It is finally (almost) here. Season One of Star Trek: The Original Series digitally remastered on combo HD-DVD/DVD disk is available for pre-order on Amazon.com (CLICK HERE
UPDATE: Paramount has released interior and exterior box art (see below)
About the Box Set:
- Contains all 29 episodes of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series (and not the first ‘season’ of remastered Trek in syndication)
- Each episode is digitally remastered with new digital effects.
- Presented in 4:3 ratio (including new CGI effects)
- Some special features appear in the ‘pillar boxes’ (see preview video below)
- 10 double sided ‘hybrid’ disks (standard definition DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other)
- Episodes are in
productionairing order (same as the standard DVD) - Each of the 10 disks contains at least one special feature (such as a documentary, interactive tour or pop up interview)
- All episodes are full length (unlike those aired in syndication)
- Digital effects are same as those aired in syndication
- NOTE: some season 1 episodes in the box set will not have aired in syndication by the time the set is released.
More info: Full TOS-R HD-DVD Details | Interview with Billy Blackburn
UDPATE: Video Preview
UPDATE – Final Box Art: (click to enlarge)
VOTE: Will You Buy?
now that the price has dropped a bit…will you buy the new DVDs? vote in the current poll (right column)
Sorry. I “ain’t paying that much”
Going to wait to see it pop up for sale on eBay.
More palatable – – I’ll agree with that.
Riddle me this – – will “Balance of Terror” and earlier efforts with the first CGI model be redone for this set?
That answer may dictate whether or not I purchase it.
episodes are as aired
I think, for most of us, it’s not so much the cost as compared to what we are getting in terms of product. If TPTB rushed this project to be out for Christmas, and the effects are only half-ass, then why would we nibble now? It wouldn’t be too long before a DEFINITIVE box-set would be available, and even then good luck with THAT being the final massage they give these episodes. It’s like buying a new computer; the moment you jump in and get one, it’s already bordering on obsolete and you wish you had waited. There’s never a perfect time to buy the “ultimate computer” (heh, heh) or final deluxe version of TOS! Decisions, decisions…….
If the original episodes are not made available in the HD format, I won’t be purchasing any more of them… I already have all the episodes twice on DVD, and if the original versions of the episodes are only on the DVD section of this “Hybrid”, then there really is no point.
Anthoney: You say….As aired. Does that mean that DoomsDay Machine will or won’t be on this set? Second season….as aired. A tad bit confusing to some. Please clarify. Thanks
The price is at least in keeping with past sets, but I’m not touching anything labeled HD (or Blu-Ray) until the format wars settle down. I don’t want to be stuck with a box full of “betamax” discs two years down the road…
And it’s disheartening they didn’t re-do the earlier episodes with the later CGI model. I don’t fault CBS-Digital for this, it just smells like greedy sales execs trying to push products to market to support their chosen HD format.
I have added a ‘what’s on the disks’ paragraph to try and explain the details…also there is a link to more details.
$140?
ppppppppplllllllpppppptttt!! >:-P
Me no like
Me no pay
Well all right then. The CGI model hasnt been updated or fixed, so I will not be purchasing this set.
When the Blu Ray versions eventually come out (and you know they will) the effects will probably be replaced with the new CGI Enterprise model, so why bother? I’ve already bought the damned things TWICE on DVD anyway…..and I had all the VHS before that.
#6 This is the first season set. Doomsday will appear on the second season set when it eventually comes out.
I’ve enjoyed most of the new versions, but not enough to pay big money for them in HD.
I already have DVDs of the original episodes, and might purchase them in HD if they were ever made available with this kind of transfer.
My wife would like to get this for me, but we have a kid on the way and I honestly don’t want her spending a combined 400 bucks. (600 if Paramount gets their greedy, evile way.)
…and, Anthony, if we ask you ten more times whether CBS-D will fix their early boo-boos, will you change that for us?
With all of this, I still get the impression this is not the last time we’ll see TOS rejiggered. Maybe the next time, Paramount will spend a buck and really do it all the way. I love CBS-D for getting this far. But, it’s so frustrating to know that they stopped at 85 or 90 %.
Aren’t these available to purchase per XBox users. How much are those?
How do th rest of us get that?
Wow! Instead of charging about 7 times what they’re worth, they’re now charging about 5 times what they’re worth! Sign me up!!!
Oh wait, I’m not a sucker.
You people have to remember that a lot of people worked hard to resrore the episodes. Its not just a button you can press. It is expensive, but I think its worth it.
Have they completely lost their minds?
The effects are half finished on many of those episodes and they expect to charge a kings ransom for them? I just can’t believe what a scam this whole thing has been. I pity the CBS-Digital folks…it’s their work that is being released half finished…it makes them look like a bunch of amateurs.
For God’s sake CBS/ Paramount..whoever, fixed the damned episodes and show the series the respect it deserves. I’m so disgusted.
Can we start a letter writing campaign or petition to get this delayed so CBS D can finish their work? I seriously don’t want this to happen like this. The CBS D guys need to be given some breathing room and shown some respect from their corporate masters.
It’s still a rip off.
Plenty of shows have special effects as good if not better than TOS-R. They don’t rip you off this badly.
Also keep in mind that this is a 40 year old show, that has been released over and over. They don’t have to reshoot scenes and ALL they have to do is the effects. If anything, this DVD set should be relatively cheap.
But they think that Star Trek fans will buy anything that has Star Trek in the title.
#15: “You people have to remember that a lot of people worked hard to resrore the episodes. Its not just a button you can press. It is expensive, but I think its worth it.”
You can bet that the people who did the work won’t be seeing residuals based on units sold, either.
It is not worth the expense of this set. I’ll be glad to watch and enjoy these for free on television, and that’s it.
Things to bear in mind:
Firstly there were 5 season one episodes made before they changed the Enterprise model: Balance of Terror, Miri, Devil in the Dark, City on the Edge of Forever, and Arena…only two of which have a lot of shots of the Enterprise
Now that the price is 138 it isn\’t that bad. , it is about 60 bucks more than the SD versions were when they were first released and with these you are getting the remastered, new effects, new special features and of course HD.
If you do not have an HDTV and you already have the previous DVDs, then these are probably not worth it. But if you have an HD TV, then I think it is worth it.
Remember that even though they have been showing the show in SD in Syndication, CBS work on the show in HD and the whole project is focused on HD. It has been made to see in HD and it looks amazing in HD.
I’m only buying the versions with the original actors.
If the originals were on the disks in HD, I might go for it. As it is, for me, too much for just a few changes.
They are the same episodes I’ve been watching for forty years.
A few minutes of enhanced visuals and a better transfer are only worthwhile if they’re free or relatively inexpensive.
Why can’t they offer us a stand alone disc with the Billy Blackburn home movies? Is that too much to ask for?
There is no way the price is worth it. As has been stated by others, these episodes have been around 40 years. Many of us grew up watching them even if we weren’t around when they first aired.
The DVDs unenhanced at $60 is a massive rip off. The TAS DVDs are a massive ripoff. All Star Trek DVDs are a massive ripoff.
And that will not change until people stop buying them. But this is beyond a massive ripoff. This is a laugher. There is no way to justify ANY $140 DVD season set. No show in history is worth that.
Yep, I’m with Daren and Dennis on this one. If the original, unaltered versions of the episodes were available in high definition, I’d definitely pony up the $140.00. But if all we’re going to get is the altered, CGI-ed versions, there’s just no incentive for me to spend that much money. Either I’ll wait for someone to give them to me as a gift, or I’ll wait a couple of years for the price to come down or pick up a secondhand resale on eBay.
Oh come ON!
What we’re being offered here is an *extremely* modest upgrading of the DVD sets we all already have.
“HD” means actors faces sharpened far beyond what the directors expected viewers would ever see, so zippers and make-up goofs become more noticable.
“Extra features” means about 10 minutes of annoying infomercials – mostly consisting of clips from the episodes themselves with occasional , “I don’t remember that bit” / “I remember that bit” / “Look how young I look” comments from crewmembers who already related every interesting anecdote they could think of from the 1960s a hundred times before.
“New FX” means the alternately impressive / infuriating new shots from CBS-D. I’ve liked a lot of what these hard-working FX teams have done, and they are interesting as reinterpretations – curiosities if you will – but they are not the original shots we remember so well and inevitably they don’t match everything we would have done if we had redone the FX to suit our own tastes *because our imaginations have already filled in the blanks*.
So basically what are the new things on this disc worth to fans of TOS? $30?, $60 maybe. But they have the absolute gaul to charge $140 and $200 retail ?!!!!!!
They are literally laughing all the way to the bank. And anyone thinking it is well worth it – I have a jar of genuine fresh air here that is yours for only $99 plus postage.
The UK amazon have it for a Nov 19th release at £89.99
Still a bit procey to be honest.
Well, the price is more palatable than before, I’ll give them that.
I agree that they should fix the first 5 remastered episodes using the revised Enterprise, and that should be on the DVD.
Another idea might be to release the episodes as a Standard DVD set at a lower price.
No HD features, but the episodes in SD in this way would be a good product at the same price as the un-remastered DVD box sets.
Is it confirmed that they haven’t fixed the first five episodes? Or are they holding them back for this release?
The price doesn’t bother me too much. It’s not that dramatic a markup from the standard dvd boxed sets of the series.
I, however, do not have an HDTV yet, and won’t for at least another year, so I’m just going to wait this one out, and hope either the price goes down or that some clarity in the format war is established.
well i was going to burn my money, i guess this is better.
or maybe i’ll buy food instead.
Let’s face it. The most common way these will end up in your hands is probably via a gift. In those situations, the person buying it doesn’t necessarily consider the “value” per dollar of the physical product. Rather, the joy it will bring the recipient.
CBS is smart. They’ll sell a bunch of these. Especially with the DVD version included.
And I really want to see those 8mm ‘home movies’ of the Original Series days.
This is a reasonable price point.
And when the Blu-Ray versions are produced, then I’ll place my order.
It’s more than just the first five episodes. The effects are continuously all over the place as far as quality and execution are concerned. The CBS D guys were rushed, and they really deserve to give each episode a final once over before being push out the door.
# 34.
Bluray versions won’t be out for at least 18 months.
And by then Blu-Ray will be in rough shape, by my estimate. There only way of getting into most households is through a PS3. And PS3’s are expensive.
HD-DVD players are already affordable and will only get much more so. People purchase affordable things. Put an HD-DVD set-up next to a Blu-Ray setup, play the same movie. Basically, identical. Then tell the customer the price of the players.
Not to mention that Sony proprietary formats (for which they can can, will, and do charge large royalties) never end up winning.
Until the HiDef formats show a winner, I won’t be seeing anything in that format. Even then the prices will have to drop way down. So I don’t foresee myself even jumping into this whole ‘mishegas’ for a couple years at minimum. At that time I will rest easy knowing these discs will be out there and at a lower price or an improved will be around. i am sure they are lovely.
I do resent Paramount thinking us Trekkies have bottomless bags of money, too.
So, don’t hurry on my account.
Here’s the plan. We all pool the money we were going to spend on the DVD’s, we clone Shatner, we give the rest to Cawley on condition he turn the part back over to the Shat and bingo, we have Trek TOS II.
well i just put in my pre-order. We recently got a HD TV and I dont have the original series. I do own most TNG seasons and it will be a harder decisions to buy those on HD…again.
I am surprised by the reaction of people. so what the box costs 60 bucks more than the regular version…did you expect them to charge less? sure it would be nice if it was only 30 bucks more but you are actually getting more.
Well, the great thing about the HD-DVD/DVD combo disks, is that those fans who will pay $140 per season for this, will be able to take those disks and play them in their Blu-Ray players as HD-DVD goes away.
The other positive will be that by December of next year, these DVDs will be going cheap on the fire sale as HD-DVD goes down the dumper, because Paramount, I still ain’t going to buy my 3rd set of TOS episodes for anything more than about $70 or so a season, and I won’t be happy at that price either.
My reaction is: there’s not enough being offered here to be worth 60 bucks more.
#37- I won’t point out which Blu-Ray players are in the pipeline that are going to alter the retail proposition, since you’ve clearly made your decision.
I’ve spent my money and I’m with Blu-Ray, but the particulars of the situation bug me less than the notion that this format war is being conducted over our heads. All the careful research and voting with your dollars can be circumvented by a corporation writing another a big check.
I think the new price is reasonable, given the state of play in Star Trek DVD. That state is a sorry one, and as it’s been said here and in other threads, Paramount has *always* charged Trek fans insulting prices. That is the baseline for comparison, however, and I think the price discussion is over. For the added value, the price delta is appropriate, even if the baseline is absurd.
The QC isssue is clearly a time-to-market decision. They left the old model in because
A: they signed off on those versions for broadcast, so reeling them back for a revamp was always going to be an iffy proposition; and
B: the combo of the holday season, the promotional value of the first run air of these remasters, and the Paramount committment to HD-DVD in the runup to said holiday season guaranteed we weren’t getting anything that didn’t air (not including Season One eps that have yet to air).
Remember, the problem with the first model wasn’t that it was a bad model, but that the detail was too much, so it bogged the system and allowed for less time for tweaking, So simply swapping models and rerendering was never going to be enough to improve the shots in question. They would then have to take that time, which they didn’t have.
I think the new sets look decent, if overly packaged (I’d like to see some stopwatch numbers of time from shrinkwrap to episode playback, heh), and they should be breathtaking in HD, and a relief from those horrid syndication edits.
I’ll rent ’em, (for the DVD side) but I won’t be spending any money on HD-DVD purchases unless and until they sucessfull destroy Blu-Ray and convince me that my investment is an Edsel. Be awhile before then.
Peace and Long Life.
Too much $
From what I’ve heard it’s the demographics of buyers that drive these price points–contemporary TV shows sell big and so they can be more affordably priced. Older shows sell to a more limited and shrinking demographic, so to be profitable they have to charge more per unit–they’re more collectibles than regular product.
$130 is pricey but weren’t the original prices on the Trek season sets about $109? That’s not much difference. My guess is these will come down in price after they’ve been on shelves a year or so anyway. The blu-ray deal is more vexing–I’m glad these are combo discs, it would be nice to know for sure that we wouldn’t have to rebuy these yet again because HD-DVD didn’t become the final high-def format.
Happy that while they are still a bit much they have come down but dissapointed that they didn’t go back and rework the first few eps. I took the fx reels from the first season eps done before the new model (not including duplicates) and I think it came to about 4 mins, some updated with the new model could be used in the similar old cg model shots.
While I don’t doubt it would take time (as any work on them would) but I would think if they have the scene/movement setup would be saved and only a few ep specific fx (romulan bop, earth orbit in miri…).
True its only a few seconds each for half a dozen eps but I was really hoping to see them given a little more work, guess not. Still looking forward to HD TOS though anyway!
As much as I’d LOVE to see the uncut versions of these remastered eps, it’s still not quite worth the price.
Although frankly I wasn’t itching to buy these anyway for what amounts to a few minutes of new FX. Even if they were movie quality I probably wouldn’t bother.
I actually dont think the pre-order price is that bad. I mean, this is Hi Def stuff we’re talking about.
My problem is that the episodes have been rushed, and are basically unfinished, and yet they’re being put out on DVD. It reminds me of Star Trek The Motion Picture being rushed to theatres before the editing and effects work were completed.
There’s CGI effects that are rough or not done, and other goofs and things that they never got a chance to work on. Why the hell the rush? I understand the rush to get them on TV, but for the DVD set, they should take a bit more time. Go back, do some more stuff that they wanted to the episodes, ect.
Until that happens, I will not be purchasing the Hi Def DVD sets.
>40. RandyYeoman – August 27, 2007
I am surprised by the reaction of people. so what the box costs 60 bucks more than the regular version…did you expect them to charge less? sure it would be nice if it was only 30 bucks more but you are actually getting more.
I’m a bit disappointed that “what we saw is what we get” for these DVD’s. There were a lot of good things, but there were a lot of things that need improvement as well: Phasers and vaporizations in a lot of episodes (and it can be done, see Wink of an Eye), explosions, and add some sweet little details (battle dammage/repair teams all could be improved upon or even added. Computers are advanced enough for little things like that. I know I speak blasphemy to a lot of people, but I would like to see the Enterprise “warp,” the rubber band stretch with streaking stars.
This message is to the suits: If you are going to make a project like restoring Star Trek and giving the effects an update: you have to go all out. Shell out the bucks so the team can do more than just “make our mouth water a little bit.” Let them treat us to steak and lobster. Have them take us to Times Square, not Valley Center Mall. I understand that the guys doing the actual computer work are given their deadline and budget and only have that to work with. I’m saying, up that budget and move back that deadline… BIG TIME. From what I can tell, most TOS fans like the idea of beefed up FX. But these same fans, for the most part, aren’t satisfied with a haphazard vision and approach.
I think most people will agree with me when I say that The Doomsday Machine was VERY well done. (I, myself would only say that since dialogue stated there was a tractor beam, I think you should have added one coming from the planet killer). The Doomsday Machine is what the bar should be at in this project.
Perhaps a lot of this stems from the fact that I am young, (and possibly dumb).