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It's weird that they'd have the crew in the frame anyway. Was it really not possible to have them out of frame? I guess being able to "do it in post" makes people lazy?
Stories like this regularly make the rounds when movies or shows that the original creators put a lot of love and thought into are "remastered" on the cheap. The last one I saw was the story about the garish colors in digital versions of old Pixar movies - amongst others, they intentionally exaggerated green hues in the digital original to compensate for the transfer process to analog film stock which was less sensit…
Through work I once got into conversation with the guy who did the re-mastering into 96kHz of the ABBA back catalogue. Up until that point CD re-releases of their material was apparently all converted from the cassette masters where they'd massively exaggerated the HF to compensate for the fact that cassette had a notoriously terrible HF response...
One of the first things I learned once I could hear music properly was that I had favorite "versions" of different albums. They truly are NOT created equally, but it's not something you can really appreciate on a crummy Bluetooth headset either. Once you can you really start to appreciate the work that folks like your friend do.
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If it can be fixed in post, what's the problem? The only flaw here is that they completely screwed up and forgot post for these scenes (in the remaster).
Apparently they didn't forget. Lionsgate did all the necessary work, then someone sent the "wrong file" to HBO Max, and it seems nobody checked it properly before uploading it! Given the volume of material these streamers are handling, I expect QA is minimal. I remember when I was watching Frasier on Amazon Prime, a bunch of the episodes had been configured to play in the wrong aspect ratio. Clearly nobody had ever b…
Yeah, I expect QA is minimal for these shows that are past their prime. Only fans will really watch them again, it's probably not worth it to spend the extra time to review every single episode. (But of course, fans will care! I'm just saying it's probably not worthwhile for HBO to check)
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It's even weirder when you consider how big of a deal this was for Star Trek only a few years ago (well maybe more than a few...). You would have thought people in the business would know about this.
> You would have thought people in the business would know about this. People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality. But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by…
Because they are businesses? Just because something is art doesn't mean expenses can be more than revenue.
There was an enormous increase in the supply of entertainment over the last 20 years, in the form of Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, WhatsApp, HN, video games, etc. Demand stayed the same, maxed out at 24 hours per day. One should expect changes in quality and quantity and price in a market with drastically shifting supply and demand curves.
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It's even weirder when you consider how big of a deal this was for Star Trek only a few years ago (well maybe more than a few...). You would have thought people in the business would know about this.
> You would have thought people in the business would know about this. People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality. But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by…
You’d think these people would go off and be executives at a ball bearing manufacturing company or something and leave the arts alone, but it never happens that way.
Fun fact: The X-Files production team foresaw the coming of 16:9 home entertainment, so they made some effort (increasing with later seasons) to try and "protect" a 16:9 frame, which allowed for an unusually good 16:9 Blu-ray restoration. [ https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7499/look-inside-the-files... ] I learned this from the older X-files DVDs, which have some unusually good special features.
Similar with Babylon 5, although the CG has not aged as well.
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I have the PAL DVD release, and I have to say the color grading has never been great, although it obviously at least has the correct effects applied.
The PAL release is already the bad copy (starting with season 4 I think). You already had odd stuff in view that wasn't supposed to be visible. The only way to watch this show properly now is the 4:3 NTSC DVD release. I think the recent streaming releases also have the music altered in many places. The show just got ed up basically. It's a real shame.
Great article. Can someone explain what was wrong with that _Friends_ screenshot? I can't tell.
They never intended to show anything to the right of the doorframe on TV, so there's a random sign on the wall and a big hole in the wall (which makes sense if you are a camera crew wanting to film a sitcom in the apartment, that doesn't make so much sense in the fictional world that anyone would have a big rectangle cut out of the wall between their apartment and the hallway).
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Similar with Babylon 5, although the CG has not aged as well.
I don't know, currently watching Babylon 5 Season 3 and I think the CG is pretty impressive. It's not high resolution or sharp, but the ray tracing is excellent. A lot of moving parts flying around everywhere with lighting and planets in the background.
In 4:3 it looks good and like the original airing show, in 16:9 any non-digital/composite shot looks freaking fantastic. But once you get to any digital or composite shot it takes a nose dive in quality.
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> You would have thought people in the business would know about this. People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality. But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by…
>But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by business-people still, as they think it's a numbers game, not a arts game. Eventually someone will understand and take the world by storm, but seemingly not yet. Because they are businesses? Just because something is art doesn't mean expenses can be more than revenue. There was an enormous increase in the supply of entertainment over the last 20 year…