Star Trek Home Video Update: New BD Live SDCC Video + Close Look At Best Buy Gift Set + More Pre-orders

Exactly! No blu-ray here, but might have to break down and buy one.

Boy, we are suckers..aren’t we :-)

I just got mine (bluray that is). I believe it’s a good purchase.

I fought it, and fought it.

Seeing the quality now…I understand. I’m like Kirk when he got the spores,…”I see now….I’ve joined you…I understand”….. or as Sulu said in that episode, “It’s all so clear now”.

The nice thing is that Blu-Ray will still play DVDs. This way a person (or family) does not have to replace all the DVD in ones collection, just buy new ones on BluRay and then replace selective DVDs in your collection with BluRay as they come available, if they come available.

Even this will take time, I bought a DVD player over 8 years ago and I still own some films on VHS (remember those movies?) that have not been put out on DVD or I just to care to buy them on DVD yet if they are out on DVD.

Not to mention what we are going to do when the next generation of home video comes out that will “revolutionize” the way we watch them. Who knows what that will be: smaller discs or a fromat like a flash drive?

BTW…I turned my 13 year old Granddaughter into a Trekkie…last Saturday we drove to Springfield, Ilinios, which has the closest theater still playing Star Trek, and she loved it!!! When we got home we had a mini-marathon of TOS episodes, and she loved them all. Best thing for me is I didn’t have to listen to her talk about Twilight or Harry Potter during them…LOL

Good God! They’ve finally pushed me over the
edge – going out this weekend to to get the BR Player.
Thank again JJ, I hope you got stock in Sony or
Panasonic……

6

Yes, I believe I was accused unfairly :)

and thanks again to Matt for hooking me up. He went way above and beyond the call of duty.

I hate when they do that. I want those pins but not enough to buy a blu-ray player and the HD TV that. Anybody have an extra HD TV lying around? :)

I’m so ticked off right now. The Mrs. and I were watching “America’s Got Talent” and they used the 12 Steps from Hell music used in the trailer 3 to introduce the judges. Drove me nuts hearing that music and seeing David Hasselhoff instead of the new Trek crew. Am I crazy?

17- I think Mr. Pascale should set up a special thread for the Trek blu ray discussions, since we keep diverging in that direction.

Any hd tc recommendations–so many choices-obviously 52 inch big screen-which brand,is plasma better than lcd?

My take (I own a Sony XBR4 LCD after alot of research)– All things equal, higher contrast tends to reduce my perception of motion blur and Plasma looked better than LCD. Supposedly 240Hz reduces motion blur vs. 120Hz achieving similar resolution during motion to plasma but I am not sure if this is completely true. Mostly blur I saw was in faces where you have a grey to grey transition in pixel which is slower than a more dramatic change in pixel. I think (as a happy owner of Sony) that Samsung are better value for LCD and very good quality. So far Sony and Samsung higher end LCD were made in the same fab facility. Sony has made agreements with Sharp for providing panels in future, so that is changing. I would strongly suggest Samsung and Sony. A friend of mine who did alot of gaming on his new plasma display actually did burn in logos when he started playing and had static images on within first 100 hrs of use. I would suggest you be very careful with plasma in early use and research into burn in and how to avoid it, when you should be okay.
Plasma will become obsolete but as a consumer this has little consequence. If you buy a set, most likely it will be supported in warranty and after warranty TVs typically need to be replaced not repaired. 240Hz LCD, OLED, and other technologies are nipping at Plasma’s heals, but these are just ways of rendering the image. So long as it has HDMI 1.3a you have a current set for use. So for price vs. performance you have alot of research to do.

Price vs performance–also if we just got a blu ray or ps3 would bluray and regular disks be viewable at all on a regular tv or monitor? Thanx oh guruzs of tech thst aleeady have their systems for any advice you can give us-

My brother in law has the Sony 40″ XBR Bravia so he’s been slow to change to something new. Even though that model is supposedly scanning in a narrower range for widescreen so you have more horizontal lines in 16:9 or lower, he can see only a miniscule difference between Blu Ray and upconverted DVD on that analogue in high end CRT. If you have an older TV (like my old 490 horizontal lines GE which was still higher resolution than an old classic Sony. If you look at it, when you take a 16:9 portion of a 4:3 standard definition TV (>65″). I think you will have a high end BLu Ray aavailable for this and over time, titles will start to support this as well, but for a moderate size screen and typical HT you will not be able to distinguish it.

Regarding storage format, multilayer BLu Ray are easy to implement multiplying the storage capability so you can expect newer BLu Ray standards but frankly content will be mostly available in 1080p except where 4k x 2k support for high end is interesting (which could be a higher price point disc or download only so piracy is easier to corect).

There is not as some have stated a motivation to use flash memory instead of discs. The cost of Silicon based memory is and always will be hgher than spinning discs. There is also no motivation for a smaller disk as wireless and Digital Copy (which a customer can transfer to their Memory Stick or SD or Flash Drive) have provided the ideal solutions for portability. If you don’t believe me, research into Sony’s UMD….

Happy hunting!!!

So short answer is you can view it on a regular TV but unless you plan to upgrade soon, why waste your money on it? The price of Blu Ray discs, players, and HDTV will probably drop faster than the cost of replacing movies you buy over next few years unless you have an addiction to buying DVDs.

I think Blu Ray and HDTV is something to spend good time researching, though the prices are much better now than when I bought my TV. I think you can buy a 46″ TV as good as my for 2 year old XBR4 (120Hz, 1080p) for about $1300-$1600 or less. Considering what I paid I’m saying it’s a good time. I would suggest go to AVS Forum when you have a short list of models you are looking at and find a User chat forum for models you are interested in. Reading through the 100+ posts on your model you will get a good sense of what are the common issues with it and how those are resolved.

What Blu Ray really impresses me (so much that I am replacing a large part of my frequently watched collection):

1. Facial detail: really enhances the subtlety in acting when you don’t have closeups.
2. Water and smoke and glass and metal. These tend to just distort, obscure in upconverted DVD. In blu ray there is so much added info in reflections, wetness, and

Regarding the future of HTheatre, I think the 4k x 2k will take off when there is true convergence of the PC and HTheatre where people will sit close to the screen or for gaming if processor speeds up and # processors and memory increases and to enable high end large screen size in home theatre (>>65″). I think you will have a high end BLu Ray aavailable for this and over time, titles will start to support this as well, but for a moderate size screen and typical HT you will not be able to distinguish it. My expectation is over next 5 years blu ray will be the thing and in 5 years or so you will start to see new technologies as I have mention start to strongly emerge in the US which still support BLu Ray but are gearing toward creating the new markets. I would not be surprised if within the next 8-10 years Blu Ray is obsolete and true PC convergence has occured. THat’s my prediction of the future and I am far more likely to be wrong than right.

I guess it’s time to become Blu-Ray’s beeatch.

The other reason to get a Blu-Ray player with your HDTV is that it will do a GREAT job making the old DVDs look good. I have a Playstation 3 and when it plays an “old” DVD on my 42″ Panasonic plasma set, the image is terrific. For example, the new DVDs of “Back To The Future” look great.

Another reason to get BluRay — even broadcast television is now 720p or 1080i, so watching DVDs (which are 480i) is actually a step down in quality.

Regarding lcd screens, in an ideal world everyone would get the best, but even the budget-brand Vizio is a fine way to start out.

Enough of the Blu-Ray/DVD stuff already, I wanna see new model kits! :-)

Any news when to expect Enterprise on Blu ray?

I am buying a blu ray player just because of Star Trek.

With all the Star Trek goodies coming to DVD, I really hope someone over at Paramount decided to greenlight a TNG mini-series (or two direct-to-DVD movies). It really bugs me that there are 6 TOS movies you can buy, and only 4 TNG movies. Would anyone have a problem if they made two direct-to-DVD movies of TNG? I don’t think anyone would at all. If anything, they could film them back to back and make a ton of cash. The fact is, Star trek movies always sell well on DVD. With 2 more TNG films, the studio can jack up the price of the DVD sets. I would certainly pay more if I got two more films to enjoy.

The subject of “Next Generation” DVD movies (or HBO mini-series) always seems to come up on these boards. Clearly, there is a market for them. In the long run, making a few TNG DVD movies would pay off huge for Paramount. It would also help move more units of TNG (the tv show) on DVD.

Here is what I wonder… if they made an “HBO” mini-series…. would that be made through Paramount or CBS? If it airs on TV first, I would think it would be a CBS project (I could be wrong though). Best bet is that they would be Direct-to-DVD movies distributed by Paramount, and not a television mini-series. You are more likely to get TITAN or EXCELSIOR movies by CBS that would air on TV first, then a TNG series. I would rather see TNG handled by Paramount anyways. That way, the DVD movies would be part of the overall “feature films” DVD sets.

Of course, we are all just dreaming… lol… but I wouldn’t be suprised if we see some DVD movies of TNG. If Battlestar Galactica and Star Gate can do it, surely TBG can do it better. Make it so!

I’m thinking I will get a Blu-ray this year but will wait until close to the release of XI just for the fact that w/ the economy the way it has been retailers are going to be slashing prices to get you into the stores before the holidays get here. Wouldn’t be surprised if by November there aren’t some nice deals.

i dont even plan on wearing the badges most likely (and if i do, ill cut off the tie pins and superglue magnets.

I just want to display them on my shelf

I love how David “Gene Roddenberry was a Homophobe” Gerrold is still making a living off of Trek, 42 years later. I guess the DVD sakes of “Martian Child” aren’t burning up the charts.

Wonder if he regaled the crowd with tales of hid girlfriend, Holly Sherman.

The man is a turd.

31. Dom – July 29, 2009

Beyond the arguement of screen size, content providers were eager to end Blu Ray vs. HDDVD precisely to start making money on Blu Ray. The trigger was that DVD revenue stream started reducing. I think you can expect them to maintain Blu Ray as the standard until the Blu Ray revenue stream starts to fall off.

That said, HDMI 1.4 is already supporting 4k x 2k transmission. LCD follows something very similar to semiconductor’s Moore’s Law in terms of pricing, with the vendors having to maintain some price premium above that curve to be profitable. I can imagine 4k x 2k screens being a way to boost sales, but other than interpolated image from Blu Ray or convergence, I wouldn’t expect it to displace Blu Ray.

Regarding screen size, I think you are right. Tooling up for larger glass size is something you could easily track (it takes alot of time to build a fab, fill it, and ramp to volume. OLED production as well you can probably tell a couple years ahead when it is ready to scale to volume. I think without one of those two things, the only cost effective solution for 4k x 2k in the home is front projection. My guess is that will remain a niche market since it is not as practical as an LCD in the living room for casual viewing. I would expect that at some point you will have a more expensive 4k x 2k version of films on a multi-layer Blu Ray disk or downloadable but that content will be held as more expensive to avoid any sense of Blu Ray being obsolete.

36 and 38:

YES!!! We need some new TNG films! I would prefer to see them at the show, but I would be just as happy to get them direct to DVD. I say make two or three movie. You got Fakes and Burton who would kill to direct TNG movies. I think they should make three movies. Give one to Burton, one to Frakes, and if he wants it… give the last one to Nick Meyer!

Guys, TNG is dead. So are Voyager and Enterprise.

Give it up already.