surround effect than the original 5.1 DVD mix that seemed to come straight from the theatrical soundtrack.

At $30, the Trek Trilogy is a nice addition to the BD collection, but I get the impression that something more definitive might be in the works (for one thing, the BD releases only include the theatrical cuts, and not the "director's" cuts that came with the previous special edition DVDs). For anyone who wants to see Trek II in its best shape in decades, this is at least worth a good look (and definitely a buy at $30 this week).

Mr Peabody
06-17-2009, 06:53 PM
Thanks for the review. It's always nice to hear how the older movies turned out. I was mostly disappointed by older movies that came to DVD, they either kept them in mono, stereo or when they did attempt a 5.1 mix using the older sound track you could hear the difference between the old and new sound. I suspect remastering technology has evolved as well.

Smokey
06-18-2009, 06:54 PM
For the trilogy as a whole, this is a mixed bag.

I find it funny that original Star Trek TV series (that is 20 years older than ST movies) on Blu-ray got much more positive reviews in terms of picture quality than the ST movies on Blu-ray did.

Mr Peabody
06-18-2009, 07:23 PM
I have no idea how a TV Show is shot but I would guess in the 60's the master wouldn't be nearly as good as a feature film years in the future. I'll have to check out the reviews of the ST TV Shows, if they are 7.1 that would be pretty wild.

3LB
06-18-2009, 08:19 PM
I find it funny that original Star Trek TV series (that is 20 years older than ST movies) on Blu-ray got much more positive reviews in terms of picture quality than the ST movies on Blu-ray did.



I have no idea how a TV Show is shot but I would guess in the 60's the master wouldn't be nearly as good as a feature film years in the future. I'll have to check out the reviews of the ST TV Shows, if they are 7.1 that would be pretty wild.

It has been my observation that NBC does a better job of archiving old shows, and comparitively speaking, older NBC shows always seemed to look better than the other two networks...maybe they had a bigger budget when they originally shot them and used higher quality film, but look at shows like Columbo, Star Trek, Bonanza, and newer shows like the Law & Order franchises... they have always looked superb compared to their syndicated counterparts of the other networks (a lot of old ABC shows look like the doodoo). Maybe NBC didn't do that with their sitcoms, but I saw an episode of Columbo the other day that looked as crisp as any modern TV show.

Smokey
06-18-2009, 08:39 PM
Good point 3LB

It might also be worth mentioning that most TV shows were shot of video with native NTSC resolution of 480 scan lines. So these shows will not benefit from HD remastering no matter what

But Star Trek and some other TV shows you mentioned (also Honeymooners) were shot on film which mean they can benefit from HD remastering.

Mr. P, check out this review of Star Trek Tv series on Blu-ray...

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/37039/star-trek-the-original-series-season-1/

RGA
06-18-2009, 08:58 PM
It's a shame they didn't do a better job of IV which I find to be the most rewatchable and best of the original movies because it followed more of the Roddenberry ideology than Captain Kirk fights the bad guy in a space battle (Black hat versus White hat) story of number II. Though I liked number II second best of the original movies. 1 and 5 were pretty terrible and III was merely "ok" 6 was quite good too - perhaps the forgotten one.

I'm always meaning to build that home theater system one day - with the big flat HDTV screen Sony purchased it's time to explore the home theater system again - But I left AC3 and Dolby surround in the middle 1990's because I felt even the best systems quite frankly stunk poo-poo. After hearing a nice set-up not long ago with some ridiculous $7000 receiver I was mightily impressed by the advancements in current surround sound technology. Let me guess there are still a bazillion different surround sound settings and 250 page manuals on how to operate the remote control?

Damn I wish Apple would come out with something user friendly so one does not need to be a member of mission control to figure it out.

Woochifer
06-19-2009, 11:36 AM
I have no idea how a TV Show is shot but I would guess in the 60's the master wouldn't be nearly as good as a feature film years in the future. I'll have to check out the reviews of the ST TV Shows, if they are 7.1 that would be pretty wild.

TV shows from the 60s were filmed using a different film stock than what was typically used during the 80s. The film processes that were used during that time required higher powered lighting and heavier cameras. While they are more amenable to high definition presentation, they also had limitations in what could be captured on camera (i.e., nothing using low light, limited action shots, etc.)

As I said, among the Trek Blu-rays, only Wrath of Khan was rescanned for this release. The others were presumably made from the previous HD master scans.


I find it funny that original Star Trek TV series (that is 20 years older than ST movies) on Blu-ray got much more positive reviews in terms of picture quality than the ST movies on Blu-ray did.

Aside from the difference in the film stock and the cameras, you have to remember that the HD masters for the original Star Trek TV series were only created recently when Paramount released the updated versions with updated visual effects. The HD masters for the Star Trek movies likely date back to their original DVD release.


It has been my observation that NBC does a better job of archiving old shows, and comparitively speaking, older NBC shows always seemed to look better than the other two networks...maybe they had a bigger budget when they originally shot them and used higher quality film, but look at shows like Columbo, Star Trek, Bonanza, and newer shows like the Law & Order franchises... they have always looked superb compared to their syndicated counterparts of the other networks (a lot of old ABC shows look like the doodoo). Maybe NBC didn't do that with their sitcoms, but I saw an episode of Columbo the other day that looked as crisp as any modern TV show.

NBC had nothing to do with this, given that the Star Trek franchise and its film library are maintained and controlled by Paramount/CBS.


It's a shame they didn't do a better job of IV which I find to be the most rewatchable and best of the original movies because it followed more of the Roddenberry ideology than Captain Kirk fights the bad guy in a space battle (Black hat versus White hat) story of number II. Though I liked number II second best of the original movies. 1 and 5 were pretty terrible and III was merely "ok" 6 was quite good too - perhaps the forgotten one.

Given that the current Blu-ray set only includes the theatrical releases, it's likely that another set featuring the "director's cuts" are on the way (in actuality, only Trek I improved the movie by any measure on the director's cut, and the director's cut for Trek VI is actually worse). But, $30 for the Genesis trilogy, or even $65 for all six movies would be a great price, even on DVD. As it is, the Star Trek Blu-ray set comes with all the bonus features from the previous special edition DVD releases, and adds a few new ones. Plus, you get remastered audio that does a lot more of the split surround effect than the DVD tracks, which sounded more like the theatrical tracks and their more monophonic use of the surround tracks.

As I said, Trek IV is a notable improvement over the DVD version. I just think it's a shame that Paramount chose to "clean it up" during the mastering process. I would be curious to see what additional detail can be revealed if less noise reduction was used. Keep in mind that there's hardly a consensus on the issue of film grain. I come down on the side of maintaining the look of the original film presentation, even if it includes a lot of graininess. Blu-ray's higher resolution means that preserving the film grain does not also introduce other artifacts into the image, as was the case with DVD.

IMO, the Blade Runner Blu-ray totally got this balancing act right. It looks clean, yet it preserves the fine detail and just the right amount of film grain. It's a revelation to look at, even though I've seen the movie numerous times in 70mm.


I'm always meaning to build that home theater system one day - with the big flat HDTV screen Sony purchased it's time to explore the home theater system again - But I left AC3 and Dolby surround in the middle 1990's because I felt even the best systems quite frankly stunk poo-poo. After hearing a nice set-up not long ago with some ridiculous $7000 receiver I was mightily impressed by the advancements in current surround sound technology. Let me guess there are still a bazillion different surround sound settings and 250 page manuals on how to operate the remote control?

If you're watching Blu-ray, the audio will be much improved simply because the releases now use lossless formats that allow for full 24-bit resolution. Even standard DD and DTS tracks are greatly improved, because Blu-ray uses 640k DD and 1.5k DTS that are higher in resolution than what DVDs used, yet fully compatible with most standard HT receivers/processors.

If you want home theater done right, you don't need much beyond the capability to decode a multichannel PCM soundtrack and decent bass management. The rest of it has to do with optimizing the speaker alignment, properly EQing the subwoofer, and using the correct settings on your receiver.

Yes, the current batch of HT receivers are as complicated as ever, but you only need to use a small subset of those features if you get everything else right.

Woochifer
06-21-2009, 01:11 PM
Good point 3LB

It might also be worth mentioning that most TV shows were shot of video with native NTSC resolution of 480 scan lines. So these shows will not benefit from HD remastering no matter what

That would probably apply only to sitcoms, documentaries, and reality TV. Most scripted dramas and even many sitcoms from the 80s and 90s (e.g., Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace, etc.) were shot on film, so they would most definitely benefit from HD remastering.

The upcoming issue for the next next generation video format (i.e., resolution beyond 1080p) will be how much post production for movies and TV shows is now done entirely in the digital domain. Studios are currently using 2k resolution (which is only slightly higher than 1080p) for a lot of post production work such as color and light level correction, and CGI effects. The general consensus is that a 2k scan does not capture all of the resolution from a 35mm negative, and that you have to go to 4k scanning before you get a full capture of the film image.

Having the resolution capped at 2k is not an issue for HDTV or Blu-ray, but for future generations it might create a situation where older movies that did not go through a round of digital post production will potentially look better than newer movies. IMO, this dumbing down is already happening as more movies are now shot using 1080p24 camcorders and more theaters are installing 2k digital projectors -- both of which are inferior to 35mm film cameras and projectors.