Blu ray release?

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
While the resolution gains would I'm sure be noticeable (even from a 16mm source), I don't think Disney is going to fund any restoration effort.

Now, one might assume the series was already transferred to high definition as part of the process of making the DVDs, but there would be no "restoration" involved. And I have my doubts that the suits are looking at the sales figures for the DVD and deeming a re-release to be a no-brainer. We have to remember that we're dealing with a cult series, here.

The DVDs look really good, supposedly. The bigger problem for the die-hards is all the editing, and a re-release that address that is even less likely. Exponentially so.
 

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
With Lucas no longer involved, they could always sideline (or stream) the educational featurettes, and release a complete 12 DVD (6 BD) set. But this time include all the extras and edits that actually relate to the series. Lucas and the actors sat for 22 VHS featurettes, 10 still unreleased. If the Star Wars shows keep coming, it might appeal to the completists.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Face Palm said:
This series could really use a blu ray restoration!
What makes you say that it could "use" a "restoration"? I think the DVDs look (& sound) great already. Do you mean improve the picture quality or do you mean restore the original broadcasts?:confused:

Here's an older thread on the subject:
Mystery of the Blu(es)-ray
Udvarnoky said:
I don't think Disney is going to fund any restoration effort.
Seeing as the series was Paramount Television, future distribution of it probably still lies under Paramount control (akin to the theatrical films). Disney might not be able to touch the TV show, even if they wanted to.
Moedred said:
With Lucas no longer involved, they could always sideline (or stream) the educational featurettes, and release a complete 12 DVD (6 BD) set. But this time include all the extras and edits that actually relate to the series.
That would be the way to go, although, I wonder: How common it is for early-'90s-TV-series to be released on Blu-ray?
 

Face_Melt

Well-known member
The DVD's look good?

When has 480p ever been considered to "look good" or good quality? In 1990 sure...

DVD (480p) was hardly a jump in quality from VHS (400p)

Blu ray (1080p) is fantastic quality, but it even comes short to the actual resolution of film which is 4K which is 4 times 1080p.

The films were released on blu ray, I don't see why the TV series can't be either.


Twin Peaks is coming out on blu ray just this month.
Nobody buys DVD's anymore. My local best buy has one single half-isle for DVD's compared to 6 full isles of blu rays.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Face_Palm said:
When has 480p ever been considered to "look good" or good quality? In 1990 sure...

DVD (480p) was hardly a jump in quality from VHS (400p)

Wasn't the jump from 480x320 to 720x480? That's significant, though of course resolution isn't the only factor.

Face_Palm said:
Blu ray (1080p) is fantastic quality, but it even comes short to the actual resolution of film which is 4K which is 4 times 1080p.

That's for 35mm film, and that's a theoretical figure. At any rate it's probable that Young Indy would have been scanned at 1800-2000 for its DVD transfer.

Face_Palm said:
The films were released on blu ray, I don't see why the TV series can't be either.

The films are much more popular and represent much less content.
 
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Stoo

Well-known member
Face_Palm said:
When has 480p ever been considered to "look good" or good quality? In 1990 sure...

DVD (480p) was hardly a jump in quality from VHS (400p)
Numbers aside, the DVD image quality is an improvement over any VHS release or home recording. Couple that with flat-screen TV and the show does, indeed, look good...better than it ever has before!(y)
Face_Palm said:
Blu ray (1080p) is fantastic quality, but it even comes short to the actual resolution of film which is 4K which is 4 times 1080p.

The films were released on blu ray, I don't see why the TV series can't be either.
Right but?don't forget that the show was shot with 16mm (as also noted above by Udvarnoky) so we're talking less than 1/4 the size of Indy's 70mm theatrical films. Would a 1080p version of Young Indy look better? Maybe not.

Making the picture TOO sharp could have a negative effect because sometimes the result can look as if it was filmed on videotape (depending on the size of screen it's being viewed on). From an aesthetic point-of-view, I don't see the benefit.

Image-wise, what do you think a Blu-ray release would improve?:confused:
Face_Palm said:
Twin Peaks is coming out on blu ray just this month.
Nobody buys DVD's anymore. My local best buy has one single half-isle for DVD's compared to 6 full isles of blu rays.
That depends on demographics. Where do you live, Face Palm?

Oh, and Welcome to The Raven!:D
 

Face_Melt

Well-known member
Thanks for the welcome! I spend most of my time on IMDB especially on Episode VII's message board (can you tell I'm a big Harrison Ford fan? Hehe).


Anyways, another cool perk is that blu rays have a scratch resistant coat and are extremely hard to scratch, with DVD's they scratch really easily D:

Plus I would like one box set with every episode, instead of 3.


Also, I'm in Austin, Texas :]
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
OT But:

Question about Blu Ray quality--
If I was to get my home movies (from Hi8 tapes) transfered to Blu Ray, would they look any different from the DVD copies we have?
 

Face_Melt

Well-known member
Probably not because that wouldn't change the source material.

I think it would have to be re-mastered.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Raiders112390 said:
If I was to get my home movies (from Hi8 tapes) transfered to Blu Ray, would they look any different from the DVD copies we have?
No. The source's quality is the available maximum quality. Migration to more advanced format does not magically make it any crisper. Only advantage is that you'll be able to fit more on a single disc.

Unless, of course, the video was compressed while converting to DVD and the DVD copies actually look worse than the Hi8 originals. In that case Blu-Ray copies may look better than the DVD ones (but not better than the originals) because there's no need to compress anything thanks to improved space.
 

Avilos

Active member
I been wondering about this a lot. Does anyone know how the effects where composited? Many of the special effects from tv shows of this era were done on video. Even through the episodes were shot on film. So the effects shots were of a lower resolution. Problem with Blu-ray releases from this era of tv is the only completed version of the episodes are usually in video. For Star Trek The Next Generation, Paramount had to find the original negatives and re composite and recreate the special effects.

Though I wonder if that maybe have been different with this series. We are talking about George Lucas. He was ahead of the curve on everything. He also probably saved all the original film elements. Like he did with all his films.

I not sure if a BLu-Ray release would be huge improvement or not. I wish he had approved the needed work before he retired. Even if it sat on a shelf like the 3D versions of the Star Wars movies. At least they would exist for a future release at some point.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I'm sure the original film elements were kept, but just as you say, since the episodes were mastered on video, they'd have to re-do all of that work. I hardly think the market for this show would justify such an effort in the eyes of Disney/Lucasfilm.

Seinfeld is the only older show I'm familiar with where they actually went back and rescanned the film elements to get the resolution gains. But of course, Seinfeld is phenomenally popular. It wouldn't surprise me if Young Indy was already scanned in HD as a step in preparing the DVD release, but it's unclear exactly what kind of work they did for that and how much of it would be rendered useless by an HD upgrade.

Additionally, since Young Indy was shot on 16mm it will of course not look as good in HD as 35mm would. I suspect it would still look excellent, and significantly better than DVD, but I just don't think the numbers crunch on the business side of things to justify what would to the average viewer not be a big enough jump in quality.

I think our best bet is if they ever throw the series up on a streaming service. If there is in fact already an HD version that they simply downscaled for DVD then they can just use those transfers.
 
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Le Saboteur

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
I think our best bet is if they ever throw the series up on a streaming service. If there is in fact already an HD version that they simply downscaled for DVD then they can just use those transfers.

The series has been available on Netflix and Hulu's streaming service for quite some time. The quality appears to be on par with the DVD release.

Given the source material's age (~25 years) and size (16mm's image size is less than half of 35mm film) you would probably need a 4k restoration and that runs (at last check) about $20,000 per movie. Since the image quality was never supposed to be grainy (see The Wrestler and the forthcoming release of The Shield; both were shot on 16mm), you're going to need a lot of additional work to correct the color, fix any cracks in the emulsion, bad splices, etc. The additional work is going to jump up the expense significantly -- and that's per episode. Assuming the twenty-grand is still accurate then you're looking at over half-a-million just to scan the series.

Once you've dug in and begun the real work, I imagine the total cost would run into the low millions. Say, three point five. Might be more. With the way home video sales are going it's probably not worth it for a negligibly better picture quality
 

phantom train

New member
I have been a HUGE fan of the High Definition/Blu-ray format ever since I got my first Blu player over three years ago. I still watch DVD's & stream on a regular basis - however, my preferred way of watching movies is in the Blu/HD format.

That all being said, I'm not sure that the YIJC series would benefit too much for an HD re-master/transfer; these are 20-year old TV episodes, so I agree that it's unlikely the video/audio can be improved too much for a theoretical HD transfer. The YIJC DVD's that came out in 2007/2008 were great & had much better picture quality than I had ever hoped to see re: the series - considering that I had originally seen the show on TV in the '90's on an old, crummy CRT set. These DVD's were also far superior to the VHS tapes that came out in the late '90's/early 200X's.
 
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Major West

Member
It's probably a situation like Star Trek The Next Generation. In case you are unfamiliar with that. Shot on film, but all the matte painting and visual effects were put together in the standard definition quality. For a blu-ray release they had to re transfer all the film from the camera negatives, clean it up, and remake all the special effects shots from scratch, then put it all back together again. Can't see that happening with YIJ, well possibly. Probably cheaper and more profitable for Disney to make a brand new YIJ series. Mystery of the Blues should be cleaned up and scanned into HD. 16mm definitely shows an improvement in high definition when transferred from the negative. A few old British tv shows in 16mm have already been given the treatment and there is definitely a benefit.
 
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Gobi-1

Well-known member
Paramount spent millions to restore Star Trek: The Next Generation for Blu-Ray and they ended up losing money on it when sales did not meet expectations. They've abandon plans to restore Deep Space Nine and Voyager because of it.

http://www.slashfilm.com/star-trek-voyager-deep-space-nine-blu-ray/

If Lucas still owned Lucasfilm he might spend the money for a full scale Young Indy restoration regardless of the cost, because he could afford it, but I don't see Disney making that effort.
 

Sakis

TR.N Staff Member
Gobi-1 said:
If Lucas still owned Lucasfilm he might spend the money for a full scale Young Indy restoration regardless of the cost, because he could afford it, but I don't see Disney making that effort.

I believe so too.

Has anyone seen the original series floating around the net from France?
 
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