In this Digital Bits article, you’ll find rumours about the DVD release date of Superman Returns (Nov. 28; not announced officially) and, even more interesting, high definition Star Trek. That’s at higher resolution than the post special effects master copies. How might they do this? By taking the original pre-effects film stock and recreating the old special effects to the same specs at a higher resolution. The purist in me objects, but the realist points out that it’s akin to the first movie’s DVD release, and less dramatic than the Star Wars revamps.
Thing is…
The Star Wars DVD releases were absolutely brilliant in terms of the picture quality improvement, but there’s no way that they’re going to do anything like that for the original Trek, and I think that kind of effort is what’s needed to justify this. Instead I feel very much like it’s a cynical hack job intended to try and cash in on the 40th anniversary, now that Paramount have realised that they don’t have a series with which to celebrate it anymore.
Mind you, that would have been dreadful too. Cynical? You bet!
Re: Thing is…
Who cares? They’ll be like, $40$ an episode, so no one sane is gonna buy ’em.
No one sane.
not good
Trek doen’t have an obsessed multi-billionaire like Lucas to fund/push the appropriate changes to the movies. As stated above, it’s probably gonna end up being some sort of hack job. I hope we’re wrong, but Trek/Paramount don’t have the best track record.
Re: not good
Oh no you didn’t!
You did NOT just claim that the abobinations that Lucas wrought upon Star Wars were appropriate!?
Them’s fighting words!
Re: not good
In this context it’s not so far off. I thought the improved space shots, while not really necessary, were impressive, as were the views of the Cloud City in Empire. Trek may be doing even less than that.
Now, as for digitized added characters, extended musical numbers, and Greedo shooting first….
Yeah, Lucas’s example suggests Trek would do well to steer clear of adding digitized forehead bumps to Klingons, extending Spock’s jam with the hippies, or having the Romulans try to steal something from the Federation right before Kirk goes in to get the cloaking device.
Widescreen versus 4:3
The HD resolutions – 720p and 1080i – are both 16:9 widescreen formats. If they are going back to the original film, will they crop the top and/or bottom parts of the frame to get from 1.33:1 to 1.78:1? Or, will they simply go full frame and give us black bars on the sides? I don’t think Shatner’s hairline can stand much cropping… <–this sentence can be translated to Scotty speak for additional entertainment.
At this point, I find the idea of another release of Star Trek (any series) on disc to be uninspiring, HD or not. Paramount has lost me with their ridiculous pricing on the releases so far and I’m not buying any of it until they get reasonable.
Pix included
Hmmm… More here, though I’ve heard it might not be all episodes. Perhaps they should just leave well enough alone?
Knowing how the technology works…
You’re all freaking out over nothing. They simply would take the old project files and have them re-rendered at a higher resolution, possibly with no human intervention at all.