"Here’s Why ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ And ‘Star Trek: Deep..." Topic

… Space Nine' Won't Be Boldly Going To HD Anytime Soon

"Star Trek fans everywhere who were hoping that ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘ and ‘Star Trek: Voyager‘ would be joining ‘Star Trek', ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation', and ‘Star Trek: Enterprise' in high-definition are in for a rude awakening. We've just learned that the technology that they used on these two fan-favorite series for the special effects actually ended up lowering the quality of both shows so that neither one is likely to ever be available in HD. While Blu-ray editions of both shows may feasibly happen at some point, they won't be in HD and will likely just have added content at a lower disc count.

The news came up when the DVD special features producer of the Trek universe, Robert Meyer Burnett, was recently interviewed by Trek News. I'll go into detail in a moment but the short and not so sweet answer is that "it takes way too much time and money to remaster DS9 and Voyager into HD."

You might be wondering how that can be when even The Original Series was already released in HD. Well, it all has to do with a revolutionary new technology that at the time saved the producers a ton of money on making both series. Only now, it means a form in HD is unlikely…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I don't think the person who wrote the article understood what was being said. Basically, in simple English, DS9 and Voyager saved money by doing the post production on video tape. The original series and TNG had the original film that the series was filmed on to make an HD remake possible. (Enterprise was filmed in HD from the get go, so it was already there).

What this means is that in order to make an HD version, the effects only shots would have to be recreated from scratch (not a huge problem- they did that with TOS), but they would then look really oddly crisper and cleaner than the live footage of the actors, which would be scaled up from the NTSC video that was used to create the show before any color work could be done. Scaling up NTSC video source to HD looks awful. It's scaling a 480i source video to a 1080p HD format. In technical terms, it would look 'bad.'

For TOS and TNG, they had the original film of the actors, which were scanned in HD (and color corrected) so that the effects and live action shots all look equally crisp.

In other words, it's a ton more work, and would cost a lot more money to do for two series less beloved by the masses.

Tim,

Thank you for that explanation. It explains it to where even I can understand it.

Dave

I actually preferred DS9 over next gen.
I cannot believe I have admitted to this

You're welcome! I loved DS9 as well.

For those who haven't gotten their fill of Star Trek, the Heroes & Icons channel has reshuffled their weekday schedule,and now show every Trek series in order, beginning at 8PM EST.

Boy,am I sleepy.

So they suffer from the same problem of filming at the time that Babylon 5 did. You'd think this should translate to a lower price for boxed sets, but star trek collections are way over priced. In some ways anime becomes cheaper.

"but star trek collections are way over priced"

New DVD versions of TNG, DS9, & Voyager are coming out over the next few months at about $100 USD each. That should drop the price of the older versions down a bit.

I actually preferred DS9 over next gen.
I cannot believe I have admitted to this

It's okay, it's called 'having good taste'.

I wish the Sy-Fy Channel would show DS-9 & Voyager, along with the other ST series. But I too think DS-9 & Voyager were better than TNG in most cases. And I liked Enterprise as well …

Glad to hear about you again my good friend!! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Tango !

Legion 4--As stated above,Heroes & Icons is running them all,consecutively,every weeknight. DS9 at 10PM, Voyager at 11PM (EST). As a matter of fact, they just aired Episode 1 of Voyager last night.

They are mostly on broadcast subchannels, but I believe some cable systems carry them too. Affiliates are in Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati,if you're anywhere near.

BTW,Yes, there's a concensus that TNG took a while to find its footing--some time into season 3,say--but it turned into an excellent series,IMO. IIRC, it was sort of the same with DS9--there seem to have been a lot of "detective show" type stories in the early years. I finally got tired of those,and stopped watching. So I missed the later stuff. Now,thanks to H&I, I'm catching up.

I had hopes for DS9 but I became bored. I stopped watching but after I did the crew acquired a small fighting ship and there was combat to entertain the males. Too late.

Thanks for the intel Haf !