Star Trek

Post by **Randall** » April 26th, 2009, 7:08 pm

I decided to get the Blu sets after all. Can't go wrong at that discounted price! I like the TOS DVD packaging, but it is cumbersome. I am selling the three TOS (TV) sets this weekend, and bidding is close to $200 so far, so that'll come at least close to paying for the 3 Blu-ray season sets (assuming more good sales). I also sold all the movies for about $100, again doing well to help pay for the Blu-ray upgrade.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » April 28th, 2009, 5:35 pm

Where are you selling your discs, Rand?

I went into Best Buy today and they had the Season 1 Blu ray set of TOS for $65 -- it's this week only otherwise their regular price will be $90.

Needless to say ---

---- I CAVED IN and bought the set!

I'm probably going to sell off most of the Star Trek DVDs I have, too.

I am going to keep the Director's Edition of Star Trek: TMP since there are no plans to re-release it on Blu ray any time soon. The new effects for the movie were done in standard-rez and with the economy the way it is, it may be a few years before Paramount coughs up the cash to pay to upgrade the effects on the DE to match hi-rez...

Post by **Daniel** » April 28th, 2009, 8:45 pm

GeorgeC wrote:Where are you selling your discs, Rand?

eBay, of course!

I was actually following the auction for fun, great that you got as much as you did, Rand.

GeorgeC wrote:---- I CAVED IN and bought the set!

Pushover.

Post by **Randall** » April 28th, 2009, 10:05 pm

Woo-hoo! George is weak like me!!! Good for you. man!

Yep, I sold my TOS sets on eBay. I was very pleased to get almost $200 for the 3 seasons. Makes the upgrade waaaay easier. Should have Season One within the week from Amazon.com. (Future Shop--- owned by BestBuy these days--- had a pretty good price this week {$80Can} too, but with yucky bilingual packaging. For me, it's worth the import.)

I'll have to re-buy the TMP DVD. I just figured that selling all 10 films as a set would bring me the best results. I think I can find TMP for a few dollars locally.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » April 29th, 2009, 7:22 am

So,

My best shot at getting rid of the ST: Movies DVDs is just to sell all 10 together?

I almost have all 10 as it is.... I never got Insurrection since that's my least favorite film of the whole lot as nonsensical as Nemesis was. ST V -- my least favorite TOS film after ST: TMP -- is better than Nemesis and Insurrection IMHO.

I never could stand the whole collector's mentality on e-Bay but if I "gots" to spend $10 more to sell $100 worth of movie DVDs, so be it I guess!

P.S. --- Darn it, but you're right again on ST:TMP.

Film's readily available on DVD for $10 just about everywhere. I guess I can suffer gettting another copy to sell the original on the 'Bay.

I've looked into cheaper e-Bay alternatives like eBid.net but they just don't get the traffic e-Bay does like it or not...

I think I'm going to have to get rid of my clutter and the bulk of my comics on e-Bay. The alternatives just aren't great including the comics-centric auction sites. People just don't go to those places by and large...

Post by **eddievalient** » April 29th, 2009, 8:08 am

Plus there's that fact that comics are a buyer's market at this point, so you probably wouldn't fetch a high price regardless (seriously, I recently got an issue of Tomb of Dracula for $5 when ten years ago it would have been $30 or more). This is great for people like me who only buy comics to read them and don't care about their value.

Post by **eddievalient** » May 2nd, 2009, 7:28 pm

Just so you guys know, Amazon's massive sale on Star Trek dvds ends May 15th. Presumably after that it'll go back to the regular price (which is to say, too expensive compared to other comperable sets). The clock's ticking.

Post by **Ben** » May 3rd, 2009, 5:33 pm

Was just very tempted to impulse buy the Original Crew Movies, but then started reading the reviews on Amazon.

Need to dig deeper if I get the chance, but this doesn't sound like it's the definitive edition. Think I'll continue to wait for them all to come out in their Director's Cuts too, and see what they do with the TNG movies. And I'm miffed that Generations isn't in there: that's as much an original crew as a next gen movie.

I'm justifying my not purchasing this, aren't I?

Post by **Randall** » May 3rd, 2009, 11:41 pm

Yep.

The original crew's barely in Generations, and most of them are absent. (As you know.

) It's mostly a TNG movie for sure. The TNG films will be along in a few months. No biggie. As it is, the six movies in HD are a good price on sale.

We've known all along that the Director's Cuts weren't there. The Amazon reviewers don't like it, but the set was never sold as anything else other than the original versions.

It is dumb that the II and VI DC's aren't there, but hopefully the scenes are at least available as extras. However, the extensions are small anyhow, and I won't miss them too much. The theatricals are the true versions anyway. (Now I'm the one justifying.

) The TMP DC explanation for not being present, though, may or may not hold water. (i.e. the new effects weren't done in HD).

Post by **droosan** » May 4th, 2009, 12:00 am

I worked at Foundation Imaging when the Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Director's Cut was being made (I did not work on it, though; and I am glad of that, because I personally wasn't very thrilled with the idea of altering/adding to a Douglas Trumbull VFX classic) .. and I can confirm that the added effects shots were not rendered in HD. I do recall a few artists positing that this should have been done, at that time -- but the output resolution was Paramount's call.

Foundation Imaging no longer exists. However, most of Foundation's Star Trek crew (along with all of its CGI 'content') migrated to Eden FX, where they'd continued to work on Enterprise, among other projects. It's not unreasonable to assume that all of the added effects for ST:TMP - DC could be recreated by Eden FX in HD, from the original project files .. but once again, that decision rests with Paramount.

As I've said here before (most likely in a different thread; I can't recall), I much prefer the original version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, anyway. I'm glad it will finally be available on Blu-ray.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » May 4th, 2009, 4:36 am

At this point in time,

I wish the original Enterprise (or a Phase II-derivative) could have been recreated in the new film and been used instead of that monstrosity!

As for the Director's Edition of Star Trek: TMP, I think it'll happen on Blu ray mostly because of Robert Wise's reputation and probably because completists will want it on Blu ray in addition to the theatrical version. As I recall, there are probably at least 4 versions of that film in existence anyway => theatrical cut, ABC cut, original home video extended version (not entirely the same as the ABC version according to people who could stay awake through it), and now the CG-enhanced Director's Edition.

I would think having the original CG files for the ST:TMP DE available in SOME format would make it much easier to recreate the effects in HD than having to start over from nothing. At any rate, Paramount WILL see the bill!

I think Paramount will pay a lot more for TNG and the other shows (other than the HD-produced Enterprise) to get them up to HD-spec. It just goes to show that if you're stingy-cheap on production to begin with, you end up paying a lot more to fix things up!

Yeah, I'll see the new film later this week.

It'll give me an excuse to hang around with family for a few hours... They're not the big Trek fans going into a potential heart ache at any rate.

Post by **Ben** » May 4th, 2009, 7:52 am

Randall wrote:We've known all along that the Director's Cuts weren't there. The Amazon reviewers don't like it, but the set was never sold as anything else other than the original versions.

Yep...that's not what bothers me though...check out the comments on picture quality, and that it seems only Khan has been restored for "true HD", even going by Paramount's own publicity wording. What does that mean for the image quality on the others? Apparently these are basically screening prints transferred to BD as opposed to proper clean-up/remasterings.

As this Gulliver disc has confirmed, there's nothing like looking at a <I>bad</I> source in high definition.

Post by **droosan** » May 4th, 2009, 8:31 am

That's definitely cause for concern.

I recently picked up the 2010: The Year We Make Contact Blu-ray, and was extremely disappointed with its image quality .. especially considering that the transfer on 2001: A Space Odyssey is among the nicest-looking live-action films I've yet seen on Blu.

The 2010 Blu-ray is incredibly 'noisy,' to the point of distraction .. particularly in the Leonov interior sequences (which, as it happens, make up the bulk of the movie). The miniature photography shots fare a bit better .. likely because they were filmed with a less-grainy stock.

I'm certain that, with a little bit of care during the mastering process, much of the more-obtrusive noise could have been reduced. But M-G-M hasn't ever really shown much 'respect' for 2010; even on BD, the only 'bonus features' they've offered is the original theatrical trailer and a vintage 'making of' short (both in standard def, no less).

It has definitely made me 'gun-shy' of rushing out to buy live-action movies on Blu-ray. Out of the 24 titles I have on BD, only 3 are live-action (and one, Enchanted, is 'mostly' live-action). Animation -- particularly digitally-created animation from the past 20 years or so -- simply seems to looks gorgeous on Blu-ray, as a rule.

Though, there are exceptions -- such as the aforementioned Fleischer Gulliver's Travels (which I've avoided), and the Dragon's Lair / Space Ace BD's, which seem to be merely 'blow-ups' of the existing video-rez material.

------------------------

So, I may be willing to wait a bit on the Star Trek movie BD set. Especially since ST:TMP is really the main one I'm interested in, anyway. I'm also not terribly crazy about the choice of buying all six TOS-based movies, or just the Genesis 'trilogy' .. I'm certain that, eventually, they'll be available à la carte.

Post by **eddievalient** » May 4th, 2009, 9:37 am

I never got any of the movies on dvd (I got them all on vhs when my local video store went out of business and sold off all their tapes), so it does kind of bug me that the six film set is only being released on bluray. I suppose I can be patient and wait for an eventual release, but they ought to be doing this now.

Post by **Ben** » May 4th, 2009, 10:47 am

Droo...isn't 2010 a WB release (albeit of an MGM title)?

Disappointed to hear about poor image as I was leaning towards that. I love all the Clarke novels and it's a shame the third and fourth have not been made into films, even if the films differ <I>wildly</I> from the source books.

I've been being careful what I upgrade. The reports on The Godfather and the good deal on that got me to fall for it, but the entire reason to go HD is if there's a substantial improvement in picture or extras, and I'm not hearing that on a lot of live-action releases. Most of everything I but new now is naturally HD, but with so many DVDs that I hardly watch anyway, I can live with upscaling the majority of them and save the upgrading to those titles that really warrant the switch.

We know the STs will come back around again, and I was already thinking about staving off until a ten-film box of the first two series (original six and the next gen quartet) was available anyway. This essentially seems to be a first bit at the cherry...and a very basic one at that. I'm passing until the inevitable uber-set which packs everything in.