Twilight Zone on Blu-ray question

[23skidoo]

I thought there was a thread on Twilight Zone coming to Blu-ray but I can't find it, so excuse me for staring a new one to ask a question:

TV Shows on DVD lists the 5th and final season of the original TZ coming to Blu-ray on Aug. 30, which means we're well past the season (it was Season 3 I think) that featured the videotaped episodes. (As a budget-cutting measure, Rod Serling agreed to videotape a half-dozen episodes rather than film them. I believe at least one classic was among them - possibly Long Distance Call, I can't remember).

When it was announced that the show was coming to Blu-ray I was very curious as to whether or not the videotaped episodes were going to be upgraded. The impression I got from earlier discussion was that it isn't possible to upgrade video to HD, without "filmizing" the footage or some other such digital re-rendering.

I'm sure someone has been buying the sets as they come out: were these episodes skipped, were they filmized, or did they take the third option and simply leave them SD (which I've seen with things like DVD-ported-to-BD special features can have very mixed results when watched on an LED set, though plasmas handle them fine). As there was no hue and cry I assume they didn't skip them.

Alex

 

[Brikar99]

According to a review on Hi Def Digest:

As is expected, the episodes shot on videotape don't fair nearly as well. They appear blurry compared to the 35mm episodes. Detail is obscured and not nearly as fine. The look and feel of them just doesn't measure up. Grays and blacks aren't nearly as revealing. Overall, it's almost as if you picked up a different set all together when you watch these episodes. Here's the deal though. This isn't Image's fault. It's no one's fault really, and Image has done as good of a job as they could to get the picture to look as clean and clear as possible. Their restoration of the videotaped episodes looks to have had just as much care put into them as the 35mm episodes. It's just that the source material didn't provide much in the way of fine detail to begin with. Artifacts appear frequently in the videotaped episodes. Aliasing, at times, is pretty bad. In "Static" as the camera opens on the characters sitting in their living room, the image breaks apart and shudders as the image moves from left to right. All the videotaped episodes have the same feeling and look of "Fairy Tale Theater" episodes, like they were filmed for live TV.
While 'The Twilight Zone' season two isn't a stunning piece of clarity throughout the season, I'm confident that this is the best looking presentation of this season we'll get.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/3801/twilightzone_1960_s2.html

For what it's worth, their reviews for Seasons 3 and 4 make no mention of episodes made on videotape, and the video quality ratings are higher for 1, 3 and 4 than for 2.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, I believe that only the 6 episodes in season 2 were recorded on videotape as a cost-cutting measure. I don't know why they reverted to using film - perhaps CBS made more money available.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, I believe that only the 6 episodes in season 2 were recorded on videotape as a cost-cutting measure. I don't know why they reverted to using film - perhaps CBS made more money available.

From The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree (Bantam, 1982), p. 180:

This method had its limitations, though. At the time, tape was still at an extremely primitive stage of its development. Except for the integration of stock footage, none of the taped shows could have any exterior locations; everything had to be shot on a soundstage. Also, since tape couldn't be edited as cleanly as film, there could be fewer different camera setups and fewer complex camera movements. Obviously, this limited the range of story possibilities. Serling wasn't happy about this but, the network being the network, he agreed to give it a try.

And p. 194:

In all, Cayuga had saved five thousand dollars per episode, but for a series that required the entire universe as a stage, the limitations of tape far outweighed the advantages. In 1972, Serling finally made public his feelings on the subject. ... "I never liked tape because it's neither fish nor fowl. You're bound to the same kind of natural laws as in live TV, but they try to mix it with certain qualities of film.... on Twilight Zone we tried six shows on tape, and they were disastrous."

So ultimately it just wasn't feasible to keep using tape despite the cost savings. The technology was too primitive and too limiting for a show that needed to be flexible and capable of anything. It left them stagebound since videotape equipment couldn't be used on location at the time. And it really limited their ability to do any kind of special effects.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, thanks Christopher. We should be grateful that the experiment finished as soon as it did.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Although the videotaped episodes looked awful the writing was still top notch. I don't misunderstand for a second why they gave up after 6 episodes.

 

[23skidoo]

I stand corrected on the timing of the videotaped episodes. I could never remember when they happened.

As for how they turned out, the thing about magazines like Hi Def Digest is they are very picky when it comes to things like picture and sound quality. There's been many a time that I've viewed a DVD or Blu-ray that I thought looked and sounded great, but because a couple of frames didn't look pristine and the sound wobbled for 1/10th of a second, I've seen reviewers deep-six some releases.

For me it tends to not be a huge deal unless the sound renders dialogue incomprehensible and the image looks so crappy it's distracting. (An example: the first DVD release of the Audrey Hepburn film was so grainy and poorly mastered, I wasn't able to sit through the DVD of one of my favorite films. Later, a remastered edition came out and it looked perfect.)

So the way the magazine describes it suggests to me that most of the problems were probably in the original source material and therefore permanent. Which means it probably doesn't look any better or worse than the DVD (at least when watched on a plasma; LEDs tend to make everything SD look awful in my experience).

Anyway - thanks for the info. I'm undecided as to whether I'm going to buy the BD. I already have the complete series on DVD - including the original release of Season 1 that came with a book - but if a complete series set comes out for the Blu-ray down the line I might consider it.

Alex

 

[Christopher]

Which means it probably doesn't look any better or worse than the DVD (at least when watched on a plasma; LEDs tend to make everything SD look awful in my experience).

Oh, that's disturbing to hear. I've been thinking about getting an HDTV, and I was thinking LED would be preferable because it uses less power than plasma. I already have to put up with my DVR/cable box being the most power-hungry appliance I own, so I was hoping to get a more energy-efficient TV.

I've seen hotel TVs where SD programs looked awful, so I guess they were probably LED sets. It bewilders me that they make the images look so much worse. Why does that happen? Shouldn't it look about the same, so long as you're sitting far enough away that you don't see the finer detail?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Which means it probably doesn't look any better or worse than the DVD (at least when watched on a plasma; LEDs tend to make everything SD look awful in my experience).

Oh, that's disturbing to hear. I've been thinking about getting an HDTV, and I was thinking LED would be preferable because it uses less power than plasma. I already have to put up with my DVR/cable box being the most power-hungry appliance I own, so I was hoping to get a more energy-efficient TV.

I've seen hotel TVs where SD programs looked awful, so I guess they were probably LED sets. It bewilders me that they make the images look so much worse. Why does that happen? Shouldn't it look about the same, so long as you're sitting far enough away that you don't see the finer detail?

From what I've read online, I'd guess that the upscaling algorithms aren't up to it, and merely exaggerate any noise or existing artefacts in the broadcast signal. Though I doubt whether that is solely the case for LED-illuminated LCD, and does not also apply to all HD technologies (including plasma and fluorescent-illuminated LCD). It does appear to be a problem on all HD LCD TVs that I've seen. Upscaled DVDs are pretty much okay, with the notable exception of the TNG and DS9 DVDs -- the NTSC-to-PAL conversions never looked very good even on an SD TV.

 

[Kemaiku]

I'm halfway through season 3 of Twilight Zone and Blu-ray and the quality of the entire show so far has been amazing, Season 2 did have several episodes on VHS/tape rather than the 35mm, but even those are crisp and clear. I'd recommend the Blu-ray's to anyone who loves the show.

 

[Christopher]

Season 2 did have several episodes on VHS/tape rather than the 35mm...

It wouldn't have been VHS, which was a consumer-level system that first went on the market in 1976. A videotaped US television show in 1960 would've most likely used the Ampex Quad format, the industry standard from the '50s through the '70s. (And by the '80s, Beta had become the industry standard for professional broadcasters. It had superior quality to VHS, though VHS won out in the consumer market due to lower cost and longer recording time.)

 

[AviTrek]

Which means it probably doesn't look any better or worse than the DVD (at least when watched on a plasma; LEDs tend to make everything SD look awful in my experience).

Oh, that's disturbing to hear. I've been thinking about getting an HDTV, and I was thinking LED would be preferable because it uses less power than plasma. I already have to put up with my DVR/cable box being the most power-hungry appliance I own, so I was hoping to get a more energy-efficient TV.

I've seen hotel TVs where SD programs looked awful, so I guess they were probably LED sets. It bewilders me that they make the images look so much worse. Why does that happen? Shouldn't it look about the same, so long as you're sitting far enough away that you don't see the finer detail?

Don't base your experience on what you've seen in Hotels. I've found plenty of hotels that just don't know how to wire sets correctly, don't care enough to try, or had data source issues they were too cheap to fix. Whatever you get at home will look miles better than what the hotel quickly installed to claim it had "flat screen TVs"

 

[Klaus]

^^and some HDTVs do a better job than others in showing SD content. Check the reviews of the ones you're considering for that.

 

[Mike Farley]

Most hotels probably don't spring for an HDMI cable and probably just use the cheapo composite cables (yellow, red, and white RCA cables). Those look like crap no matter what the TV or source.

 

[Brikar99]

We bought my parents an LED hdtv recently, and tested it out using a bluray that I'd brought over and my father's copy of 'The Pacific' on DVD. I had to fiddle with the settings for a while, but the DVD looked pretty respectable. Not up to the blu-ray, of course, but far from "awful." There are a lot of things that can affect picture quality.

 

[BillJ]

Anything shot on videotape looks terrible on HDTV's. Just an unfortunate fact of life.

 

[species5618]

It wouldn't have been VHS, which was a consumer-level system that first went on the market in 1976. A videotaped US television show in 1960 would've most likely used the Ampex Quad format, the industry standard from the '50s through the '70s. (And by the '80s, Beta had become the industry standard for professional broadcasters. It had superior quality to VHS, though VHS won out in the consumer market due to lower cost and longer recording time.)

Sorry to pipe up here, but you're confusing Betamax with Betacam.

Developed by Sony in 1975, Betamax was the consumer grade competitor with VHS, while Betacam (1982) was (and still is in some cases) the professional grade tape used for broadcasting applications. BetacamSP (1986) supplanted plain Betacam due to it's higher technical standards.

All three formats use the same sized outer plastic shell (excluding the large-format Betacam tape shell), but the actual tape inside is different. Betacam/BetacamSP has higher audio and video quality than Betamax.

But yes, even consumer level Betamax had higher quality than VHS.

 

[Christopher]

^The word "Betamax" never appears in my post. I simply said "Beta." Betamax and Betacam are the consumer and professional versions, respectively, of the videotape technology developed by Sony in the 1970s. Betacam was derived from Betamax.

Still, you're right that I could've been clearer about the distinction between the professional and consumer varieties of Sony's technology.

 

[DarthPipes]

I haven't watched the videotaped episodes on Blu-ray but I have to say that The Twilight Zone on Blu-ray looks ridiculously good. I couldn't believe they were able to make a 50-year-old show look like that.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Well they were all shot on film. Provided that the transfer was from the original negatives and not from master tapes there's no reason it wouldn't look fantastic.