Is there any reason Frasier didn't get an HD remaster like Cheers?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by OldSoul, Jul 24, 2017.

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  1. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'? Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    Surely the show show is just as important as Cheers and is in reruns just as much. It's a shame the majority of the series looks nowhere near as good Cheers does (seasons 10 and 11 are at least HD on Netflix).
    @Vidiot , you seem to know about when Cheers was remastered. Did you hear anything about Frasier being remastered and vaulted, or reasons why it wasn't?
     
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  2. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I would much rather have a Frasier HD than Cheers.
     
  3. Wally Swift

    Wally Swift Yo-Yoing where I will...

    Location:
    Brooklyn New York
    I never watched Cheers originally but I saw a bunch of seasons on DVD real cheap and being a fan of Frasier I grabbed them. I watched a few episodes and have no ambition to watch them further. Dull.
     
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  4. Steve...O

    Steve...O Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Frasier is such a brilliant sitcom with consistently intelligent writing and the characters are so endearing and enduring.

    This came up on home theater forum.com recently also. Frasier was a filmed show (vs videotaped) so it should be possible to do HD transfers that would look excellent. Unfortunately CBS/Paramount has already released the entire series on DVD so I doubt they would revisit this.
     
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  5. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    Cheers was remastered in high definition around 2001, when Frasier was in still production and before Paramount/Viacom and CBS split.
     
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  6. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'? Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    That's a good point. Still seems odd they wouldn't have remastered what they already had, though.
     
  7. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    Yes, especially considering that they began producing new episodes in HD the following year. Perhaps they thought they'd remaster the whole series sometime after it wrapped with no foresight of the Viacom/CBS split. I bring that up because CBS seems to take poorer care of old Paramount Television shows than Viacom did. For evidence of that, look no further than the Cheers seasons released on DVD by Paramount vs. the Cheers seasons released on DVD by CBS (music cuts galore, and we don't even have an uncut series finale on the season 11 set).
     
  8. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    Aren't the Hallmark broadcasts HD?
     
  9. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'? Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    No, and they also show seasons 10 and 11 in 4:3 instead of 16:9, at least last I saw.
     
  10. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    Yeah, I don't think the HD Frasier episodes have been seen on American television since their original 2002-2004 airings, and even then not all NBC affiliates were broadcasting in HD yet.
     
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  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You know, I think Viacom was going to remaster Frasier -- and the last few seasons were definitely shot on film and edited in HD -- but I don't know how far it got. The problem with 1990s shows like Frasier, which started in 1993 and ended in 2004, was that it began in the digital standard def era, then 1999-2000 hit and everything switched to HD, and then it went off the air four years later. So the problem are all those early shows done only in SD. The costs of doing that are considerable -- I'm guessing about $30K-$40K per episode -- and the Viacom people are very stingy on spending money.

    Just as with Star Trek: TNG and That '70s Show and many others, when they decide to redo the entire series in HD, inevitably one problem that happens is that there are "pieces" that wind up being lost, and they have no choices but to upconvert and blow-up the 4x3 SD pieces to HD 16x9... which looks like crap. But whaddya gonna do?

    So my answer is, I gots no idea what CBS/Viacom/Paramount's priorities are. I believe McGyver is their current project, andn that's being completely redone from scratch (for the first time) in HD. Other studios are looking at old 1980s & 1990s film content like Family Matters and Perfect Strangers and redoing all those for HD. The great thing about the 35mm film shows is that they hold up very well in HD; god help you with tape shows like Golden Girls, Different Strokes, Family Ties, Cosby, and Facts of Life.
     
  12. Steve...O

    Steve...O Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I fully admit I'm not up to speed on who owns what so please excuse my ignorance. Is this a Viacom issue vs a CBS/Paramount issue? CBS/P transferred a ton of long running vintage shows to HD (the complete Perry Mason, Mannix, Hawaii 5-0, Mission Impossible, 13 seasons of Gunsmoke, etc) and while they've slowed considerably, they're clearly not adverse to spending the money money to do this (and recouping via DVD sales). Does Frasier fall into a separate category because Viacom is involved?
     
  13. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    I've been trying to sell my UK DVD box forever, just because my HD TV really makes them look like VHS quality. Selling region-locked DVDs around here is impossible.

    Hell, I'll let it go for $ 40 + shipping. :hide: maybe I'll try the Classifieds.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2017
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  14. Texastoyz

    Texastoyz Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas, USA
    I always thought that it was because Frasier wasn't as popular as Cheers. I saw both when they were current shows and I enjoyed Cheers so much more better than I did Frasier. I never heard anybody talk about Frasier the next day, whereas you would hear that about Cheers.
     
  15. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    One must be of a certain , shall we say...intelligence level, to fully appreciate Frasier, ah yezzz.
     
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  16. jojopuppyfish

    jojopuppyfish Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    I worked at Paramount Studios and to my knowledge, it was the last filmed tv show done there.
     
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  17. Texastoyz

    Texastoyz Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas, USA
    I didn't say I didn't like Frasier. I loved it. I followed all the escapades of Frasier Crane and Co. very intently for the years that it was on. It was a very enjoyable show. It was the last NBC scripted show that I followed. One musn't assume anything these days about what they do not know about.
     
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  18. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I went on the Paramount studio tour in the late 1990s when I was in LA for a few days and had two brushes with fame during the tour. One was a brief encounter with A. C. Lyles. The other was seeing the dog who played Eddie on Frasier out for a walk. :)
     
  19. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'? Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    It's possible some of those had already been remastered before the switch over. Perry Mason, Hawaii 5-O, and Mission Impossible were originally released by Paramount, for example. Edit: Actually, I take that back. I'm not entirely sure now. My slipcase/digipak trick may not be full proof, but those shows were definitely released right around the changeover. /Edit An easy trick to tell is that Paramount released shows in slipcases contained in cardboard--kinda the classic TV on DVD way to do things--while CBS released them in digipaks.

    As AKA said, CBS has been less caring of the shows than Paramount. If the cheaper (yet, admittedly, sturdier) packaging wasn't a clue, the switch over was also when shows started to have regular music edits and replacements. You can see how that changed with the first seasons of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy, which were great, compared to the later seasons by CBS which started to have problems. Picture quality stayed consistent since the remastering was likely done already, but edits started appearing. Even season two of Frasier was re-released in a digipak by CBS to edit music in an episode or two. I don't remember which ones.

    Oddly enough, CBS has moved away from careless edits and replacements, for the most part, yet the "Some episodes have been edited and music changed" disclaimer has stayed put on pretty much all releases, I'm guessing just as a safety net. Later seasons of Happy Days were pretty change free, from what I heard, and I was pleasantly surprised that The Lucy Show, which was basically a skitcom in its last seasons, was mostly unscathed. I was only aware of one episode that had some background music changed and maybe a somewhat seamless edit to get around singing.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2017
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  20. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    I was putting you on, in a Frasieresque bit of pompousness . :winkgrin:
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    No, I think somebody is just lazy and doesn't want to spend money. All the other shows you mentioned were cut on film, so those are trivial jobs that could be done in a couple of days, since all the editing work is already done. Rescanning and re-editing a raw-negative show like Frasier would take basically about 5 days per show, maybe more like 7 days when you include the audio mix, so it's a very complex, multi-step process. And it's hard work that costs a lotta money.

    This is the big difference between a show cut on tape (like Frasier) and shows that were cut on film (like all the major hit TV shows from the 1950s all the way through the early 1990s. Everything changed around 1990. I think Murder She Wrote was the very last show to cut on film, and that's because the producers were stubborn and didn't want to rock the boat.
     
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  22. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    Most criminally of all, the series finale of Cheers, released on DVD by CBS, is missing more than three minutes of footage. For the DVD release, someone took the three-part syndicated version and frankensteined it back together into one episode, and forgot to add back in crucial dialogue that was cut from reruns of the episode to make it fit tidily into three 23-minute parts.

    Much of the footage cut is from the final scene, in which the gang smokes Cuban cigars in the bar after closing time — including one last, passionate kiss between Sam and Rebecca.

    I have a copy of the originally-aired version that premiered on NBC in 1993, and it runs 73 minutes, 21 seconds. The DVD version is 70 minutes.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2017
  23. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'? Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    I'm pretty sure the DVD isn't even edited into one episode, but instead is just the 3 rerun edits. That's how it is on Netflix, anyway. I'd have to pull out my DVD.
     
  24. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    The DVD finale is edited into one episode, but they use the end credits of syndicated part three, so only the guest stars who appeared in the last 1/3 of the episode are credited. (Better luck next time, Coach Ditka.)

    I think I'll start a thread about the edits after I put my kid to bed.
     
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  25. jojopuppyfish

    jojopuppyfish Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    AC was a cool guy.

    I would work the shows at night and Fraser had the best spread.
    Never saw Kelsey Grammer except for when he was on the stage doing the show.
    David Hyde Pierce is a very nice guy.
     
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