Star Trek: The Next Generation in HD (part2)

Forgot this thread existed!

My review, if anyone's interested!

http://www.dvdmg.com/startrektngs1br.shtml

 

most likely Amazon will meet this pricing...seems like BB are after Amazon lately...the Three Stooges box was matched and they offered ten dollars off if you applied for their store card (and got accepted)...I got the complete box for $34.99 shipped...a deal I could not pass up...double dipping proved frugal for once...

 

Current lowest price at online stores for UK users is £50.

Only 2 seconds of missing footage for an entire series is pretty impressive. The upscaled scene on the sampler disc looked far superior to the DVD version even though it looked soft compared to the rest of the sampler footage.

The average bit rate of the episodes is probably going to be around 25 Mbps (based on 5 episodes per disc without extras), which should look great.

 

I canceled my Amazon order and put one in with Best Buy. That's a great deal, even if for some reason the $10 credit doesn't come through.

 

The $10 credit is apparently sent to you by email after you have picked up the item.

From their site:

Free $10 Savings Code

Spend $50 or more on movies, music or video game software, choose store pickup, and get a $10 savings code.

Place a movie, music or video game software order of $50 or more between Sunday, June 17, and Friday, August 31 — and use store pickup.
The savings code will be e-mailed up to 5 days after you pick up your order.
Redeem your savings code in store or online.
Note: Not all products are available for store pickup.
Valid on individual online purchases made between 6/17/12 and 8/31/12. Excludes purchases of PC and pre-owned games, video game accessories, video game hardware, and Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Plus, CinemaNow, iTunes® and online game cards. Eligible pre-orders must be placed and fulfilled during promotion. Savings Codes expire as follows: For June in-store pickups — 7/31; July in-store pickups — 8/31; and August in-store pickups — 9/30.

 

Ordered. Thanks.

 

Yep. Amazon just matched it. But I'm keeping my BB order. Might as well pick up the set in person and get the $10 credit (and I'll be able to squeeze in a couple more episodes that morning, in the time that I would have been waiting for the box to arrive!).

 

I went with amazon. With the same day release for me with Prime and the lack of tax, it'll be not too different in price from Best Buy.

Plus "Mystery Men" is coming out (IIRC) the same day and I have that on order, too.

 

So...there are complaints about the dialogue being out synch on many episodes (especially "Haven"). I've only jumped into the second disc (I always skip the episode where Yar has to fight the Nubian Princess which I've always felt was somewhat racist and offensive and just badly written) and haven't seen it as a big issue yet.

Anyone else notice this problem?

 

Supposedly the lossy 2.0 track is out of sync for the intro of the very first episode by about a second. The 7.1 track has problems too, such as weird echos and the centre channel being incorrectly duplicated in the front-right channel (again, first episode) or both the front-left and front-right channels (random other episodes).

Weeeeeeeeeee replacement discs.

 

Wonderful.

Why can't they get it right the first time?

 

I wonder - are these Blu-rays region encoded or all region? Just wondering if the problems might be limited to one region only. There was no problem with the sound on "Encounter at Farpoint" on the "Next Phase" sampler Blu-ray.

Also interesting that none of the reviewers noticed the problem. I appreciate that they obviously aren't going to listen to every second of every episode in a 26 episode set, but it seems like the problem can't be that noticeable or it would have been picked up before now.

When I pick up the Blu-ray next week in Sydney I'll check to see if the audio has the same problems... It's going to be priced at $75 at JB for any fellow Aussies.

 

The US/CA set has subtitles and dubs for several European countries so this is clearly open to at least Regions A and B (if not Region C as well) and these errors are likely going to show up on sets sold in at least the UK, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France, Spain, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Japan just judging by the available subs and audio selection.

 

Thanks, I see the same languages showing up on the info page for the Australian Blu-ray ... although it claims to be Region B only (but that well could be wrong).

 

Pretty sure they're universal discs for all regions. I wouldn't buy the set until Paramount have said what they're going to do about the audio errors though.

So far 8 episodes have issues, across 4 of the 6 discs.

 

I've been hearing reports of the Australian sets being recalled, anything you have noticed?

 

While I'm definitely not trying to beat a dead horse, I'm new here, read the first part of this topic (my thanks go to many participants talking about the aspect ratio issue with an open mind) and would just like to provide two updates, I found interesting:

First, Mr. Meyer-Burnett has been recently participating in an interview in which he talked about the format issue. Sounds to me like a paradigm shift compared to his remarks from September last year: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4..._blu_ray_producer_robert_meyer_burnett/index3

In this interview Mr. Meyer-Burnett says "They did not know at the time that there was going to be 16.9 shots and so many times, especially with the visual effects, there is only 4:3 imagery and we use an example..."

This is not entirely correct as ILM shot the VFX for Season One in VistaVision widescreen and the beautiful "Hint of HD" teaser (available on the Next Level BD and online) ended with a beauty shot of the Enterprise-D in full 1.78:1 widescreen (which makes the opening credits shot in each episode look like Pan & Scan). Worse, nobody had informed Mr. Meyer-Burnett that no less than three original ILM widescreen shots in native 1.66:1 (aka 15:9) had been CGI enhanced and would be shown at Comic Con on July 13, 2012 (11 days prior to the official BD release of Season One on Blu-ray!) in widescreen: http://tng.trekcore.com/bluray/index.html#comiccon

Why undoubtedly (just like with TOS-R) these VFX widescreen shots will be used for widescreen HDTV (and include a noticable amount of image trimming regarding other TNG shots) I can't help but wonder why these had been on display in 15:9.

Full blown-up shots in 16:9 (1.78:1) would have served the 4:3 advocates ("See, there's more left and right but also less at the top and bottom"), instead these had been displayed in 15:9 which also happens to be the maximum palatable widescreen which some (including myself) believe to be what could be extracted from the 4:3 camera negatives.

Mr. Meyer-Burnett is absolutely right, when he states that in 1987 they "did not know" there was going to be 16:9 aka 1.78:1.
All they 'could know', then, was that the early plans for American "wide-screen" HDTV involved an aspect ratio of "5:3" (or 15:9). The Indian Summer 1987 issue of "The Perfect Vision" featured an article entitled "Towards the Future" which discussed and supposedly major studios in the US and Europe were aware of such plans.

 

Jeez. Are we back on this again?

It's 4x3.

It's a done deal.

Just because a few effects shots (and even fewer live action shots) can make a few 16x9 transfers possible (ILM only did the pilot, after all) doesn't help the rest of the scenes shot with no such extraction possible without drastic compromises.

 

The Blu-rays are only due to be released in Australia this week - so I am going to check whether this is still happening. A delay would certainly indicate a problem/recall.

I'm getting conflicting information - one major retailer (JB HiFi) says they have it in stock in their stores as of today (the official release date here) and another online only retailer (EzyDVD) says the release date has been changed to 29 August...

 

I've tried to order a set for "in store" pickup. Haven't heard anything from them so far - even though it's supposed to be available for pickup "same day" - so I think something's up.

Hang on - the webpage says it's available in store today, but the page also has changed the release date from 1 August to 5 September!

I'm looking at this page:

http://www.jbhifionline.com.au/dvd/...k-the-next-generation-season-1-blu-ray/668847

So yeah, it's been recalled. Just as well I didn't actually pay for it. Just sent a query to the store asking "is it available or not?"

 

Funny, that Columbo from the same era are issued in widescreen, (and works much better in that format), while ST:TNG is not.

That Mr. Meyer-Burnett interview as Frank says is stating wrong things. Probably trying to minise his previous comments about 16/9 being better?

Also, what happened to the syndication masters, which have been said to be in 16/9? Why are the new SFX in wider ratio then? My money on better 16/9 friendly versions appearing on the TV stations after all the ugly zoomboxed 4/3 Blu-rays are sold to the nostalgia crowd who want to see the series in the same format they used to see it (even thought all the image, SFX etc is changed).

Being happy with 4/3 for ST:TNG is no different than being happy with Pan & Scan in the VHS days.

Apart from a few shows in 16mm, most TV shows made on film from the mid-sixties onward, were composed for widescreen, and protected for 4/3.

Will buy the Friends box set (in widescreen) instead of these ugly 4/3 box sets. So ST, the future? HA!

 

From TheDigitalBits blog:

 

The call for replacements was pretty easy, but I did wait almost 20 minutes before talking to someone.

 

Oy...

 

To quote Chandler: Could this statement BE more misguided?