About a month ago Star Trek vanished off the iTunes store due to technical problems, but now it is back. Even better, iTunes are now separating TOS from the TOS-R with each having its own listing: ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’ or ‘Star Trek: The Original Series (Remastered).’ All of TOS Season 1 is up, along with the full-lenth versions of the 11 TOS-R season 1 episodes aired so far. Additional Seasons 1 TOS-R episodes will be made available after they air, with seasons 2 and 3 of TOS and TOS-R sometime in the future. Star Trek: Enterprise has still not returned and TrekMovie.com is told it will take some time because all 4 seasons are being recoded. (click image below to launch iTunes TOS-R store – NOTE only available in US)
so it was technical problems? well i guess that’s what explains it. this was one of those minor mysteries that was nevertheless nagging.
Does anyone know if the TOS-R episodes are full length or the edited ones we’ve been watching?
full-length…i added that to the article to make it clearer
btw, if you check out the ‘TOS Remastered’ tab at the top of the site it answers that question and many others
Before the episodes were taken off, I downloaded The Corbomite Maneuver Remastered and it is great. The clarity is amazing.
They are the full length episodes
Just saw the Corbomite Maneuver remastered — wow, it really brings the show to life. I can’t wait to see Space Seed now.
What about “Enterprise?” Just before they took Star Trek off iTunes Enterprise was on there. Is it coming back as well? There are many season five (the last season) I would love to download
I downloaded Arena before I-tunes when dark and you can see hairs coming out of the Gorn’s nose… killer!
I wonder why Doomsday hasn’t made the list yet… It looks like the same list of remastered episodes that they had before they disappeared a month ago.
The encoding software can’t be causing these problems because Galatica goes on I-tunes within 24 hours after it airs. I think there’s more at work here than Paramount is ‘fessing up to.
Can someone explain to me how this works please? I live in London and I have never used Itunes. Does it let you download an episode or is it streaming? Do you pay for individual episodes? What software do you use to watch it?
Thanks
Hi, On your poll for “Do you download Trek?” you don’t have a option for “I would if I could” for us poor non US based fans.
Can someone please report on any extra remastered shots included in the full-length TOSR episodes that were cut from the broadcast versions? Are there any new shots? And if so, what are they?
#7 – you can still buy episodes from the first three seasons of Enterprise on Amazon Unbox video downloads… don’t ask me why they don’t offer the fourth season….
I’m watching “The Corbomite Manuever” right now. It is great seeing it this way and uncut. Nice effect shots…they really have fixed even the shots that were missing in syndication. You can really see the red and blue stars, too. It’s all there, totally uncut. It was worth my $1.99 and I’m only at “you now have seven minutes left”….lol
LOL-They didn’t change the Sulu line, “one minute…I knew he would.”
Alright, don’t tell me then. Thanks guys.
firstly tos is not available outside the us, but here is how it works
itunes is software you download…just google it
you buy songs, tv episodes and movies off it
you download not stream
you can watch using quicktime, itunes itself, or on your ipod
Dumb question,
Are the ITunes versions in HI-DEF?
NOT so dumb question,
If so could someone post an ACTUAL HI-DEF screen grab?
Thanks.
Spockboy- I’m not sure if that’s possible. Later tonight, I’ll give it a shot, though. It won’t let you burn it to a disc or anything like that. It just stores on your computer and you watch it on itunes or quicktime (if Anthony says so, I haven’t tried that yet). I don’t own an ipod. BTW-It took me about 45 minutes to load each episode with “cable internet”, just to warn you.
I will tell you this. The effects in the “deleted for syndicated” stuff is consistent with the rest of the show. They are telling the truth when they say they are doing all of the special effects (even if they get cut via syndication). I watched “Balance of Terror” a little later. For some reason those awful nacelles don’t look nearly as bad on my computer as they did on the TV. Is it HI-DEF? I have no idea. How can I tell or find out?
17 & 18
The iTunes versions aren’t HD. All iTunes video is 640×480, nowhere near the 1920×1080 that HD actually is, but is better than the quality you would get from standard television because the iTunes video is digital. I have some screenshots I have taken of the iTunes versions, and it’s pretty simple to do. Just take a screenshot (ALT+Print Scrn) and crop out the iTunes window. If people are really interested to see the iTunes quality, just let me know and I’ll throw them up somewhere.
I think Spockboy is interested-lol-from what he’s said in messages on here. I actually would be, too, even though I purchased two episodes so far.
the xbox live versions are in HD…but those are downloaded to your xbox not your pc
Alright, here are the screencaps from the two episodes I have (Space Seed and Corbomite Maneuver). They scale really well from their small size (I have ss-end.jpg as my 1600×1200 wallpaper right now).
http://www.jbc.edu/~dstewart/trek/
Dammnit! I was all hot and lathered to download the remastered doomsday machine and…..ffffffffffffffttt. My balloon deflated! I did get the corbomite episode though, including the horrible Blalock character and his low budget ship interior. Unfortunately.
What is the aspect ratio of the downloads? Is it 1.33:1 (SD ratio), 1.37:1 (35mm original filmed ratio), or 1.78:1 (HD ratio)?
Given that it is 640×480, and seeing double-o-five’s screen-caps, I’m guessing it is 1.33:1, but I’m not sure if black bars or columns were inserted, or if the aspect ratio changes between the original live-action shots and the new CGI ship shots (as I have heard is the case with the x-box versions?).
Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Thanks Anthony.
I’m surprised they arent available for download in the UK. I wonder why that is?
24. CALQL8
aspect ratio is 1.33:1
doubleofive? How do you get the screen caps? I’d like to do some for myself but can’t figure out how to do it.
I just downloaded about half the remastered episodes. They look Great! I’m so glad these are here, because here in New York they still air them at 3 AM Monday Morning.
I downloaded COTEOF. The shot of the alley rat nuking himself, which was cut from the broadcast version, appears to have been tweaked by CBS-D
Yes, overall these look much better on iTunes than on regular TV broadcasts. I have downloaded three now: The Corbomite Manuever, Balance of Terror, and Where No Man Has Gone Before.
What’s interesting is this: Corbomite looks fantastic! Balance of Terror looks much better (even the nacelles don’t look nearly as bad as on regular TV)…especially the deleted scene for syndication where they clobber the bird of prey at the end (the way it is hanging there like a dead ship with “burn marks” from the battle damage). BUT, I think Where No Man Has Gone Before looks even worse than on TV. I complained about that show when it aired because I felt that Enterprise model looked fake. It’s even worse on iTunes. Overall, the lighting of the ship looks much better on iTunes on all the episodes so far (including the windows on the ship), though.
Jim J
While it’s playing, just select the window with the video paused in it and push the Alt + Print Screen keys. That copies the picture to your clipboard, where you can paste it into Paint or whatever photo editing program you choose. There, you can crop out the iTunes part of the window and you are left with a nice clean screencap.
Cool, thanks a bunch…now if there were just a way to put them onto dvd-yes, I know that is impossible and naughty! LOL
To start with folks please forgive the length of this post but I had a bunch to get off my chest and I’m hoping some of you guys may be able to offer up some advice. Even though I swore I’d never do iTunes because of the ongoing DRM issues, TOS-R full length episodes for $2 a pop was too much for me to pass up so I signed up last night and downloaded Corbomite Maneuver. My experience has been a mixed bag so I thought I’d drop by here and share it with you and hopefully one of you guys will have some helpful advice regarding the issues I’m having. Before I get into the issues, here is the good part of my experience and some answers to some of your questions: Download Time: I have a pretty hot connection to the internet as I’m an independent software developer and need the bandwidth so it took about 13 minutes to download. Perfectly acceptable. Your mileage will vary. The file size for this episode is 585MB. If you download CD ISO images you’ll know what to expect. Picture Quality: Even though the rez is standard VGA (640×480) it looks pretty good – especially compared to the SD cable feed I get here in the Seattle area from CW11. It is also very nice to be free of all the edits, station branding and the running ad overlays in the lower part of the screen. Full Length: Yes and the new SFX are all there through the whole show. Very nice. Audio: The sound is crisp and comparable to the DVDs however I think it is only a stereo mix and not the 5.1 mix on the DVDs – I may be wrong here so if someone knows for sure please confirm. Now for the bad. All my issues with this experience have to do with the iTunes application performance and not the TOS-R episode I downloaded. Performance: This is the big problem. The video playback on the 2 systems I would want to play these on the most is unacceptably bad. The sounds plays flawlessly but the video has terrible trouble keeping going smoothly. The main system I want to be able to watch these on is Windows Vista Ultimate based PC with an overall experience rating of 3.5. It has a 3GHz Intel Celeron with 1.5GB of PC3100 DDR SDRAM and a front side bus speed of 800MHz. The hard drive is more than adequate as it is a 200GB 7200RPM drive and can be accessed very quickly. It actually has the best experience rating in the breakdown of 5.3. The sound in an Audigy 2. The graphics card is an ATI Radeon based 8X AGP card – most likely the culprit. The monitor is 20.1 widescreen LCD. This is by no means a “sluffer PC” as I use it regularly to mix 16 track audio and DVD quality video editing never mind the “day job” task it performs as my development workstation. It runs the Vista Aero glass presentation system perfectly and DVD playback is outstanding. It even plays high quality Quicktime files perfectly so why the hell can’t iTunes play with acceptable performance? Yes it is the latest version with the “fix” for Vista. My other system I want to watch these on is Windows XP MCE 2005 based but it is even worse but I expected that as the PC is not nearly as powerful as my studio PC. Even so, it plays DVDs and other digital media flawlessly which up till last night was always my un-official benchmark of minimum performance standards. The really troubling thing here is that my windows Vista laptop with lesser specs and a Vista experience rating of 3.1 plays the episode perfectly. I guess that’s OK for when I travel but for regular viewing it is unacceptable. The other issue I have, and it relates to performance in that I have to search for a system that this crap works well on is DRM. Not much anyone can do there as this is an ongoing industry battle for control of their IP but it has been a hassle. iTunes only allows you to activate and use your downloaded programs on up to 5 PCs. For most folks that may be just fine but I have an army of PCs performing all sorts of home entertainment tasks and currently have a need to be able to play my content on 7 different systems. Since the 2 best ones I have won’t work, I have little hope of having it work on the other 4 except my laptop. Part of me says this is all part of the ongoing Apple vs. Microsoft corporate conspiracy and that Apple has made their app work… Read more »
doubleofive-I can’t seem to get it to work the way you said. I’m not really a technology whizzzz, but when I press those buttons it seems nothing happens. Are they being stored in some folder I can’t find? Where is this “clipboard” at? Much thanks.
Can anyone explain why the remastered episodes are not available to us poor salivating users in the UK?
Have we done something to offend? ;)
#34 Jim J – No worries about being a PC wiz. It’s really easy once you get the idea of what you are going to do.
There are 2 terms that need to be defined here before we start.
The Clipboard
Window Focus
1) The clipboard is not a folder. It is a temporary storage mechanism in memory that Windows uses when you do things like cut, copy and paste. It is available to all Windows programs.
2) Window Focus – Whatever program Window that is in front of all others is considered to have the “focus”. Only one window can have the focus at a time.
Also anytime you see the 3 tool buttons for cut, copy & paste (scissors, double document, clipboard) you are using the clipboard.
The print screen process that was described copies the image of the iTunes window when it has the focus to the clipboard so it can be pasted somewhere else, like into the windows paint program.
Open up both the iTunes program and the paint program. Just in case you’ve never played with paint, you can find it by going to the start button and selecting All Programs. Look in the Accessories group and you’ll see Paint. It’s been there since Windows was 1st released back in the mid 80s, albeit in a different location.
Once you have both programs open, go to your iTunes program and run the show up to the point you’d like to capture the image and pause the playback. Make sure it has the focus by single clicking on the Window’s Title bar at the top.
With iTunes as the Window with the focus, press and hold the Alt key and then the print screen key. After you pressed the print screen key you can let co of both keys. The image of the iTunes window will now be stored in the windows clipboard and is ready for you to paste somewhere.
Switch over to the paint program. If the button on the toolbar that looks like a clipboard is visible, then press it and the iTunes image will be pasted into paint. You can then save the image just as you would any other files.
As the original poster said, while it is in paint you can crop off the iTunes window title bar and frame boards. Please refer to the paint program’s help for more information about image cropping.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions about any of this if you are unsure and still want to be able to play with this.
Enjoy~
Thanks so much. I think I got it! Now I have to give it a try to see, hope it’s ok. This is the romulan ship after the Enterprise did it in from Balance Of Terror (cut in the syndicated version).
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o27/James25485/BOTbirdofprey.jpg
I also am not amazingly happy with the overall quality of watching video with iTunes and the DRM stuff, but I understand it and down the road the Apple AAC issue will be resolved. It’s only a matter of time until AAC video and audio plays on non Apple products. For now it’s OK and since Star Trek 2.0 is not something I can get on TV I’ll used iTunes to check one or two out. I’m not a big fan of the 2.0 but I am a fan of iTunes making it available for me to see. I’ve been doing the same thing this year with Battlestar, so TV with iTunes isn’t great but it’s not awful.
Well, a week has gone by and there are still just 11 eps in the
remastered collection @ itunes … we are expecting more, as promised
(“… Newly remastered episodes will … become available every week”) …
Hopefully more to come very soon. I like them. I started to figure out all the time, blank dvd’s, etc. It’s almost (but not quite) as cheap to download these as to record them off of broadcast TV. BONUS-No cut scenes!!!!
Re: my post #39
Apple has changed the above mentioned statement on the TOS-R page;
it no longer says that the episodes will become available “every week”
(they’ve removed the words “every week”). :/
Will Enterprise Season 2 ever come out on itunes? Anybody know anything?