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Is "Taxi" still coming to Blu? The complete series set was released on DVD last month; one would think if there were to be a Blu edition, it would've been issued alongside the DVD.

Donald Brown wrote:Is "Taxi" still coming to Blu? The complete series set was released on DVD last month; one would think if there were to be a Blu edition, it would've been issued alongside the DVD.

I guess you are referring to this post. They haven't made announcement for any of the other shows (except Twin Peaks), and so I'm not sure how soon/if to expect them at all - that list seemed more like a potential than a fact.

I don't think their recent I Love Lucy/Andy Griffith/Honeymooners sets (came out in May) sold particularly well, as there haven't been any 2nd season announcements yet -so who knows how this might affect other shows. I'm guessing they are preparing the last season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and will move onto Deep Space 9 at the very least. Will post here if/when anything changes.

Minkin wrote:Speaking of Network, they've announced Season 3 of the Professionals. Still no word of Space: 1999 or The Sweeney (both of which were supposed to have further seasons come out in 2014).

A couple of weeks ago Network announced that Space 1999 Series 2 will be released in "autumn 2015"

However as of today a stopgap a limited edition blu-ray of two part story "The Bringer of Wonder" coupled with a presumably exclusive to this release HD restored version of it's intended for cinema feature length edit 'Destination: Moonbase-Alpha' thrown in as a bonus feature is available from their website.

http://networkonair.com/shop/2090-space ... 01847.html

Just noticed that the list in post #1 states that Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space is "missing a lot of content from the DVD edition"

This isn't strictly true. In fact it deliberately contains completely different bonus content to the special edition DVD, with there being no crossover whatsoever between the formats.

Who knows whether it will actually pan out or if the time frame will be correct, but Billy Mumy just tweeted that Lost in Space, a complete collection, will be coming out on Blu-Ray in September!

This is wonderful timing for me, as I've been enjoying the show for the first time- catching each week on Me-TV (although going from Season 2 & 3 to season 1 is rather disappointing - as the first season is missing all of the campy fun of the latter seasons). Hopefully Fox won't screw all of this up somehow (I don't trust studios at this point on aspect ratios) and I also hope they don't go with WB Batman pricing/extras for this one.

No other updates about any other show at this point. I'd like to know whether Paramount has any plans to resume I Love Lucy or Andy Griffith; or what's going on with Network's Sweeney releases. Oh well.

They've definitely done tests at 16x9, though it's primarily of the opened up variety a la The Wire, rather than being cropped (though it still is slightly in some scenes). Personally I think both ways are just as wrong, and I'm praying it'll be 4x3.

Doesn't the fact that that comparison even exists on Youtube mean that the 1:78 is coming? or is the hope that both ARs are included (if we have to have the 1:78 at all)?

I guess I am happy the Original Star Trek and Twilight Zone was done early on before these ideas of AR revisionism came around.

The man responsible for the remaster explains in the comments that it's standard to do both versions for any show because it is impossible to sell the 4x3 format to a TV station these days. Though clearly he's proud of his work on the 16x9 version and thinks it is an improvement, he acknowledges that which version is used for home video is entirely up to Fox.

I'm actually quite surprised how much additional image was captured on the original camera negative, indicating the show as broadcast cropped the picture considerably. I wouldn't have guessed a TV program filmed in the 60s would frame images so loosely; perhaps it was a safeguard against the inevitable overscan problem of tube televisions? Certainly the majority of THE TWILIGHT ZONE episodes featured much tighter compositions that would not allow for 1.78:1 revisionism. A 1.33:1 LOST IN SPACE would still be the way to go, but the widesceen approach works much better than I would have imagined (apart from the extreme close-ups anyway).

As far as I'm aware it was standard to use only a small portion of the negative image area for actual composition. Before Batman was released there were images making the rounds demonstrating that it too would work in widescreen with minimal cropping, and I'm certain I've seen some for Star Trek: TOS as well (i.e. both using film elements to demonstrate this, showing unused side information absent from the Blu-rays).

How do you know for instance that The Twilight Zone can not be expanded in the same manner unless you've seen the full negative area? Looking at the Blu-rays is no way to judge since they obviously only feature the compositional area. I don't think there's anything to suggest Lost in Space was unique in the way it was shot, and I personally think the 16x9 version looks awful. It's merely trading off very important top and bottom information for a chunk of useless empty side information.

EddieLarkin wrote:As far as I'm aware it was standard to use only a small portion of the negative image area for actual composition...

I feel if this was true there would be far more attempts to create 1.78:1 versions of classic Academy ratio films like the really pathetic shot-by-shot re-composing done for "widescreen" releases of GONE WITH THE WIND starting in 1954. Or are you saying that this was standard practice for 35mm television shows from the 60s? You're correct that I can't claim outright to know exactly what the full negatives of THE TWILIGHT ZONE episodes look like, but since I've been re-watching the entire series over the past few months I can say that most of the 1.33:1 compositions strike me as extremely tight, displaying little of the looseness seen in those LOST IN SPACE 1.33:1 examples.

Yes, I was referring to TV shows only. The amount of area used was different between a film and a TV show. In this image, line 6 is the compositional area for TV, whilst line 2 was used for a 1.37:1 film. Note that the image is showing the area of a print, rather than the negative, which will have even more space on the left for the soundtrack (though imagery is still captured there), and top and bottom to maintain 1.37:1.

So yes, as far as I know TV shows of the era have a very large amount of room to play with (though even on a film, the intended 1.37:1 is only about 76% of the full negative, once you've allocated room for the soundtrack, and consequently space at the top and bottom to maintain 1.37:1) .

I don't feel Lost in Space looks anymore loose than The Twilight Zone going by the 4x3 example in the video. Only the very first example where they are at the table could be described as loose, the rest are quite tight (which is why you lose a lot of foreheads, chins and hands once it's cropped in the 16x9 version).

Gotcha. This is a case of being so close to something I missed it! Having worked in TV advertising production for a couple of decades, I routinely framed shots knowing when something was "content safe" or not (same in editing when graphics would need to be kept within the "title safe" area of the frame). Obviously, the same rules would apply to filmed entertainment intended for television knowing that information would be lost to overscan. I guess it was the amount of extra room found in the LOST IN SPACE examples that surprised me, but then, one must expect those examples were cherry-picked for demonstration purposes.

Roger Ryan wrote:Gotcha. This is a case of being so close to something I missed it! Having worked in TV advertising production for a couple of decades, I routinely framed shots knowing when something was "content safe" or not (same in editing when graphics would need to be kept within the "title safe" area of the frame). Obviously, the same rules would apply to filmed entertainment intended for television knowing that information would be lost to overscan. I guess it was the amount of extra room found in the LOST IN SPACE examples that surprised me, but then, one must expect those examples were cherry-picked for demonstration purposes.

Btw, smpte revised title safe to 10 % two years ago, and action safe is at 7%, that's true even when delivering a master that must comply with 4x3 center cut restrictions for gfx. All our deliverables over the last year for network and cable are now using a 10 % title safe.

Lost in Space confirmed to be 4x3 on Blu-ray, 16x9 via streaming/TV. In your faces widescreen fetishists (the comments are full of those guys, whining and crying despite the explanation that the widescreen version reveals set equipment etc.)!

EddieLarkin wrote:Lost in Space confirmed to be 4x3 on Blu-ray, 16x9 via streaming/TV. In your faces widescreen fetishists (the comments are full of those guys, whining and crying despite the explanation that the widescreen version reveals set equipment etc.)!

Phew. Glad that dodged a bullet, but it is worrying that this was even a consideration/concern. I hope nobody at Fox/other studios ever takes Facebook comments seriously - those people even want the 1st season to be colorized.

Also, this really sucks for me:

However the episode broadcast on stations like ME-TV, Netflix and Amazon streaming, will be the wide screen versions.

Though Me-TV is still an SD channel, so it seems like it would be strange for them to accommodate HD Widescreen audiences (especially given that their audience bracket is in the $20 hearing aids, zooming glasses, and incontinence products). Hopefully I'll be able to finish getting through the series before their hand is forced to this shit widescreen era where black bars are a sin.

Edit-

Amy West is right we will not be able to see in widescreen on METV. So it will probably only be available on ITunes and Hulu. And only full HD on Itunes or Amazon

Happy days are here again \:D/

The Complete Lost in Space Blu-ray is now available to pre-order at FoxConnect at 50% off retail. New accounts apparently get a further 30% off, bringing the total to $75 delivered! Pretty upset that FoxConnect don't ship outside of the US; as of right now it's far from certain this will even get a UK release.

I wonder if MeTV will still broadcast the 16X9 version, though. I've caught 16X9'ed episodes of Seinfeld on it before; rather than have black bars at the top and bottom of the 4X3 frame, the frame was full with the sides of the image completely cut off!

med wrote:I wonder if MeTV will still broadcast the 16X9 version, though. I've caught 16X9'ed episodes of Seinfeld on it before; rather than have black bars at the top and bottom of the 4X3 frame, the frame was full with the sides of the image completely cut off!

I'd imagine not - as they still broadcast in SD and for a rather older audience (see any of their commercials? ) who probably won't upgrade to a new fangled HD, widescreen set. Hell, their main attraction - Saturday night horror host Svengoolie - shows scope/widescreen films in P&S/fullscreen. Worst is when you watch it, get excited by the credits that it is correct, then suddenly is switches out. I suppose this is a worst travesty than Lost in Space opened up/cropped at the top+bottom, but Svengoolie is too much fun to otherwise miss.

Glad Fox has some brains/sense about them with Lost in Space and isn't throwing in a bunch of BS toys or price gouging people as Warners did with Batman (speaking of Lost in Space toys, a friend gave me a bobble-head talking Lost in Space Robot figurine, and the damn thing won't shut up - any slight vibration in the air: door closing, shelf bumped, earthquake, sneezing, will make the stupid thing start blabbing for 20 seconds, solution: put it on its side. Thus be warned!). Sure, Batman was a once like 30 years in the deal-making, but I still refuse to buy it (maybe when it hits $50)- since they fucked up, forgot the Villain tags (last 30 seconds -1min of an episode, which closes the current episode and introduced the next episode's villain - only in the 3rd season), and then half-assed a fix by throwing them on a separate disc, rather than it being part of the episodes they're supposed to be. Oh well. Very happy to see Lost in Space bluray a reality, I'll update the first post.
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Question:

Have I missed anything in the first post lately or has there been a glut of pre-90s tv on bluray lately? I usually can't keep track of all of the anime releases - so that might be one area to check.

What I mean is if the masters that are being made available are 16x9 for streaming/TV (according to the link upthread), that may be all that MeTV will have access to. And then they'll do like they've done with select Seinfeld episodes* and zoom in on the 16x9 image until it fits a 4x3 frame. The first time I caught an episode that was being broadcast like that it took me a few minutes to realize what was wrong exactly. A lot of strange-looking closeups on a program that favored the typical medium shots found in multi-camera sitcoms.

*I've not watched enough of Seinfeld on MeTV to detect a pattern on which episodes are good ol' 4x3 SD masters and which are zoomed-in-to-fit-a-4x3-frame 16x9 HD (scaled down to SD) masters. I don't know if I've made myself clear here, though I hope so.

Ken Burns' The Civil War in the Fall.

EddieLarkin wrote:Ken Burns' The Civil War in the Fall.

Fantastic.

Minkin wrote:Have I missed anything in the first post lately or has there been a glut of pre-90s tv on bluray lately? I usually can't keep track of all of the anime releases - so that might be one area to check.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water - Sentai
The Vision of Escaflowne - Anime Ltd UK (Q4 2015)

EddieLarkin wrote:Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water - Sentai
The Vision of Escaflowne - Anime Ltd UK (Q4 2015)

Thanks, I can't seem to keep all of the anime straight - and there seems to be a million announced every week. I'll try my best, but perhaps those who follow them more, can just give me a heads-up from time to time.

Announced today: I Love Lucy Season 2.

No word on Andy Griffith or any of those other shows they mentioned might be coming at some point. Glad they at least decided to give Lucy another shot.

Minkin wrote:

EddieLarkin wrote:Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water - Sentai

Thanks, I can't seem to keep all of the anime straight - and there seems to be a million announced every week. I'll try my best, but perhaps those who follow them more, can just give me a heads-up from time to time.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water has also just been released in the UK by Animatsu on a 5 disc Blu-ray. I'd been vaguely aware of this 1990 series but had not seen it before picking up this release. I was mainly inspired to pick it up by it having a number of episodes (27 of the 39) directed by Hideaki Anno before he went on to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and by its premise apparently being based on an idea by Hayao Miyazaki, derived from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

I've read a few reviews of the series in anime magazines such as MYM and apparently the majority of the series is excellent although there is a repeated warning of a lull in the final section of the series in what are ominously called "the island episodes", in which apparently nothing happens for a while, before things pick back up again for the climax.