One possible reason Star Trek The Motion Picture Directors Cut is not on blu ray?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by XIDOR, May 21, 2016.

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  1. The Secam I saw in France looked great for analogue SD. Keep in mind, and you know this better than me, that's not only the system or the quality of the equipment, it's also the skills of the engineers behind the desks. I live in Southern Spain very close to the Maroquian coast, with a rooftop antenna I can receive TV stations from Morocco which looked bad in the old SECAM analogue days and still look bad in the digital days.
     
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  2. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    It looked good in France. I visited for the first time in 1992, just after the elections here, and I marveled at the quality of the cheap little TV in our tiny Latin Quarter hotel room. The colors seemed so much more natural than on American televisions, and the picture far less grainy. The contrast seemed less harsh and more photographic as well.
     
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  3. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Japan's HD television system start out as analog and then go to digtial. I heard that analog HD back in the day would have taken up the bandwidth of two NTSC channels.
     
  4. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    But my understanding is that the only nations still region locking their DVD/Blu-Ray players is Canada and the States. (That I know of). People in Europe I hear don't have this problem. That all the disk players are region free. Or at least you can easily walk into a store in England and buy a region free player.

    Back in 1993 in Canada if you wanted a VCR to play PAL tapes there were only maybe one or two very expensive models available. The one I saw most frequent was $900. It could convert any tape to play back on any television system in the world. Otherwise no average VCR had even a PAL to NTSC switch.

    That same year I had to go to England to take my sick girlfriend home. I stayed with relatives. They took me to London and what I saw shocked me! Every VCR had a NTSC to PAL switch. It seemed to be a normal thing over there in England but yet wanting to watch PAL tapes was almost a crime over here. Any reason why things were so different?
     
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes and yes. Even with mild compression, HD takes up roughly six times the bandwidth of SD. Because of the lack of available spectrum space, they had to go to a highly-compressed digital system in order to handle HD broadcasting. 4K is most likely going to be impossible solely over the air: the ATSC 3.0 system uses a combination of over-the-air and internet.

    https://www.atsc.org/newsletter/atsc-3-0-where-we-stand/

    Still no word when and if a Star Trek 4K boxed set will be out -- but I have it on good authority that most of the features have been remastered to 4K.
     
  6. Paramount is the studio that seems to release the lower number of catalogue titles on UHD BD and they seemed focused on franchises as Transformers or Mision Impossible, why is that? They sure have recent outstanding movies to be released on UHD BD like The Island, Event Horizon or World War Z.
     
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  7. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

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    Well, given that broadcast stations seem to be dying off, I wouldn't be surprised if they did something to combine channels for the next gen broadcast standard...
     
  8. captainsolo

    captainsolo Forum Resident

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    I’d still love to see it in person one day but Japanese MUSE was incredible tech and achieved hd via the Laserdisc platform and a decoder.
    Of course like anything it has its problems and limitations but to think they achieved 1080i on disc in the early 90’s....
     
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  9. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    The first HD set I ever saw was at CES in 1986, a rear-projection monster (for the time) from I believe NEC. Presumably an early MUSE-standard unit. I just remember thinking how stunning the color looked. So much more lifelike than any NTSC image, and deeper and richer than most film of the time.
     
  10. Andrew

    Andrew Chairman of the Bored


    :goodie:
     
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  11. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Swoosh!! Over my head. Maybe you could explain what MUSE is. Please!
     
  12. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Wait.. what?!...I thought 4k was already being sent over the air. So to get 4k you need more than a digital attena? You need either Cable T.V., streaming or satellite service? And they talk about one day moving to 8k when they can't even send 4k over the airwaves. Funny!
     
  13. captainsolo

    captainsolo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Murfreesboro, TN
    From wiki:
    "In 1991, several manufacturers announced specifications for what would become known as MUSE LaserDisc, representing a span of almost 15 years until the feats of this HD analog optical disc system would finally be duplicated digitally by HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Encoded using NHK's MUSE "Hi-Vision" analogue TV system, MUSE discs would operate like standard LaserDiscs but would contain high-definition 1,125-line (1,035 visible lines) (Sony HDVS) video with a 5:3 aspect ratio. The MUSE players were also capable of playing standard NTSC format discs and are superior in performance to non-MUSE players even with these NTSC discs. The MUSE-capable players had several noteworthy advantages over standard LaserDisc players, including a red laser with a much narrower wavelength than the lasers found in standard players. The red laser was capable of reading through disc defects such as scratches and even mild disc rot that would cause most other players to stop, stutter or drop-out. Crosstalk was not an issue with MUSE discs, and the narrow wavelength of the laser allowed for the virtual elimination of crosstalk with normal discs.
    To view MUSE encoded discs, it was necessary to have a MUSE decoder in addition to a compatible player. There are televisions with MUSE decoding built-in and set top tuners with decoders that can provide the proper MUSE input."

    Essentially they found a way of encoding hi def content of sorts onto an LD and via a separate hardware decoder were able to reproduce HD content on early HDTV screens capable of displaying it. This was extremely niche in Japan and cost thousands back in the day but had they been able to stick with it who knows where it might have gone.
     
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  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You can get 4K streaming content via Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Hulu. There's very, very limited 4K content available via satellite (but it's highly compressed). The ASTC 3.0 over-the-air 4K broadcast system will involve part of the signal coming over the air, and part of the signal coming over the internet -- it's kind of a mess. I'm very skeptical about 8K, but there's some validity to shooting in 8K and then releasing in 4K, to give you some "weasel room" in post for reframing and so on.
     
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  15. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
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  16. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Wow! Good news!
     
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  17. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

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    Toronto, Ontario
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  18. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    My English is at College level but my math is grade 8 so I might have some problems with understanding some of this technical stuff. How compressed is ahhh.....compressed for 4k via satellite? Does it still look like 4k?

    The what the what? Part of the signal coming over the air and the other part over the web? ...O.k. not funny! You are joking right? Please tell me you were kidding! That is crazy!

    A little story about shooting in 4k. This is off the audio commentary of an Episode of Star Gate Atlantis. One of the directors was saying how:
    1. They hate the Sony HD pro cameras they were using.

    2. HD cameras have too much depth of field.
    The director said that they pumped in smoke for the indoor sets of Star Gate Atlantis to reduce the depth of field. I don't know what kind of smoke or how much. Seems to me that 4k would only be worse.

    The 70 mm negative of "Lawrence of Arabia" was scanned at 12k. (Says it on the back of the case.) Surely the 70 mm movies would benefit from a 8k scan. 150, 70 mm movies. Well 100 movies are those Ultra Panavision 70 mm, 2.79:1 things. But yes, 8k is beyond the resolution of a 35 mm negative.

    I heard 4k would allow 3D without glasses. Any truth in that?
     
  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You ask a lotta questions!

    I have not yet seen 4K on satellite, but I have seen 4K HDR/Dolby Vision on streaming (Amazon, Apple, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, etc.) and it looks terrific. Some of it is H.265, and since we have a 1Gb connection, I like to think we're getting the fastest speed the provider can give us. Compression schemes are complex and it's fair to say they're not created equally. The big problem (to me) is a lot of stuff has 8-bit color depth, which is not enough to me. 10-bit, even 12-bit is a lot better.

    If they were using 2/3" pickups, the cameras tend to have too much depth of field (that is, actors are in focus, stuff behind them is still in focus, stuff way behind them is still in focus). In 35mm film, generally the actors are in focus but the backgrounds are out of focus, and that helps force the audience's attention on the actors... which is a good thing. Almost all the modern digital cameras have at least a 35mm-sized frame, so the depth-of-field is surprisingly close to that of film. They also cheat a little bit by lighting at lower levels, then they open up the aperture, which further reduces the depth of field. And sometimes we go in in post and keep the actor in focus and throw the background slightly out of focus if it's too distracting.

    Yes, Lawrence was done over at Sony Colorworks in Culver City by Scott Ostrowsky, and he did a fantastic job on the film. It took many months to restore that film, but all the final color was done in 4K on (I believe) a Baselight 8. 4K is fine for a film like this, and downsampling the scan can actually improve sharpening and reduce artifacts in some way. You can compare that to oversampling for audio.

    Not that I'm aware. I've seen two systems that had glasses-free 3D, and you couldn't move your head 1 inch before the 3D effect collapsed. I think HDR and Dolby Vision have become a better choice for entertainment, because you can see the effect anywhere in the room, lying down, sitting up, walking around, and no glasses are required. Plus, it works with just about anything shot on film in the last 40-50 years, and it works fine with digital from the last 10-15 years. I'm halfway through watching all the Marvel films in 4K HDR (just saw Antman last night), and the HDR really adds a lot to the experience.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020
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  20. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    It's probably worth bumping this post from very early in the thread. David's quoting and replying to previous posts. He was the producer of The Director's Cut.

     
  21. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    1 inch? Ohh no! The other one system sounds promising.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  22. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario

    Mmmm.....With these MUSE HD disks I wonder why Laser Disk disappeared. Sounds good to me.
     
  23. Paul_s

    Paul_s Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    I was considering getting into MUSE but it's insanely expensive both for a player and the discs! It'd be cheaper to live in Japan for some of the tech I'm interested in. Plus they have shops full of old Japan HiFi too... :love:
     
  24. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    You don't need internet to watch OTA ATSC 3.0 programs. I have an ATSC 3.0 tuner on order, should be here next month. We have one station in Dallas broadcasting a ATSC 3.0 signal.

    I have 4K DIRECTV satellite, the programs look decent. It uses the HLG format for HDR. Of all the 4K streaming services, I think Apple TV and Disney+ look the best, but the rest are close.
     
  25. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    It was insanely expensive when it first launched, circa '92. Laserdisc was always problematic, even the standard format, because the discs were heavy and ginormous, meaning the players needed beefy motors and power supplies and had to be built pretty solid. The discs themselves were expensive to manufacture as well. And by the early '90s it was clear a next-gen CD was on the way which, combined with more advanced digital compression, meant a digital video disc format was inevitable. If memory serves it actually took the industry longer to launch DVD than it probably should have - if more stars had aligned it could have come out a year or two earlier.

    With virtually no HD televisions in homes until after 2000 (HDTV penetration didn't reach 10% in the US until 2006 I think), there wasn't much of a market for any high definition player. DVD exceeded the capabilities of the vast majority of existing sets when it launched in '96, producing a far better picture than VHS, S-VHS (which never really caught on in America) or even standard Laserdisc. And its tiny dimensions meant players could get cheap, quick, and the discs themselves were inexpensive to manufacture.

    The other problem for the MUSE Laserdiscs was competing formats, like the (equally expensive) analog HD W-VHS, that of course allowed recording as well. This kept any of these pricey formats from even dominating the tiny market for HD video in Japan in the '90s, serving to keep the prices elevated. By the early 2000's when more HD sets were available in Japan and the US these formats had to compete with upscaled DVD as well as with D-VHS, which prior to Blu-ray was probably the best HD format designed for home use. They all ended up just being playthings for the rich...
     
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