Red Dwarf Series I-VIII Blu-Ray Boxset is Shite

[magval]

Yeah, it's appalling. If you've got Amazon Prime it's on there. There's all kinds of issues like effects overlays being missing, horrible image smoothing applied to scenes seemingly at random, crew members being visible in shot, etc.

Whoever did the X-Files HD upgrade did a brilliant job, however. The only issues are a few sequences(mainly stock footage) that have been noticably sourced from HD, other than that it looks fantastic.

The HD Buffy on Prime has seen a lot of fixes since the original transfer that everyone was talking about a few years ago. A lot of it looks really good now.

[Replies From View]

Yeah, it's appalling. If you've got Amazon Prime it's on there. There's all kinds of issues like effects overlays being missing, horrible image smoothing applied to scenes seemingly at random, crew members being visible in shot, etc.

Wait, what?  How would upscaling for Blu-ray cause that to happen?

[daf]

reframing for 16:9?

[Replies From View]

reframing for 16:9?

That sounds strangely interesting to me; instead of cropping off the top and bottom, creating widescreen by including details from the edges that weren't planned to be there.  Brilliant!

I've never had any interest in the show before, but I now feel I have to seek this out!

[Mango Chimes]

Yeah, they can do HD of Buffy, TNG, The Wire etc. because they were shot on film and then cropped for the original 4:3 TV versions. So for the 16:9, instead of zooming in, they can open out. Side effect being that you get information shown that wasn't intended.

You used to get the same thing opening out 1.85:1 films for 4:3, except now your boom mic is on the left or right of frame rather than the top. Progress!

[Replies From View]

I LOVE IT AND I AM GOING TO SEARCH FOR COMPARISON VIDEOS TONIGHT.

[mjwilson]

I think that's only true for later seasons of Buffy isn't it? The DVD releases in the UK have always been widescreen for seasons 4 (maybe 5) to 7.
I think the earlier seasons on Amazon prime are cropped to make the widescreen image, from what I've read anyway.

[Sebastian Cobb]

That sounds strangely interesting to me; instead of cropping off the top and bottom, creating widescreen by including details from the edges that weren't planned to be there.  Brilliant!

I've never had any interest in the show before, but I now feel I have to seek this out!

Lots of shows pre-empted widescreen by cropping for 4:3 but maintaining a 16:9 'safe area'. The Sopranos and X-Files (after the first couple of series) did.



There's sometimes the opposite as well, rather than using an anthropomorphic lens they just matte out the 35mm frame to 16:9 in post-production. I've seen an 'open matte' version of the film Dolomite and you can see the boom in lots of shots.

[Phil_A]

I think that's only true for later seasons of Buffy isn't it? The DVD releases in the UK have always been widescreen for seasons 4 (maybe 5) to 7.
I think the earlier seasons on Amazon prime are cropped to make the widescreen image, from what I've read anyway.

I believe the show was always filmed with 16:9 cameras and then masked for 4:3, which was common with most US shows at the time. Although the UK DVDs removed the masking from Season 4 onwards making it 16:9 again, this was never intended to the be the broadcast ratio, every season was originally broadcast as 4:3.

The cropping issue is a bit confused as it seems some episodes are zoomed in and cropped rather than using the full image, but some others aren't. It's a total mess, basically.

A few issues have been addressed on the Amazon version but after four years it's still far from being "fixed", the aggressive digital smoothing is still there. Just watch "The Pack" from Season 1 for evidence of how bad this looks - specifically the sparring scene between Buffy & Giles ten minutes in. It looks they've sourced one particular take from the SD version but have tried to disguise it, badly, by cranking the DNR right up. It's so poorly done the colour grading actually changes between camera angles.

Here's a handy comparison video for Replies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F28XcxHxH6k

[Replies From View]

I don't get that.  Why did they make a 16:9 image using a 4:3 version, and a 4:3 version from a 16:9 one?

[Phil_A]

Have they got the captions the wrong way round? Surely the one on the right is the HD source, as it says "HD" in the corner. How confusing.

[Alberon]

Yeah, they can do HD of Buffy, TNG, The Wire etc. because they were shot on film and then cropped for the original 4:3 TV versions. So for the 16:9, instead of zooming in, they can open out. Side effect being that you get information shown that wasn't intended.

You used to get the same thing opening out 1.85:1 films for 4:3, except now your boom mic is on the left or right of frame rather than the top. Progress!

I've always sort of dreamed them doing a proper 16:9 cut of TNG, but each shot would need too much CGI to mask out lights and sound mikes and the end of sets. And they can't even do proper HD transfers of DS9 because not enough people bought the TNG ones.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't get that.  Why did they make a 16:9 image using a 4:3 version, and a 4:3 version from a 16:9 one?

It confused me but I think the bars are swapped to the viewable image purposefully to highlight where the overrun is in relation to the other image. So The red box shows that there is added horizontal picture, but a vertical crop, to give the (HD 16:9) image next to it, and the green box shows the original broadcast image (on the left) has more vertical data.

[Replies From View]

I must admit that I still don't get it!  Thanks for trying though.

[St_Eddie]

Nah, it's just that analyzing grates is a very a classic 90s-style anorak and Thermos nerd thing to do. Context is irrelevant.

Okay, so I'm a nerd.  Does that admission make you happy?

[VelourSpirit]

I have no idea what to think about changing original broadcast aspect ratios.
I love the X-Files blu ray - the show looks stunning and cinematic and I think they were right to do it in 16:9 since they'd allowed for it.
I absolutely can't stand pan and scanning 4:3 to widescreen, but I get that it was necessary when they did it for original series footage in Twin Peaks The Return.
The Wire is a tricky one - there's a whole article about it here by David Simon. http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/ I've not even seen The Wire and I don't know which to go for. I think I might actually go for the DVDs - some things are sort of better served by 4:3 standard definition, like it's an aesthetic in itself.
The Freaks and Geeks blu ray actually did it both ways, with two sets of discs, which is almost extravagant but I love it that they did it. The thing is, given the choice, I still don't know what I'd go for, considering that I probably wouldn't watch it twice in quick succession.

[Mango Chimes]

Have they got the captions the wrong way round? Surely the one on the right is the HD source, as it says "HD" in the corner. How confusing.

Aye, they've got their left and right mixed up. Left of each is surely the DVD image with the red box showing the Blu-ray shape in relation to it, and the right is the Blu-ray image with the green box showing the DVD shape.

So the first one shows the Blu-ray zooms in and slightly opens out the image, whilst the second shows the Blu-ray opening out the image without any zoom.

Regardless: fucking shit. Leave it in the original fucking aspect ratio. If wankers want to use their TV settings to horribly crop the image, they can go for it. Everyone's happy.

(Although I suppose there's still 'as originally intended' issues with interlacing etc.)

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's shot on film so there won't be interlacing artefacts as such. It'll have probably gone through some horrific 3:2 pulldown though.

Cropping wouldn't work as they're opening the picture out. And what is the 'intended' aspect ratio? Is the director directing in 16:9 and keeping a 4:3 safe area for broadcast or the other way round? On the x-files Carter specifically says they pre-empted it.

Of course the other option is to do a Star Trek and keep it 4:3. But then they never had anything to open out to because they shot the film in 4:3/

[Mango Chimes]

It's shot on film so there won't be interlacing artefacts as such.

It wasn't intended to be watched on film, though. I was just countering my own purity argument – I think futzing with the aspect ratio is beyond the pale, but it'd be fair to argue that it's not possible to watch a pre-widescreen TV show 'as intended' regardless, because modern TVs simply don't display the image the same anyway. Some of the filmmaking decisions will have been made with the idea that TVs weren't going to be much bigger than a couple foot across, with inherent fuzziness to the image, some overscan, etc. as much as they will for the screen shape.

But I'm sticking to my position on aspect ratios regardless.

Cropping wouldn't work as they're opening the picture out. And what is the 'intended' aspect ratio? Is the director directing in 16:9 and keeping a 4:3 safe area for broadcast or the other way round? On the x-files Carter specifically says they pre-empted it.

It'd work in as much as it would 'remove the black bars' for the people who that bothers. Carter can say what he likes in retrospect, but if a crew is working to produce an image for 4:3 broadcast, they're working to 4:3 (with a 4:3 safe area within that). Even if they were keeping lighting kit out of the wider frame just in case, that isn't the same as composing for it.

[St_Eddie]

Twed - Sorry, mate.  I know that you were just pointing out a valid point.  I didn't mean to be an arse and yet I was.  I like you, man.  Sorry for being a dick.

[buzby]

It's shot on film so there won't be interlacing artefacts as such. It'll have probably gone through some horrific 3:2 pulldown though.

The X-Files BluRays are in 1080p/24, so native frame rate to the original film. However, the effects shots weren't produced on 35mm and there were some elements that were only available from SD video masters (the show was edited on video) so they had to be converted and upscaled to fit in with the scanned 35mm film elements.

[Replies From View]

Imagine if somebody told you your face wasn't high enough resolution and they started messing with it without even checking if it was okay first.

[Twed]

Twed - Sorry, mate.  I know that you were just pointing out a valid point.  I didn't mean to be an arse and yet I was.  I like you, man.  Sorry for being a dick.

Haha, I win!

[St_Eddie]

Haha, I win!

And with such humility too!

[machotrouts]

Is the scoop of Red Dwarf underneath it there?

Zoom in on this one:

Here's the original image the ship on the cover is based on:

I don't know how I ended up in this thread, I have very little investment in Red Dwarf and barely know what I'm looking at here, but I laughed out loud at this. Were the artists only given the reference image in silhouette?

[purlieu]

The worst part is that it was okayed. The artist attempted to do a vectory looking version of the ship and fucked up the ramscoop. Then someone at Grant Naylor Productions said "yes, that's the image we want!" and signed it off.

[purlieu]

Back to the original topic, Ganymede & Titan have done a pretty balanced review which eventually comes down on the side of "nice try, but sadly a bit shit" in conclusion.

[Duckula]

Did they fix Kryten's head in these ones then?

[St_Eddie]

The BBC has ackowledged the issue with two of the discs in the boxset and has issued an offical statement...

After a comprehensive review with all our suppliers involved in the manufacturing of this product we have now identified the source of the problem. De-interlacing did occur at tape to digital capture stage with one of the suppliers. This was not part of the Blu-ray authoring process as we originally had reason to believe.

The mastering of this release was a multistage process involving three separate suppliers. We hope you will understand that it would be inappropriate for us to say specifically where this fault occurred as we are remedying this with the company concerned.

We have started the process of recreating the masters and re-authoring these discs which will take approximately six weeks.

Glad I didn't impulse buy this upon release.  Does anyone know how such things work?  If I buy the boxset in a few months time, am I basically guaranteed to be getting a reprinted version?

[Replies From View]

Why not just get the DVDs?