STNG: "The Next Level" Blu-Ray Mini-Review
Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 11:06 pm
In case you live under a rock and don't know what this is, this is a 3 episode Blu-Ray of Star Trek Next Generation. It's a teaser for the full First Season release that's supposed to come out late this year. Amazon has it for $15 with free shipping and I decided to get it to see if I might be interested when they release the whole season.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Generat ... 883&sr=8-1
It contains 3 episodes: The pilot "Encounter at Farpoint", "Sins of the Father" and "The Inner Light" which is that award winning episode where Picard lives an entire lifetime on another world while he's unconscious for 15 minutes on the bridge, after an alien probe takes over his mind.
They took the original film negatives that the series was shot at, which inherently has better resolution the than standard def video it was edited to, and digitally enhanced it, and reprocessed the sound for 7.1 audio.
Right off the bat let's be clear - even though it's 1080p, its still only a 4:3 aspect ratio image because that's the way it was filmed, so don't expect it to fill your screen. Nor can you stretch it (although only a mongrel would do that anyway) since you can't stretch a 1080p image - it's already afull screen image and the black borders are part of it.
The visual quality is stunning. Unlike the Star Trek TOS Blu-Ray treatment, they didn't completely re-do the CGI, they just enhanced the original CGI. This keeps the space scenes from looking over-the-top cartoonish like they do in the TOS Blu-Rays, and I approve.
I do have minor grumbles about the audio. The audio engineer made the mistake that a lot of them do and added WAY too much echo to some scenes. They do this to make it stand out better in 7.1, but it really annoys someone like me (a former audio engineer). It's exaggerated. It's not terrible, just annoying occasionally. It's really noticeable in turbolifts. For some reason the audio engineer thought a turbolift should sound like an echo chamber.
The other minor issue is that some scenes DON'T look better in hi-def. Instead, the hi-def will sometimes make a poorly lighted scene look even worse. For instance in "Encounter at Farpoint", there's a scene where Picard is staring at "Q" in the courtroom and his face is half in shadow. Maybe the lighting director did it on purpose, or maybe someone just screwed up. I don't remember it standing out in the original standard def video, but it looks God-awful in hi-def.
Hi-def also tends to accentuate the poor makeup job they sometimes did on Data. That was always my complaint about the movies: they did the same face makeup on Data in the movies as they did in the series, but on the big screen it looks like they painted Sherwin Williams Flat White Latex paint on him with a 4" brush. That makeup job was never meant to stand up to that kind of scrutiny. In the Blu-Ray I *think* they tried to digitally fix it a bit, but in the close-ups under certain lighting it does look funky.
Now, the $64,000 question: will I buy the whole first season, much less the rest of the seasons, when they are released? I dunno. While it looks nice, and it's nice to see the red command rank uniforms actually LOOK red instead of slightly reddish-pink, for a change, I don't feel that it's THAT much better that I'm willing to throw away my STNG DVDs (which look pretty darn good on an up-scaling DVD player) and spend a fortune on the Blu-Rays.
Then again, if you never bought the DVDs and have been holding out for this, then you'll want it.
I'd recommend getting this teaser Blu-Ray before making a decision, as it will give you a good taste of what's coming.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Generat ... 883&sr=8-1
It contains 3 episodes: The pilot "Encounter at Farpoint", "Sins of the Father" and "The Inner Light" which is that award winning episode where Picard lives an entire lifetime on another world while he's unconscious for 15 minutes on the bridge, after an alien probe takes over his mind.
They took the original film negatives that the series was shot at, which inherently has better resolution the than standard def video it was edited to, and digitally enhanced it, and reprocessed the sound for 7.1 audio.
Right off the bat let's be clear - even though it's 1080p, its still only a 4:3 aspect ratio image because that's the way it was filmed, so don't expect it to fill your screen. Nor can you stretch it (although only a mongrel would do that anyway) since you can't stretch a 1080p image - it's already afull screen image and the black borders are part of it.
The visual quality is stunning. Unlike the Star Trek TOS Blu-Ray treatment, they didn't completely re-do the CGI, they just enhanced the original CGI. This keeps the space scenes from looking over-the-top cartoonish like they do in the TOS Blu-Rays, and I approve.
I do have minor grumbles about the audio. The audio engineer made the mistake that a lot of them do and added WAY too much echo to some scenes. They do this to make it stand out better in 7.1, but it really annoys someone like me (a former audio engineer). It's exaggerated. It's not terrible, just annoying occasionally. It's really noticeable in turbolifts. For some reason the audio engineer thought a turbolift should sound like an echo chamber.
The other minor issue is that some scenes DON'T look better in hi-def. Instead, the hi-def will sometimes make a poorly lighted scene look even worse. For instance in "Encounter at Farpoint", there's a scene where Picard is staring at "Q" in the courtroom and his face is half in shadow. Maybe the lighting director did it on purpose, or maybe someone just screwed up. I don't remember it standing out in the original standard def video, but it looks God-awful in hi-def.
Hi-def also tends to accentuate the poor makeup job they sometimes did on Data. That was always my complaint about the movies: they did the same face makeup on Data in the movies as they did in the series, but on the big screen it looks like they painted Sherwin Williams Flat White Latex paint on him with a 4" brush. That makeup job was never meant to stand up to that kind of scrutiny. In the Blu-Ray I *think* they tried to digitally fix it a bit, but in the close-ups under certain lighting it does look funky.
Now, the $64,000 question: will I buy the whole first season, much less the rest of the seasons, when they are released? I dunno. While it looks nice, and it's nice to see the red command rank uniforms actually LOOK red instead of slightly reddish-pink, for a change, I don't feel that it's THAT much better that I'm willing to throw away my STNG DVDs (which look pretty darn good on an up-scaling DVD player) and spend a fortune on the Blu-Rays.
Then again, if you never bought the DVDs and have been holding out for this, then you'll want it.
I'd recommend getting this teaser Blu-Ray before making a decision, as it will give you a good taste of what's coming.