Comments on: Video Of Trek Remastered In Widescreen

By: Some_Person

Some_Person — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:10:38 +0000

I think they should crop the HD effects, so that they remain the same aspect ratio as the source material, and it doesn’t change while watching. I have done test encodes of 4:3 and 16:9 material together, and the 16:9 material looks great, but once the 4:3 material shows up, BAM! The black bars appear right in your face. It is much less noticeable on all-4:3 material. Of course, you could crop the 4:3 material to be 16:9, but then you’d lose part of the image. If you don’t care about losing the image, practically every widescreen TV comes with a zoom option.

By: SPOCKBOY

SPOCKBOY — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 07:37:10 +0000

Well the widescreen would explain why some shots look so badly cropped IE-The extreme closeup of the Botany Bay and the Enterprise “alongside for 10 hours now” scene will look amazing with the WIDESCREEN uncropped.

SPACE SEED was definately the high point of the remastering thus far.

Well done boys.

By: By-Tor

By-Tor — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:14:20 +0000

Guess this is one of those opinion things. I think the whole widescreen thing is silly, and Tony, I have to disagree: on my HDTV I don’t insist on widescreen; I insist on high-quality, unedited material. It’s bad enough that nitwit content providers like HBO crop and/or do pan-and-scan…IMO taking parts of the image AWAY does not make it better, no matter the shape.

GIve me 4:3.

By: Anthony Pascale

Anthony Pascale — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:18:03 +0000

well the purpose of the videos is to see the aspect ratio and how ratios are being mixed. This is not to be an example of the resolution of HD. By the way the downloads are better than the youtube, but I am not going to be hosting downloads of full HD clips…too much bandwidth.

By: MichaelJohn

MichaelJohn — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:05:20 +0000

This topic seems a bit premature if you ask me…

We are shown some very low qualitiy “video bites” from youtube.com, that in no way represents the massive improvement in picture quality that the HD/widescreen format will bring to TOS, and then people are writing comments regarding this new format….

I think this will be an interesting topic a few years from now when Star Trek TOS fans have the HD Widescreen DVDs in their posession, and the HD Widescreen TVs to play them on….

Mike :o

By: T Negative

T Negative — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:48:56 +0000

When I was watching “How William Shatner changed the world” All of the shots from the original series appeared to be in “widescreen” or 16X9 format and it looked really good!! Did they simply crop it or did they do something else to accomplish this. Why can’t our friends at CBS digital do this?? I am in no way an expert on this issue. Just thought I would point it out.

By: Anthony Pascale

Anthony Pascale — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:25:57 +0000

for now the CBS folks want the whole HD version of the show to be ‘pillar boxed’ (black bars on left and right). The widescreen effect shots are to allow for the possibility to create a widescreen version of the show that would have to crop (using pan and tilt) the live action. Yes some purists would object, but then again they wont be forced to watch it and will likely have a standard apsect ratio version available.

I for one would like to see a full widescreen version available as an option. When one buys a HD TV one wants full widescreen content. There is also a ‘comprimise’ where they can crop both the effects shots and the live action and end up with smaller pillar boxes. This is how HD Net are showing Hogans Heroes for example

By: paul austin

paul austin — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:21:48 +0000

I like the widesreen images, but dont want to loose any of the original image, what does the CBS-dig team want to do? I think they’d be pretty aware that any cropping of the original image is going to case an outcry…so because of the potential image loss, im all for the aspect ratio switching, i dont find it jarring at all.

By: Kelvington

Kelvington — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:58:45 +0000

I’m surprised the jump between the ratios doesn’t seem to bug me. I think in the darkness of outer space it’s less jarring, but the shot of the ice planet where it’s mostly white, it might be more of a jump cut. Maybe on those shots they will make the side bars be white for a second and have them fade to black. Still pretty cool. I just wonder how long before we can get computers to add the remaining sides to a scene so that when an actor goes from 4×3 ratio he/she can be digitally walked off into the 16×9 ratio?

By: neal

neal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:24:24 +0000

The widescreen looks gorgeous, but it does make the oddity of the Enterprise trajectory more apparent.

In the old show, you got the feeling that the obvious curve to the trajectory was a useful attempt to communicate to a less sophisticated audience that “It’s in orbit … it’s going *around* the planet, not past it.” But to a bystander close enough to see the Enterprise without a telescope, the orbital path looks like a straight line, just like standing when you stand on the ground, the surface of the earth looks like a flat surface. It’s too big to see the curve, unless you’re very very far away.

As depicted in these scenes, the Enterprise trajectory is a tight circle, or a momentary turn, with no indication of how or when it will straighten out and “orbit” properly.