Besides the Star Trek movie going into production later this month, the other big project going on these days is the transformation of Star Trek: The Next Generation into HD. A sampler disc of four episodes comes out on Blu-ray at the end of the month with the first season coming later this year. Today CBS released a new video showing off the HD version. Details below.
New promo for Star Trek TNG in HD
This morning CBS released a new video to EW which shows the quality of the HD transfer of the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot "Encounter at Farpoint."
CLICK TO SEE PREVIEW AT EW.COM
The "Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Next Level" sampler disc will be released on January 31, 2012 with a suggested retail price of $21.99. The disc will include the feature-length pilot – “Encounter at Farpoint” – as well as two more “fan favorite” episodes, “The Inner Light” (Season 5) and “Sins of the Father” (Season 3).
You can pre-order it on Amazon for $14.99.
All seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation will follow, with the first season coming later this year. TrekMovie will continue to track this project as further news is announced.
I gotta buy it. I grew up with TNG and I’ve been waiting for this…. Although I bet they’ll release it on Blu Ray again with re done effects or something… Paramount loves to suck us dry.
Gotta say it looks amazing!
wow
Ok. I will be getting this. Can’t wait to see it.
I would have loved to see best of both worlds on there!!
#5 I would have _killed_ for Yesterday’s Enterprise.
Very cool!
Wow that looks great! Here’s hoping for DS9 in blu-ray!
If I could cherry pick the winning episodes from this series on blu-ray and leave the stinkers in dreadful, muddied up VHS-land (where they belong) I’d do so in a heartbeat. But, sadly, it appears, aside from this sampler, Paramount is going to force you to spend a king’s ransom to buy hundreds of hours of programming just to get to the handful of episodes that are actually worth re-watching. I’ll have to pass on the season sets. But this sampler edition I will probably pick up.
It should have been The Best of Both Worlds, Yesterday’s Enterprise and All Good Things. Just my opinion.
This looks great!
By the way, does anyone why TNG is the only Trek series not available on iTunes?
1. This already looks like re-done effects. How can there be such a vast difference in the amount of detail??
So, so many people being wrong in the article comments, on the Facebook post about the article…
“nice CG replacement”
“Blu-ray adds nothing over my DVDs”
“where’s the widescreen”
etc etc.
trying to put correct info out there is like bailing out the Titanic with a bucket. >_<
The Inner Light is a fan favorite episode but a poor choice for the sampler disc because it’s not a visual effects episode. Rather the opposite of it. Instead I’d have included Yesterday’s Enterprise.
Mongo like part where space mushrooms hold hands. Hi-def let Mongo see that space mushroom need to shave. Mongo not hope new video do “A-B comparison wipe” all time. Make Mongo eyes hurt.
Mongo think Q look better with Ceasar hairdo than with poofy hair. Maybe poofy hair look better in hi-def?
Mongo like TNG. Almost finish watching all DVD.
#14 It’s not about Special Effects. The disc is a nice afterthought, but the episodes weren’t chosen for wow factor, they were chosen to test various aspects of restoration; Encounter at Farpoint for excessive opticals, Sins of the Father for low light and Inner Light for high contrast. The content of the episodes or their “cool” factor wasn’t taken into account. These episodes are appropriate “test patterns” for different technical hurdles.
I guess there is the inevitable problem of the odd fx shot looking cheesier with the enhanced resolution.
Those tentacles looked a little bit like “the muppets” with out the soft diffusion from the SD version.
It’ll be interesting.
@10. Careful now. We don’t want to give the best of TNG out before everything else. If we got the best episodes first, there’d be little else to look forward to. I can wait.
We won’t go back!
Can’t wait for this!
#13-
Facebook is not known as a place for lively, intellectual discussion of any kind.
Neither is most of the internet, if you wanna know the truth :p and most of the kee-rap I hear from those places I mentioned, well, I hear it here too.
Just out of curiosity even though I have a feeling I know what the answer is, will this all be available on netflix streaming too, or just blu ray?
Why does the box tagline “A Taste of TNG in High Definition” sound vaguely dirty?
Absolutely love it! I’m not sure about what was being talked about earlier about not making new special effects though. The new stuff looks like it had details not present at all in the originals, not just high-def scans of original footage. Regardless, I am truly pleased.
Looking forward to seeing this. I love Next Gen.
22 – will Netflix doesn’t stream the same 1080p data that a Bluray puts out, so the best image will be from the Bluray disc.
Come on people, there’s nothing new, it’s just you’re seeing a better transfer with as much as five times the resolution. This is what it optimally could have looked like at the time.
What we should be grateful for is that unlike later 90s shows (and I imagine DS9/VOY) they were still putting the effort into the effects even if the results weren’t apparent until now.
9. star trackie – January 5, 2012 – I dig where you’re coming from.
I’m pretty much done buying these old shows over and over and over again, just because they get a little prettier each time. And you’re right – A Lot of TNG episodes were quite lame, in my opinion. I’m out. Paramount/CBS has enough of my $$$.
Are people surprised about the selections?
Are people serious that they think Paramount would be stupid enough to release Yesterday’s Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds, and All Good Things…. in this sample package? Come on people, be Realistic.
@5
If they included Best of Both Worlds, then there would be no reason to snap up season 3 & 4 sets…in 2019
Want it now!!
Looks fantastic. So glad they are cgi-ing the effects and retaining the originals.
At least release a promo for a HD remaster in HD video at a decent bit-rate!
#21
-so true!
————
I imagine Netflix will get the new masters eventually….probably after a certain time frame has passed. Personally, I’m all about the Blu Ray.
I wonder if they’ll include a coupon for the first season for those who buy the sampler
All TNG episodes that had children in them sucked.
I’m looking at you Wil Wheaton.
#34 – Wheaton would agree with you about a lot of those performances (particularly early in the series), but even he’s made peace with Wesley Crusher. Too bad some Trek fans don’t have the same amount of maturity.
#23 Because you have a dirty mind? Not that that’s a bad thing…………………
I love how they just cleaned up the Enterprise instead of replace it with a CG ship like the TOS-R.
Well we DO know they’re replacing some of the planets. I remember a lot of those early CG planets looked crappy as hell even back in the 80s, and I can only imagine how bad they would have looked in HD.
It would have been cool to see a greater variety of ship shots (like in TOS-R), but I guess we should be grateful they’re doing as much as they ARE.
Shame they’ll probably never do the same thing with DS9 though. : (
#10 — MUCH agreed!!! That would sell through the roof!!!
I would have loved to have seen. Cause and Effect. Yesterdays Enterprise. and Best of Both Worlds on the teaser Bluray.
I wasn’t convinced until I saw that transfer, that’s just gorgeous.
Putting out a sampler at a good price is also a smart move – I’d imagine that if this doesn’t do very well they won’t continue? Seasons 1 and 2 were easily the least great of the 7 seasons though so here’s hoping they at least do up til season 3 before making a call.
And yeah, the Enterprise D was never my favourite, but seeing her in HD is still a thrill.
42-
They’ll continue, regardless of sales. The entire thing will be sold into the syndication market for a very pretty penny.
Since the final version we saw in the late 80s/early 90s was severly cropped from the original negative, i see no reason why we can’t get a widescreen version. the information is there (IE we’ll see parts of the shots we’ve never seen before) so we might as well use it.
I see no reason why they can’t sell both widescreen and pillar box versions, or possibly even just have one widescreen version with the ability to super impose black bars on the sides (which would give you the exact same picture anyway).
Ahhh excellent, here it comes!
Creating widescreen where there wasn’t isn’t just an issue of having the data to do so. The information may exist, but the show was filmed for a 4:3 ratio. That was the artistic intent and I’d rather see that respected than a haphazard expansion of the screen for no other reason than to fill a television’s wings. The director shot and edited for 4:3 so that’s ideally what we should get.
44-
The show was framed and the shots composed for 4×3. Any extraneous picture information on the sides(what little there would be) will be of microphones and grips picking their noses. You’re not missing anything.
I haven’t heard either way, but are they going to re-do any of the effects shots? Or is everything staying the same?
Apparently, as I found on ex astris scientia, there are already a few examples of shots in the standard version we’ve all seen for years where things like the edge of sets can be seen, and that’s WITHIN the current area shown to us. The aspect ratio is right the way it is; the information is NOT NECESSARILY there in order to justify a widescreen presentation, NOR is widescreen required for high definition.
They only have to redo elements that were not on film. I don’t know how phasers were animated or how they did the starfields but probably any electronic effects done at the time were standard-def and unusable. Everything that was on film is being preserved it appears.