Looks like the Blurays are definitely happening, then

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Posted by on 1st March 2018, 19:52

Rumours of a Bluray release for the BBC years of Red Dwarf have been swirling for a while. I think we’ve discussed it as an aside on a DwarfCast or two, but we’ve held off from front-paging the news until there was something a little more concrete to report, mainly because the forum was doing a sterling job of logging various developments. Today, however, Doug tweeted:

I guess that counts as something more concrete. Last month, Doug was Francis Urquharting the question, but his Twitter feed has been the best source of information about the project for a while now. Back in June 2016, he first mentioned the prospect of the earlier series being upscaled, but in September last year he said that he’d “killed” a rumoured Bluray release due to the picture quality not being good enough. However, as per today’s tweet, it seems that they’re having a second go, as detailed by Doug in November:

The mention of a colour grade is worrying for anyone who’s ever seen Re-Mastered, which has given us an automatic distrust of any attempt to alter the original versions of the show. There’s also the photo that Doug shared in the early hours of the anniversary, showing Rimmer in greyscale within a scene from The End:

What’s interesting about this is that it’s a photo of a screen, rather than a clean upload – possibly taken in an edit suite? There are several potential conclusions here. They could be undertaking the painstaking and irrevocably canon-altering task of making Rimmer monochrome throughout the first eight series, which would make this Re-Mastered Part Two. It could be something they experimented with to see how easily it could be done with modern technology, or it could even be that Doug asked someone to mock it up just for the purposes of that anniversary tweet.

My money would be on the final grade being far less drastic and controversial though – I imagine it’d be a case of cleaning things up and making the colours pop a bit more, the success or otherwise of which remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Doug’s happy with how it’s looking, and we know from the first attempt that he’s not prepared to put something out that doesn’t meet his standards.

However, I do remain sceptical about the idea. The first series was shot on thirty-year-old one inch analogue tapes, in a soon-to-be-decommissioned studio using ancient tube cameras. Even Doug was bemoaning their quality just three months ago. I just can’t imagine how these could possibly be brought up to a standard that’s even acceptable for Bluray, let alone impressive enough to fork out for when the DVDs are perfectly adequate.

I guess we’ll find out in October, according to the hashtag in Doug’s tweet, which is consistent with the date on the recently added Amazon listing. Said listing also states that there’ll be sixteen discs, which if accurate implies that we’ll be getting extras too. New ones, do we reckon? Not likely with today’s home video budgets. So perhaps they’ll be bundling in all the stuff from the individual releases, although it should be noted that there were 18 discs in total across the original range, as VII and VIII were three-disc sets. It could be that they’re squeezing the eps from those series on to one disc each, or it could be that the number listed on Amazon is as temporary as the artwork.

One request, though, if there are to be old extras included – bung the Bodysnatcher ones in there as well, given the scarcity of that beautiful work. And if we’re going to be cheeky, we’d add that sitting Doug down in front of a microphone to record commentaries would be relatively cheap but absolutely wonderful…

340 comments on “Looks like the Blurays are definitely happening, then”

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  • Cautiously looking forward to this. I agree there’s probably not much more that can be done to improve how the show looks though (unless there are high-quality film versions of the model shots that can be rescanned?), and I hope whatever grading there is falls more on the subtle end of the spectrum. Tinkering with anything like this is a slippery slope.

  • The colour grade on the remastered was not actually that bad IMO, its just everything else that was pointless and stupid

    I also think its right that they didn’t go the B/W route with Rimmer because i don’t know how they would have pulled off several seasons of that without coming to issues with the effect.

  • I bet the colour grading refers to them digitally repainting the series 1 and 2 sets from ocean grey to military grey.

  • How does 4:3 compare to 16:9 when it comes to putting it on blu-ray? will it have black bars at the sides?

  • >What’s interesting about this is that it’s a photo of a screen, rather than a clean upload
    Wow I didn’t even notice that. I’d like to see black and white Rimmer as maybe an example scene for an extra but don’t particularly want to see it in seven series (you said eight in the article which made me scan my brain for any hologrammatic scenes from VIII but I don’t think there were any).
    If they went down this road would they make Holoship predominantly in black and white or would they have one of the upgrades of their class of hologram be that they’re in colour? It would be strange for no one to mention that in dialogue. And the captain emerald jokes wouldn’t work, nor would the line in Gunmen inserted purely to explain why Rimmer was wearing the wrong colour make any sense.
    All of that tells me either they’re definitely not doing it or it will be a continuity disaster.

    Also I like how Doug keeps messing up his hashtags like the cute old man trying to use social media he is x

    4:3 is an absolute necessity and I’d be overreactionarily angry if they dared to crop it.

    New extras would be nice obvs but yeah

  • It will most likely have black bars, I should think. And nice to see they’ve decided to include VI-VII as well.

    Edit: black bars as in, it will just display a 4:3 image, not that it will have black bars hard coded into it. This is all assumption though, I’ve never even smelled a Blu-ray in my life.

  • I think I said last time, if Doug does new commentaries* (& can persuade Rob to get involved too) then I will happily buy a BluRay player for this alone. Even though I can’t afford either a player or a 16 disc boxset.
    Otherwise, a subtle colour grade might help when trying to upscale the thing, but any other altering is Bad. I think, given the response to Remastered, that Doug probably knows this though and won’t go too far. If that black & white Rimmer turns up anywhere, it’ll be a short documentary about the upscaling-to-DVD project.

    *he can record some X-XII era ones while he’s at it and release them on the official site.

  • >I think I said last time, if Doug does new commentaries* (& can persuade Rob to get involved too)

    it would be fun to see how Rob reacts to Pete Part 2

  • Would be great if that was the reason Doug met up with Rob fairly recently but its both time and money i suppose.

  • > And the captain emerald jokes wouldn’t work, nor would the line in Gunmen inserted purely to explain why Rimmer was wearing the wrong colour make any sense.

    Well, there’d be no *need* for that line any more. Nobody mentions what he’s wearing though, and it would still work as a reminder that Rimmer can have a physical presence now thanks to the hard light drive he got in the previous episode. But yeah black and white Rimmer would obviously be a huge minefield. No explanation for him being b&w on earth in Backwards or Timeslides. But if they’re doing it for a bit of fun as an extra (I hadn’t noticed that was a photo of a screen in Doug’s tweet either), then I’m cautiously hopeful we’ll get other extras, Rob and Doug commentaries being the dream scenario obviously.

  • They wouldn’t make Rimmer monochrome for the first 8 series! Just the first 7. =P

    Though it’s obvious that Doug wouldn’t make that change with the benefit of hindsight. There are too many reasons not to do it to even get into (primarily just that it would look horrible – think of what would happen to Holoship!), but if he’d wanted to do it he would have done it in Series X.

    Anyway, I’m cautiously optimistic about this. The possibility of new extras is tantalising, and having Series 1-8 on Blu ray is pretty much the only way I’ll feel comfortable with the idea of getting BtE-XII on Blu ray, so there’s that.

  • It will most likely have black bars, I should think. And nice to see they’ve decided to include VI-VII as well

    This is how it works in general for pre-widescreen TV released on Blu ray. That is if they don’t mess it up, anyway. Sky 1 insists on stretching out classic Simpsons to widescreen, for example, and it looks SO BAD.

  • But I don’t have a Blu-ray player…

    I didn’t have a DVD player when the Series one DVD was released. How time flies.

  • If any of you have a PS4, it has a built in Blu-Ray player. A lot of folks seem not to know this.

  • I don’t own a blu-ray player either, but am hoping this release will encourage me to get one.

  • Can someone explain to me how they can make the earlier series’ look beyond slightly better as they were filmed on video tape and not film right??

  • If any of you have a PS4, it has a built in Blu-Ray player. A lot of folks seem not to know this.

    The same is true for a PS3.

  • Sky 1 insists on stretching out classic Simpsons to widescreen, for example, and it looks SO BAD.

    They aren’t stretching it, the entire show before it went HD was remastered by Fox for their anniversary showing where they broadcast every episode in order on FX in the US. They cropped every episode to 16:9 and cleaned up the image do whilst it may look more colourful and sharp, it also looks bloody awful when characters heads and text are missing or chopped off. Sky just got these copies from Fox and decided to use them instead of the original 4:3 ones.

  • In a world of 1080p 4K streaming I’m surprised so many people don’t have Blu-ray players for their disc content. DVDs look ass in comparison to all other media ingested. Sure you can just rely on streaming, but it’s very rare you get the extras digitally. Also Blu-ray is better quality than streaming for video and audio. DVD audio options are poor.

    Wonder how many people have 4K TVs or surround sound and no Blu-ray player.

    PS3, PS4 have Blu-ray drives and so do Xbox Ones and One S’ if you have those lying around. Recommend PS4 for value and games or One S as that does UHD Blu-ray too.

  • I have a 32″ HD tv and often I struggle to tell the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray. It’s noticeable for some stuff but not a huge amount.

    I imagine the difference is much more obvious for larger 4K sets.

  • Can someone explain to me how they can make the earlier series’ look beyond slightly better as they were filmed on video tape and not film right??

    Sourcing earlier generation tapes, transferring using the transform decoder to reduce colour distortion and clear up detail, subtle use of DVNR and colour noise reduction to undo video noise, remastering the audio which wasn’t done at all last time, a restorative colour grade to improve saturation levels and remove unwanted discolouration, and the much better compression algorithms of 1080i AVC compared to PAL MPEG. I’m cautiously excited as it seems BBC Red Dwarf is finally getting the ‘Doctor Who treatment’ it needed, in the way it should always have been done.

    And for countries such as the US and Japan who have only ever seen NTSC downscales, these will legitimately be higher resolution than they’ve ever seen before.

  • Oh and they’ll stream a lot better as well as the ratio of source to artefacting will be hugely improved due to the larger canvas.

  • Doesn’t the Xbox One (S?) also have a built-in Blu-Ray player? I read that it was going to at one point.

    Also, what would it look like if you got a 16:9 Simpsons DVD and made your TV/player squish it back down to 4:3?

  • In a world of 1080p 4K streaming I’m surprised so many people don’t have Blu-ray players for their disc content

    Well in a world of 1080p 4k streaming nobody really uses disc content in general, out of people I know. My dad gets hundreds of DVDs for like 2p each and one of my mates owns Doctor Who: Regenerations on Blu-Ray but didn’t watch any of it.

  • Can someone explain to me how they can make the earlier series’ look beyond slightly better as they were filmed on video tape and not film right??

    Sourcing earlier generation tapes, transferring using the transform decoder to reduce colour distortion and clear up detail, subtle use of DVNR and colour noise reduction to undo video noise, remastering the audio which wasn’t done at all last time, a restorative colour grade to improve saturation levels and remove unwanted discolouration, and the much better compression algorithms of 1080i AVC compared to PAL MPEG. I’m cautiously excited as it seems BBC Red Dwarf is finally getting the ‘Doctor Who treatment’ it needed, in the way it should always have been done.
    And for countries such as the US and Japan who have only ever seen NTSC downscales, these will legitimately be higher resolution than they’ve ever seen before.

    Your hired.

    BTW which DW episodes? Any youtube examples?

  • Almost all of them, the Doctor Who Restoration Team do a great job for the DVD releases. Going to great lengths to colourise certain Pertwee episodes which had their colour copies junked and to restore the original footage to be as high quality as possible. I’ve heard very good things about the recent mastering of Shada, and Spearhead from Space is the only classic serial to recieve a Blu-Ray release because it was the only one shot completely on film, and it looks incredible.

  • To be fair, they say you need at least a 40″ TV to see the benefits of Blu Ray (vs DVD) and 55″ to see the benefits of 4KUHD (vs Blu Ray) so if you don’t have a TV that’s at least 40″ I can see why you wouldn’t invest in Blu Rays.

    The DVDs looked great on the 28″ CRT, not even widescreen TV that I was using up until about 7 years ago but they look pretty whack, for the most part, on my current display. I’ll be interested to see how these turn out.

  • It also depends how close you sit, I’ve been told. I watch everything on pretty modestly sized screens which are right in front of me and honestly anything about 720p is absolutely fine.

    DVDs in general don’t look very good when played on my actual HDTV, through the built-in slot on the side of it, but look better on my computer

  • They aren’t stretching it, the entire show before it went HD was remastered by Fox for their anniversary showing where they broadcast every episode in order on FX in the US. They cropped every episode to 16:9 and cleaned up the image do whilst it may look more colourful and sharp, it also looks bloody awful when characters heads and text are missing or chopped off. Sky just got these copies from Fox and decided to use them instead of the original 4:3 ones.

    Ah, yes, cropped does make more sense. I think I just saw that it looked weird and jumped to conclude it was stretched.

    Shame on whoever at Sky thought that was a good idea, though. It’s like they’re trying to sell the DVDs.

    I hope Channel 4 isn’t making the same mistake.

  • Screen size is mostly cobblers in my opinion. It’s distance and your own visual acuity more than screen size. If I was paying attention I could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on my old 32″ TV from across the room, and I think most people would tell the difference when YouTube is going through the resolutions.

    A lot of stuff isn’t on streaming services, hence discs. I still use them a lot for films in particular. Also films on Netflix are pretty transient.

    Even if you don’t have the TV for it I’d still say blurays are worth it if you’re buying new because you’re future proofed and the audio and speed of menus is miles better.

  • Blu Rays are ace and still look notably better than your average HD (or even 4K) streaming service. There are some great 4KUHD titles but they really are a nice-to-have. A good Blu Ray can offer a mindblowing image. Watching Arrow’s release of The Thing (1982) last year was like seeing the film for the first time again – it looked absolutely stunning. Studios should have ditched DVD ages ago and made Blu Rays the new normal.

  • The Simpsons upscales use autotracer-based software to turn the cel to vectors, which utterly wrecks the original inking and colouring. They look abominable.

  • A good Blu Ray can offer a mindblowing image. Watching Arrow’s release of The Thing (1982) last year was like seeing the film for the first time again – it looked absolutely stunning. Studios should have ditched DVD ages ago and made Blu Rays the new normal.

    There are several Blu-Rays of old movies that have blown me away with the way they look. Jaws, Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, Terminator, and many others. (Including, oddly, the old 1960 Batman tv series.)

    But I’m never clear how much of that impact comes from the format itself and how much comes from the remastering/regrading process that they’ve gone through.

  • In a world of 1080p 4K streaming I’m surprised so many people don’t have Blu-ray players for their disc content. DVDs look ass in comparison to all other media ingested.

    Most people don’t care. DVDs look fine for me. As long as the picture isn’t heavily pixelated and the audio isn’t all watery I’m absolutely fine watching it. I watch stuff for plot, character and dialogue much, much more than for effects and visual details.

    I’m not quite used to HD yet. I occasionally see my parents watching something in HD and it somehow looks TOO real. I find it strangely disconcerting.

  • Aren’t the colours still fucked on Star Wars? I mean, the purple-tinted version is the one I grew up with and as such I actually quite like the slightly cold, alien feel the grade gives it, especially when the screen flashes purple from blaster shots, but “purists” seem pretty annoyed by it.

    Higher bitrate can be more important than 4K – there are YouTube content creators who upscale their 1080p content to 4K, so that those with fast connections can enjoy what is essentially 1080p content, but at a higher bitrate which looks much nicer.

    Friends did that for me, Debris. Because Friends was shot on film they can make incredibly HD prints of it, and it takes some serious getting used to watching a 90s sitcom in such high quality.

  • I occasionally see my parents watching something in HD and it somehow looks TOO real. I find it strangely disconcerting.

    That could be to do with how their TV is set up. Most TVs nowadays are factory set to have “smoothing” technology that artificially increases the number of frames, making things look a lot less filmic and a lot more real in a way that our eyes are not used to processing. It gives things that overly real, digital “soapy” look but can be switched off. New TVs are also generally factory set to high contrast modes to show increased colour ranges, have filters on to remove any grain from images and also apply artificial sharpening – all of which look “wrong” but can also be turned off or changed.

  • God frame interpolation is disgusting. It messes with depth of field and gives me motion sickness, especially on camera movements, and gives the whole piece an artificial gloss on top of it that truly -does- distance you from the reality of what’s happening on screen. I can’t believe it’s a standard. Why?!

  • Non HD broadcast TV looks like absolute shite on a modern TV, if you’re watching a DVD through scart that’ll look shite too on a modern TV. Upscaled DVDs are alright for films usually but lack the crispness, anything not shot on film looks bad when put through an upscale like that and youre at the mercy of your DVD player really as some upscaling is software based, some hardware and neither guarantees quality.

    Definitely need to set up your TV though. If you went to Currys right now and bought a TV, out of the box they’ll have vivid mode on, HDR effect, frame interpolation and all the colour temps will be wrong.

    A disc is definitely the best way to enjoy something you care about though imo, so I’ll be buying these even if they’re up on streaming sites. Got Blade Runner 2049 on UHD Blu-ray and it’s breathtaking.

  • I really hope this is Remastered done right. The concept of remastering Red Dwarf is great. It’s just the execution that went so horribly wrong the first time around.

  • Heh. I rip all my DVDs. I’m entirely non-techy on these things so it’s default settings. An episode is about 300Mb. It’s good enough to watch on my 17″ laptop, which is the biggest screen I own, but even I can see it’s a bit crappy.

    I get the feeling that the blu-ray would be a waste of money for me.

  • I didn’t upgrade to HDTV until very late (2014!). When I did, I intentionally went for a 40″ 720p Panasonic plasma (which at that point had been almost completely phased out) because I knew I’d still be watching a lot of SD video formats, and the consensus recommendations seemed to be that 720p plasmas are better for SD than 1080p LCDs, and that the ways that plasmas handle motion would be closer to what I was used to from CRTs.

    (I’d previously bought a Samsung 1080p LCD TV about a year earlier, but had to return it because it had a distracting blue-tinted ghosting/smearing effect.)

    The famous AV Forums optimal size/resolution/distance graph suggests that at my seating distance and screen size, I might benefit from a 1080p screen.

    I still don’t have a Blu-Ray player, though I would like one because no-one puts bonus features on DVD releases now – even commentaries are often BR exclusive. When I do get a player it’ll probably be a PS3 – the current-gen consoles still don’t have enough titles that interest me enough to make it worth upgrading from my Xbox 360. So at the moment my main HD (well, 720p, so “HD-Ready” not “Full HD”) video sources are streaming from Amazon Video and YouTube.

  • >However, I hated any major detail which contradicted the TV version.

    >Kryten was directly responsible for getting the crew killed due to inexplicably being crap at his only job?

    Think thats canon for the TV version now also since Series 7 (Ouroboros) hints as such

    Kryten: “I’m going to end up on my own again, just like I did on the Nova 5.”

    Lister: “You killed the crew, Kryten! No wonder you ended up on your own! All right, it was an accident, but nevertheless…”

  • Think thats canon for the TV version now also since Series 7 (Ouroboros) hints as such
    Kryten: “I’m going to end up on my own again, just like I did on the Nova 5.”
    Lister: “You killed the crew, Kryten! No wonder you ended up on your own! All right, it was an accident, but nevertheless…”

    I have a feeling you meant to post this in the forum thread where I actually made that comment, not under a news post on an unrelated topic!

    Though just to be clear, I did know about that line in Ouroboros, but the novel was the first to introduce the idea, and so I don’t like that Ouroboros made it canon either.

  • I have a feeling you meant to post this in the forum thread where I actually made that comment,

    I did gosh darn it.

  • I got a 1080p telly in 2009 and still have it. All SD content looks like trash on it and I was never really impressed by HD. It made me better at Call of Duty, though. I miss CRTs.

  • I’m not impressed by panda pop but I’d still rather drink it than toilet water.

    Okay, but what do you think about the bluray?

  • If you can’t get two weeks in the Caribbean then Grimsby’s better than nothing.

    i’d rather just stay home. two weeks in Grimsby sounds awful

  • if it was Hull instead i might consider it though, they’ve got some good book stores there

  • I’m not a cheap skate but how long do we think it will take Dave to show these newer versions? Late summer 2019 in the run up to Series XIII?

  • Knowing Dave they’ll be showing the Remastered version of Marooned followed by the original version of Back to Reality, finished off with the Blu-Ray version of Gunmen, but only before the first ad break, after which it will revert back to the original.

  • I only have a ten year old 720 HD Ready TV set but even on that Blu-Ray looks infinitely better than regular DVD. Miles and miles ahead.

    How big the leap in quality with a show captured from 30 year old video tapes will be remains to be seen, but if done right this will be an essential purchase for me.

  • How big the leap in quality with a show captured from 30 year old video tapes will be remains to be seen

    There’ll almost certainly be a leap considering we’ll be comparing a 2018 Bluray release with a 2002 DVD release, but I can’t imagine it’ll look all that much better.

  • How big the leap in quality with a show captured from 30 year old video tapes will be remains to be seen

    There’ll almost certainly be a leap considering we’ll be comparing a 2018 Bluray release with a 2002 DVD release, but I can’t imagine it’ll look all that much better.

    Yeah we were all wowed by DVD when it came out but it was actually pretty limited in terms of what it could store. I’m very keen to see how RD comes out looking on Blu-Ray.

  • If you can’t get two weeks in the Caribbean then Grimsby’s better than nothing.

    i’d rather just stay home. two weeks in Grimsby sounds awful

    Grimsby’s surprisingly good for a night out, maybe not two weeks but a long weekend would be alright.

    Caribbean doesn’t have Yorkshire fishcakes either.

  • If they do monochrome Rimmer it would be for series 1 and 2 only, surely. After that the entire design of the show changed, and if they could have afforded monochrome Rimmer in the 80s they would have dropped it for series 3.

  • I think Doug probably learned his lesson from the remastered shows about making changes to the originals.

  • Not so much a ‘change’ but it would be interesting to see if the original broadcast version of Terraform with the original music cue is used rather than the altered version for all other home media releases. The music rights situation is different now i’m told but like with Fools and Horses, it’s too expensive to create new masters for creating dvds and such.

  • I think Doug probably learned his lesson from the remastered shows about making changes to the originals.

    Making changes is all right as long as they actually work.

  • It’s amazing how attempts to modernize and “improve” the picture of an old program for an HD-loving audience so often end up making it look absolutely fucking HIDEOUS. Because it’s worth distorting the picture, fucking up the framing of every single shot and zooming in on an already SD picture if it means the picture completely fills the screen instead of leaving a little extra space on the side.

    People who don’t notice picture quality won’t care – almost TV I ever run into.has the picture set up totally incorrectly and people think I’m crazy when I point it out – but those of us who do care are stuck with horrible quality and no alternative. To a videophile like me, even HD streaming is very subpar compared to Blu-Ray. You can always spot compression artifacting like banding, and that stuff stands out like a sore thumb. I always get a pleasant surprise by how gorgeous Blu-Ray looks compared to Netflix. Even from a distance I can see the difference.

  • > Because it’s worth distorting the picture, fucking up the framing of every single shot and zooming in on an already SD picture if it means the picture completely fills the screen instead of leaving a little extra space on the side.

    Which is why Doug isn’t doing this for the Dwarf Blu-rays. :)

    See also Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Blu-ray release of which is perfectly presented in its original 4:3 framing. Such a glory to behold, those sets. :D

  • I have Lost in Space collection on Blu Ray. They are in 4:3 and for a show from the 60s in HD they look amazing (especially the black and white episodes). The Next Generation set is amazing as well. For streaming I can notice the difference. I am curious to see how these sets turn out.

  • Star Trek was shot on film so allows for much higher quality (I checked with Google to make sure this was true) but I remember hearing about some issues they had with the special effects. Something like they wanted to do a 16:9 version since it was technically possible with the live action footage but the special effects were done in 4:3?

  • Yeah, the TNG ship models just disappear on the space background outside the 4:3 frame. Even in the studio, there are lights, camera crew and wires casually visible all around the edge of the frame if it’s taken to widescreen, so that could have been pointlessly painstaking to remove.

    DS9 and Voyager aren’t get the HD treatment largely because they’d have to recreate the standard definition CGI effects from scratch, after they foolishly moved away from models in the late 90s. Will there be the same issue for Red Dwarf VII & VIII?

  • Well since Dwarf wasn’t shot on film outside of the model shots and I’m not even sure they have the original film cans anyway the gulf in quality won’t be as much of an issue. The VII and VIII effects might look a bit worse if they aren’t redone, but only because you’re blowing them up, warts and all.

    I’m imagining a remastered VIII with the XI/XII model shots pasted in and I’m not sure I like it. Or just that test shot from the movie over and over again.

  • Voyager (and I assume DS9) were filmed on tape anyway, and as you say most of the model shots were CG. They had practical models for a few series I think, with CG aswell but things like the opening credits of Voyager were CG from the off and eventually the model was canned.

  • Voyager (and I assume DS9) were filmed on tape anyway, and as you say most of the model shots were CG.

    No, they were most definitely filmed on film. But TNG and DS9 (not sure with Voyager) were edited on videotape, which is why the original broadcasts have that grey, blurry video quality to them. And why the HD remasters have such an incredible jump in quality compared to HD remasters of shows that were always sourced from film.

    And just to be clear because some people seem to be confused about this: Red Dwarf was shot on videotape and standard definition picture is as much resolution as ever existed, even on the raw output of the cameras filming the show. It is _impossible_ to create a genuine HD version of anything in the first eight series, which is why this Blu-Ray release is an upscale. It will look nicer than the DVDs, but only because of nearly 20 years of improvement on digital remastering/restoration tools and the larger storage capacity of a Blu-Ray disc.

    And because clearly nobody else was going to bother, I went ahead and tweeted Doug about whether the Bodysnatcher Collection extras would be included. You’re all lazy bastards and I hate the lot of you.

  • Voyager (and I assume DS9) were filmed on tape anyway, and as you say most of the model shots were CG.

    No, they were most definitely filmed on film. But TNG and DS9 (not sure with Voyager) were edited on videotape, which is why the original broadcasts have that grey, blurry video quality to them. And why the HD remasters have such an incredible jump in quality compared to HD remasters of shows that were always sourced from film.
    And just to be clear because some people seem to be confused about this: Red Dwarf was shot on videotape and standard definition picture is as much resolution as ever existed, even on the raw output of the cameras filming the show. It is _impossible_ to create a genuine HD version of anything in the first eight series, which is why this Blu-Ray release is an upscale. It will look nicer than the DVDs, but only because of nearly 20 years of improvement on digital remastering/restoration tools and the larger storage capacity of a Blu-Ray disc.
    And because clearly nobody else was going to bother, I went ahead and tweeted Doug about whether the Bodysnatcher Collection extras would be included. You’re all lazy bastards and I hate the lot of you.

    TIL, thought they just wanted to go cheaper and went with video. Thanks for the knowledge.

  • Much of the CG for DS9 still exists and was future proofed with more detail then would ever show up on video.

    A demonstration of the CG re-rendered in HD by one of the people who worked on it is on YouTube and looks incredible.

    I’m hoping the DS9 documentary’s success and the HD clips that will appear in it will convince CBS to push forward with DS9 in HD.

  • They may well end up re-mastering DS9 for HD, but there’s very little chance it’ll get a Blu-ray release. The TNG sets, as amazing as they are, didn’t sell particularly well…..

  • Season 1 sold very well. Apparently it tailed off from there which is a shame.

    I imagine if they do remaster it then they will definitely give it a Blu-Ray release. The question is whether there would be any budget for new features.

  • One of the tweets from Doug actually said:

    Wasn’t shot on film apart from opening model shot sequence. ….Master rushes tapes lost long ago. Probably thrown out by the beeb as were the opening model shots that showed up in a skip.

    Does ‘showed up in a skip’ mean they actually found them? Do film versions of the original shots exist i wonder. Does anyone care? Do I care? Where am i……

  • Do film versions of the original shots exist i wonder. Does anyone care? Do I care? Where am i……

    Who’s eatin’ this chicken? What the hell is going on?

  • >Does ‘showed up in a skip’ mean they actually found them? Do film versions of the original shots exist i wonder.

    I assume the sections which did turn up “in a skip” are the bits seen in Skipper. The shots certainly look HD.

  • Weren’t the model shots knocking about for the DVDs. Stuff like the rushes probably went in the bin a week after the episode was submitted knowing the BBC.

    Any model footage rescanned would be nice though, even if not all of it. I’d take that movie shot too from the Bodysnatcher collection. That’s gorgeous.

  • I thought they had access to at least some of the rushes, and uses them for the DVDs. Pretty sure I read that on here.

    >In a skip
    >Skipper

  • DS9 and VOY won’t get HD remasters – unfortunately CBS didn’t recoup enough of their costs from the TNG remasters to justify the expense. Which is a shame, because I know someone in possession of an HD transfer of “Trial and Tribble-ations” and, having seen it, it looks fucking marvelous.

  • Weird that they’re using the new logo. Also too much going on with that Collection 12 bollocks at the bottom.

    What sort of quality will they be I wonder. Assuming Doctor Who from the 70’s was shot on even worse tape than Dwarf in the 80’s

  • DS9 and VOY won’t get HD remasters – unfortunately CBS didn’t recoup enough of their costs from the TNG remasters to justify the expense. Which is a shame, because I know someone in possession of an HD transfer of “Trial and Tribble-ations” and, having seen it, it looks fucking marvelous.

    That’ll be the upscale that was on the TOS Season 2 Blu-ray, a true HD transfer of the episode doesn’t exist. Still an improvement over the DVD though.

    If they were to remaster DS9 that episode would be one of the trickier and more expensive since all the Forrest Gump-style footage would need to be done in post again.

  • Weird that they’re using the new logo. Also too much going on with that Collection 12 bollocks at the bottom.

    Word is that the BBC want to bring all their DW stuff under one logo; everything else currently using the Pertwee/McGann-era logo will probably switch over to using the new one too at some point.

  • I assume the sections which did turn up “in a skip” are the bits seen in Skipper. The shots certainly look HD.

    Well it probably is HD, it looks like it.

  • Weird that they’re using the new logo. Also too much going on with that Collection 12 bollocks at the bottom.

    What sort of quality will they be I wonder. Assuming Doctor Who from the 70’s was shot on even worse tape than Dwarf in the 80’s

    It’s not final art, but I’d believe the unification of logos thing, even though I really don’t like the way it looks on that box.

    According to the Doctor Who Restoration Team, they don’t have the original film they shot the location footage on for Season 12, so at least there won’t be an as enormous of a gulf in quality between the in-studio video and on-location film, but not having the film at all is a shame.

    It’s already annoying how the video stuff is 50fps and the film stuff is 24 – it’s really jarring to have to constantly switch between the two framerates

  • Word is that the BBC want to bring all their DW stuff under one logo; everything else currently using the Pertwee/McGann-era logo will probably switch over to using the new one too at some point.

    Surely the whole point of the Pertwee/McGann/books/Big Finish/50th anniversary DVDs/etc. logo is that it kept everything under one logo, or as close as possible; the new series changes its logo every few years. Unless they’ve decided that this logo is going to be The Official Logo from now until the end of the show, or they’re actually planning on reissuing every past release every time the logo changes.

  • I deeply, deeply hope the final boxart features the sans serif logo. It’s just objectively superior.

  • I’m imagining a remastered VIII with the XI/XII model shots pasted in and I’m not sure I like it.

    Imagine not liking series VIII!!!!111

  • i wonder if they’ll re-do the effects for VII for the blu-ray? i mean that shit 2d bluescreen starbug is going to look even worse in HD, isn’t it?

    >I’m imagining a remastered VIII with the XI/XII model shots pasted in and I’m not sure I like it.

    there’s barely any shots of the ship in VIII so i think that would be a pointless exercise, wouldn’t it? unless i’m mistaken you don’t even see the exterior of the ship at all in Pete Part 2, and there’s only one shot of it in Cassandra.

  • i wonder if they’ll re-do the effects for VII for the blu-ray? i mean that shit 2d bluescreen starbug is going to look even worse in HD, isn’t it?

    I mean, yeah, but it’s going to be a sort of fake 720p HD, so I don’t think it’ll look massively more shit than it does already.

    It’d be great if they did redo them all though, even the good shots from VII have issues from being shot on 16mm, I don’t think Stoke Me a Clipper’s opening would pass QC now haha, so blurry, and in the Gelf chase you can see folds in the backdrop said sub 1080pness would save some money on the rendering too haha

  • I think IF they run with monochrome Rimmer, they’ll keep him monochrome up until Legion upgrades his H/W. It may be that in SIII onwards, it’s just his skin that’s monochrome. If they do keep him fully mono throughout the entire few series, it would be cook for him to get his colour restored on the Holoship where he can touch and taste and shag, at least.

  • Just doesn’t work for me. The reactions are wrong now. If you’d been hanging around with someone who was monochrome for 5 years or so, I think the reaction to him being in colour would be stronger than the reaction Lister gives in Legion. When it’s interfering with performances I say leave well alone. And that’s before issues like Backwards where he has to blend in with full colour humans.

    Good for a featurette, bad for the whole series.

  • Instead of making Rimmer back and white just then, I could have redone the effects on Pete and made him look really good. It’s just not right, it’s just not right. Instead of saying that bit about Pete just then I could’ve remade Timewave and made it really good, it’s just not right.

  • Frankly, the in-universe reality of it is daft. They have the technology to make 3D holographic projections of people that can walk around the ship, with a light bee floating in the centre, that have perfect replications of that person’s personality, but they can’t do it in colour.

  • I assumed the initial idea was that, in-universe, they were using the black and white to clue people in that he was a hologram, rather than using the ‘H’.

    (As opposed to being a technical limitation that means holograms can only be black and white.)

  • I don’t think any of us can judge how well grayscale Rimmer compares, because we see it as a distracting alteration from the normal look of the show. And I really have to insist that “interfering with the performances” is a ridiculously over the top way to describe Lister underreacting – you could easily argue he underreacts in the original scene, too. You could argue he shows exactly the right reaction for both.

    The point is I don’t think that moment would ever stand out as odd if this was how it always looked, and you’re only noticing this sort of thing because you’re now inclined to look for ways in which this major visual change clashes with the rest of the show.

  • New viewer here. It’s strange that Lister and/or Cat come up with all manner of creative put-downs around Rimmer’s H, his nostrils, his hair and other attributes, but never once allude to him being black-and-white up to series VI. Are they just being particularly sensitive about that? And is it just me, or does Craig Charles’ voice briefly age several decades during the lines “I’m sick of you and your silly [grey] suits” and “I look like Captain [grey]?” Why does Ace Rimmer need to be informed that the black-and-white person he’s looking at is a hologram?

  • I asked this in another thread but if you get your arm blown off a week before you die, are you cursed to “live” with one arm for your entire stint as a hologram? If you’ve got the flu do you keep the flu forever? That would be shit.

  • In the original Rimmer just gets a new coat. Reaction for that normal. Lister doesn’t know that he’s solid at that point, his reaction when he touches him is stronger.

    Stand by my opinion that Rimmer being in colour after so long would warrant a greater reaction than Rimmer gets a new coat, which at that point had already happened 3 times anyway, twice if he’s black and white.

  • in rimmerworld, rimmer is constantly suffering from headaches and heart palpitations and chest pains and blackouts and also starts hyperventilating later in the episode. so i’d imagine whatever illnesses/conditions you have before you die, you keep after being revived as a hologram. mind you his nearly-fatal heart condition is never mentioned again after that episode, so i don’t know

  • Was that not specifically a hologrammatic sickness? Hence why he had never had a single heart palpitation in the five years before or twenty years after that episode

  • Was that not specifically a hologrammatic sickness? Hence why he had never had a single heart palpitation in the five years before or twenty years after that episode

    Nope. According to Kryten when you are scanned and your hologrammatic file is created, it’s everything about you at that point, and “it’s uncommon, but it’s possible for a hologram to die” or something. It’s all a bit muddy though as you say because he was fine before and after.

    It’s all bollocks anyway because if he died just load him up again. JMC Cloudsync. Might be a few years out of date though depending on your restore point.

    Kryten should have surely just edited Rimmer’s file instead of digging out some antique alternative medicine based remedy. Makes Kryten look a bit of a twat really.

    And that’s why you shouldn’t examine Red Dwarf too closely haha

  • “your exact personality was refined to an algorithm and duplicated electronically. If that algorithm contained a flaw, that flaw would be duplicated also”

    Rimmer’s issues (in Rimmerworld) appear to be panic attacks and the hologram equivalent of hypertension, so he’d likely have had similar issues had he still been alive.

    >Kryten should have surely just edited Rimmer’s file instead of digging out some antique alternative medicine based remedy. Makes Kryten look a bit of a twat really.

    Well, that’s what the Emohawk does in the previous episode. The result is someone who’s not Rimmer, so it raises a moral question of whether Kryten should be meddling in the same way, even to save his “life”.

  • >Why would a hologram have a heart though?

    He doesn’t. Rimmer’s the only one who mentions him having a heart. Kryten translates the way Rimmer feels (such as blood pressure = T Count) into the hologram equivalent. It’s like the René Descartes stuff in Infinity. Rimmer’s neuroses make him believes he’s having heart palpations, so his hologram takes on the physicality of having heart palpations.

  • >T Count

    what does the T in T Count even mean? VI also does this with “G-Gukes” which are seemingly a unit of distance but it’s never really explained

  • The person’s brain functions are being emulated by software, so any faults in the mind of the living person would make sense to remain in the hologram’s mind. The hologram itself, however, is just a 3D projection of an image. Hard-light would just be augmenting that image with some sort of physical force to allow it to behave as a solid object, but that’s still all smoke and mirrors without anything resembling the function of a living body involved. What part of a hologram could possibly, even by a stretch, be analogous to blood pressure?

    “G-Gukes”

    What was missing from Twentica’s opening scene was a Lister a line about the simulant ship being “200 G-Gukes and closing!”

  • I’ve always filed geegooks in the same fictional-space-units bin as the Klingons’ kellikams, so combined with the straight line delivery and not questioning odd things accepted in childhood, I never got that it was a blatant technobabble gag before now. I’ve been watching VI like a pudding for 24 years.

  • Honestly I didn’t realise until somebody pointed it out to me, and I’m fairly sure it was on this site, or in a commentary maybe. I don’t think it gets a laugh and it took me like fifteen years to even realise it was a gag, so yeah, very subtle. Just brilliant.

    In V I think they say klicks I think, which Google tells me is actually a real unit of distance.

  • In V I think they say klicks I think, which Google tells me is actually a real unit of distance.

    You’re thinking of Emohawk.

    Well I’m from space and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase “gigooks”

    Well not out in space, no, it’s a Starbug expression.

  • >You’re thinking of Emohawk.

    i’m pretty sure they use “klicks” in V, dont they? off the top of my head there’s the line “that’s eighty klicks. we should be clear of any possible blast zone” from Demons & Angels

  • i’m pretty sure they use “klicks” in V, dont they? off the top of my head there’s the line “that’s eighty klicks. we should be clear of any possible blast zone” from Demons & Angels

    Well either way, it’s a real unit of measurement so I’m not surprised it shows up in different episodes.

    Unlike J-Dukes or Beejews or whatever.

  • The person’s brain functions are being emulated by software, so any faults in the mind of the living person would make sense to remain in the hologram’s mind. The hologram itself, however, is just a 3D projection of an image. Hard-light would just be augmenting that image with some sort of physical force to allow it to behave as a solid object, but that’s still all smoke and mirrors without anything resembling the function of a living body involved. What part of a hologram could possibly, even by a stretch, be analogous to blood pressure?

    “G-Gukes”
    What was missing from Twentica’s opening scene was a Lister a line about the simulant ship being “200 G-Gukes and closing!”

    Note that when Rimmer arrives in the universe where he’s alive in “Skipper”, he seemingly only realises he’s not a hologram when he realises he doesn’t have an H on his forehead, and similarly in “Timeslides” he only realises he’s alive when Holly tells him. So the implication is that Rimmer can’t really feel any difference between the two.

  • That’s nice, because I always felt like being a hologram felt like… nothing, due to the “being on holiday with a group of Germans” line, and that he gained feeling as he gained hardlight. It’s a little less horrible for Rimmer if he’s able to feel things.

    Don’t ask me about Queeg because I don’t have an answer

  • Given the BBC have just released a Special Edition of The Enemy of the World with all the lovely bonus content that was missing from the 2013 rush-release, is it totally out of the question we might see re-releases for X, XI and XII?

  • Enemy of the World is fantastic, as an aside. Really glad they found it. Enjoyed the animated The Invasion and The Ice Warriors, too.

  • Well there are a couple moments in the first two series like the one where Rimmer has a holo-shower and Holly makes it too holo-hot and whenever he gets all out of breath and in pain from too much holo-running, i think that’s what i was referring to

  • Given the BBC have just released a Special Edition of The Enemy of the World with all the lovely bonus content that was missing from the 2013 rush-release, is it totally out of the question we might see re-releases for X, XI and XII?

    Different teams, different brands with differently-sized global fanbases. I suspect what we have for X, XI and XII is what we’re getting unless we get some kind of weird anniversary retrospective release in a decade or so on whatever media is prevalent at the time.

  • I don’t suppose Doug could sit down of his own accord with a half decent USB mic and record X-XII commentaries to release as mp3s.

    Please?

  • At some point in the future – either the 40th anniversary or when Doug decides the show has definitely finished – we’ll get a nice Red Dwarf: The Whole Smegging Saga boxset of all 15 series as a last ditch attempt to sell BluRays to a rapidly decreasing sales base, but otherwise I don’t think there’ll be any other reissues.
    Doug commentaries, however, will happen, because if the fucker doesn’t do them voluntarily I’m going to kidnap him and force him to do them.

  • The Rob and Doug commentaries (and Doug and Ed actually) on the Bodysnatchers collection are quite funny so id love to hear Rob,Doug and maybe Ed do commentary for the episodes

  • I am mildly concerned about the use of DNR in Series III, considering the grotesque overuse of it in early Blu-Rays (infamously for Predator) that turned the picture into a smudgy mess that looked like they ran it through a “paintbrush” Photoshop filter.

    I like a bit of grain. I don’t like the smudgy look of excessive DNR and picture sharpening.

    That said, I’m extremely happy this clean-up is being done in 2018 and not 2007. Or God forbid, 1997.

  • Well the clean up for the Remastered was actually pretty good considering.

    The “filmizing” really destroys any positive effect of the clean-up, and I found the grade to feel a bit unnaturally saturated at times. I’ve made a better grade myself just fooling about in my VFX editor, focusing more on the contrast, brightness and black/white levels than the saturation.

    It really helps knock the greyness out without overdoing the color, although it was Series III I was experimenting on.

    I’ve found that once you get over seeing Series I in color, the grade feels a bit…off, compared to later series actually shot in color.

  • I am mildly concerned about the use of DNR in Series III

    I dunno, I think it benefits greatly from being a Doug’n’Rob era series. Can’t imagine it working at all with some VIII-style jokes or Dave-era unnecessary complexity.

  • I’d be interested to see if they can improve the image quality of Series VI.
    After the continued improvement in IV and V, Series VI always looked like it was recorded on an old VHS tape. The image is much less clean and sharp, and seems sort of noisy. Is it just me who thinks this?
    Also compare the onscreen logo for series V and VI. The latter has weird kerning and lots of aliasing, and overall looks so much cheaper and amateurish than what they managed the year before.
    VI in general has a weird mix of vastly improved sets, costumes, props, and VFX (the polymorphing effect, the teleporting effect, Kryten’s virus) which then all get a little spoiled by shooing on substandard video.

  • I associate VI the most with production errors too (not counting the smeg-ups and continuity gaffes aplenty), like all the boom mics getting into cockpit shots, Craig visibly mouthing Danny’s lines in Legion and Robert’s obvious/”you-can’t-tell” autocue reading in Out of Time. Doesn’t spoil any of it, but distracting.

  • Robert’s cue-card reading stands out a mile to me these days – I don’t know how I never noticed it before.
    Not just ‘Out of Time’ (which was written on the fly, so we’ll forgive him that one), but when he receives that chip from Holly in ‘The Last Day’, and Spare Head Three’s rant in ‘D.N.A.’, and his recital of the newspaper in ‘Tikka to Ride; ‘ are a few examples that spring instantly to mind. Maybe we can head canon by saying that’s what androids’ eyes do when they process speech, I don’t know.
    But yes, boom mics are another production issue where standard seemed to have dropped in Series VI.

  • I’ve always enjoyed the way Robert visibly turns towards the idiot board mid-sentence whenever there’s a particularly long SCD number to deliver.

  • I didn’t notice any autocue reading in Out Of Time, but I’ve always noticed the Space Corps Directive idiot board in Gunmen!

  • I’m currently rewatching the whole series (with G&T commentaries where available) and I’m noticing a few new things like Dastardly and Muttley on Lister’s space suit in Kryten and the terrible Red Dwarf patch on Rimmer’s uniform before they found the Golgrafinchum badge.

  • Kryten is noticeably reading from an idiot board during the “trumped up piscine” speech in Polymorph, and still manages to stumble over his lines

  • Kryten is noticeably reading from an idiot board during the “trumped up piscine” speech in Polymorph, and still manages to stumble over his lines

    I think in the documentary it says that he couldn’t see/didn’t have the idiot boards when the audience got there for whatever reason and so did it from memory, I think it was that speech anyway. Either way it’s rough.

  • I actually really like(d) his stuttery delivery before I knew the reason behind it, it’s as if he’s really, really so distraught about what he just said that he can’t speak straight. Before knowing it was because Robert was struggling with his lines, I thought Kryten stuttering every now and then was a nice little character trait, lol.

  • Are Robert and Chris both pretty much retired/semi-retired from acting apart from Dwarf these days?

  • I’m currently rewatching the whole series (with G&T commentaries where available) and I’m noticing a few new things like Dastardly and Muttley on Lister’s space suit in Kryten and the terrible Red Dwarf patch on Rimmer’s uniform before they found the Golgrafinchum badge.

    one thing i noticed on a recent rewatch is Lister’s got a KKK patch on his trousers in Series V

  • I think in the documentary it says that he couldn’t see/didn’t have the idiot boards when the audience got there for whatever reason and so did it from memory,

    Man in the Rubber Mask talks about it.

    I may know better, but I still see that delivery as him being so distraught he’s losing it a little bit.

  • Are Robert and Chris both pretty much retired/semi-retired from acting apart from Dwarf these days?

    IMDB lists them as having been in very few things in recent years, so possibly.

    one thing i noticed on a recent rewatch is Lister’s got a KKK patch on his trousers in Series V

    As in, -the- KKK? Interesting.

  • I’ve always enjoyed the way Robert visibly turns towards the idiot board mid-sentence whenever there’s a particularly long SCD number to deliver.

    He just sort of turns his whole body, raised arms and all, right? I always love reading that as him bracing the rest of the crew for hearing it.

  • >As in, -the- KKK? Interesting

    yeah, that KKK. it’s most visible in the car chase in Back To Reality, you can see it on his leg for most of the scene

  • Oh dear, that does look unfortunately similar to the KKK branding if you look up images people have posted (the centre of the cross is different though). A racist symbol accidentally gracing some of the best Red Dwarf ever. I’ll just assume Lister’s wearing it as naively as I assume the Asian people I sometimes see wearing swastika T-shirts with “white power” slogans are.

  • It’s fairly possible these clothes came with some of those patches already on them, when the costume designers sourced them.

    If you go to vintage shops you can sometimes see confederate flags and SS badges on jackets. That’s no guarantee that the previous owner, the seller, or a new buyer is a racist. It could just naively be considered part of the ‘look’ of biker fashion. You don’t see more overt symbols like swastikas, because everyone knows them here to be a Nazi symbol.

    Given that these costumes were put together in pre-internet age U.K., it’s likely that the KKK badge was simply not recognised, and the history/controversy of the Confederate flag was simply not known by those who designed/wore it.

  • or maybe it’s a continuity nod? he only wears it throughout Series 5, and the last episode of Series 4 is Meltdown; in which one of the villains is a KKK member. so maybe he looted their corpses and took the badge

  • lister steals one fashion accessory from each of his victims, i suppose

    Where’d the rocket patch come from?

  • Robbie Rocketpatch.

    An excellent and inventive suggestion, with just two tiny drawbacks.

  • Growing up in Scotland, I knew next to nothing about the Confederate flag until everybody started making a big deal about it in 2016/7, so I can easily see how you’d wear one/sew one onto a jacket in ignorance. I also have no idea what the symbol for the KKK even looks like, so again I’d probably wear that without knowing.

  • was re-watching Terrorform so i could point out where you can see the Confederate flag on Lister’s coat, but i ended up getting distracted because Terrorform was actually a lot better than i remembered. like, it’s really rather good isn’t it?

    that model shot at the beginning is very clearly just a still of the crashed Starbug from Bodyswap with some green stuff overlaid on it, though

  • I would have thought that Craig Charles would have recognized a racist symbol if he saw it though.

  • Terrorform is great. The shot of Starbug at the beginning might be a bit ropey, but the bit towards the end with the swamp has some of my favourite model/effects shots of the entire series.

  • generally the whole of Series V has some really nice special effects and overall looks the best visually out of all the series imo. it’s hard to believe they made it look as good as it did on a sitcom budget

  • I would have thought that Craig Charles would have recognized a racist symbol if he saw it though.

    Me too. But that would suggest he knowingly wore a racist symbol on television for several weeks – which I wouldn’t have expected him to do.

    Can anyone confirm if the KKK member in Meltdown has that patch on his his costume? That might explain where it came from (production wise), but would also make its inclusion in Lister’s costume a lot less innocent.

  • Every time I see a new post in this thread it makes me think there’s been news about the Blu-Rays.

    Not that I object to conversations about the provenance of Lister’s patches, mind.

  • Is the Terrorform Starbug shot really a recycled Bodyswap one? I will pay close attention when I get to that one!

  • it’s a really dodgy shot -especially considering 2 seconds later we are shown Starbug is completely fucked, yet here it looks fine. but since the rest of V looks so amazing, its easy to overlook

  • The BBC: [re-uses the same shot of Starbug flying left in 18 episodes, sometimes adding a little cgi woosh]
    The fans: Wow Red Dwarf has great model effects!

    I mean they do but that one shot always gets me, lol

    (18 episodes is an exaggeration)

  • Has there been any actual news about the blurays recently? Any insiders about? If Amazon is anything to go by they’ll be coming out in a few months.

    I suppose they have until February 2019 to get them out in the 30th anniversary year though.

  • >it’s a really dodgy shot

    Could be worse.

    (If I had mspaint, I’d add a swamp of despair for Terrorform)

  • >it’s a really dodgy shot

    Could be worse.

    (If I had mspaint, I’d add a swamp of despair for Terrorform)

    That really is some George Lucas tier fucking about.

  • it’s not awful CGI for its time (remember it was made in 1998) but the question is, why the fuck did they do this? the original model version of the chase sequence looked fucking amazing. so why replace some beautiful effects work with CGI? it’s not like they were obligated to remove every model sequence for Remastered, was it. they kept the model crash sequence in Marooned, after all. (looks incredibly odd as every other shot in Remastered is CG)

  • I can just about live with superimposed Skutters, Rimmer crashing into pots and pans, “yes god?” and the story of the second Polymorph, but replacing all those model shots with CGI was THE travesty of Remastered.

    That and all the lost/changed music.

  • the story of the Second Polymorph was one change in Remastered i never really found to be too bad, since the original ending is a bit crap anyway. it’s still a pointless addition though- you could have easily just ended the episode on the reveal that the pod contains 2 polymorphs.

  • It’s an odd reveal though, as it does make you wonder where the hell the other one has been for the entire episode.

    Unless we’ve actually been seeing both of them at different times, I guess.

  • it’s not awful CGI for its time (remember it was made in 1998) but the question is, why the fuck did they do this? the original model version of the chase sequence looked fucking amazing. so why replace some beautiful effects work with CGI? it’s not like they were obligated to remove every model sequence for Remastered, was it. they kept the model crash sequence in Marooned, after all. (looks incredibly odd as every other shot in Remastered is CG)

    They did it because they redesigned the Blue Midget to have legs for a gag (and maybe because they thought it was crap I don’t know) but surely you’d think “if I change this then I can’t use these amazing high quality model shots” and not do it.

    Or just redesign it in such a way that it looks the same but has legs. Those legs could have been underneath it, like this.

    Which is ungainly and looks like it’s in the Smooth Criminal video but at least you can use the model shots.

  • Series III Remastered actually has a number of random model shots thrown in there, including a few normal Starbug fly-bys. My theory is that they’d basically run the budget dry by III, because the Remastering gets substantially more crap at that point.

    Not as crap as The End, clearly, but that was where they had to get all their initial excitement to play with the new toys out of the way.

    Mind you I haven’t actually watched Remastered in a number of years, and even then I just enjoyed the novelty of spotting the changes.

    They did it because they redesigned the Blue Midget to have legs for a gag (and maybe because they thought it was crap I don’t know) but surely you’d think “if I change this then I can’t use these amazing high quality model shots” and not do it.

    They clearly didn’t have the money to reshoot that chase with the Remastered models, or they absolutely would have. The original plan was always to film new model shots and only utilize CGI for the bits that physically could not be created with models, but we all know how that turned out.

  • >it’s not awful CGI for its time (remember it was made in 1998)
    Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The Phantom Menace (unironically), Jurrassic Park….

    It’s probably not bad CGI for 1998, for the budget, under the time constraints, I’ll give it that. But that’s just splitting hairs, really.

    Obviously comparing big budget movies to BBC sitcom isn’t really fair, I realise I’m just being incredibly anal, lol.

  • Blue Midget really doesn’t look very good in Series II, but looks fantastic in the Bodyswap chase, and feels significantly bigger. Is that just because it was shot better, or were new models built, or is it just on account of it coasting by on the quality of what surrounds it?

  • I’m an asshole because the Bodyswap chase is one of sequences where I feel most aware I’m just looking at models hanging from wires. Blue Midget’s movement especially.

    Then again even in big budget movies with top tier model effects, I often cannot make myself see anything but a model. I’m way too aware of the processes that go into making VFX shots.

    Rare moments like the plane slamming into the tarmac in Die Hard 2 are model shots that don’t look “modely” to me and I can actually accept them as real, and not just concede that that’s going to have to stand in for what we want to show.

    I do love model effects. I just usually can’t buy them as being the scale they’re supposed to represent. I have a whole wave of rants about how fake the CGI in hundred million dollar movies looks, so don’t worry.

    Everything looks fake to me, I just have a particular taste for models.

  • >I have a whole wave of rants about how fake the CGI in hundred million dollar movies looks, so don’t worry.

    this. how is it that with millions and millions of dollars of budget, a lot of movies have CGI that looks like it was done for about $10? where did all the money go?

    >The Phantom Menace (unironically)

    a lot of The Phantom Menace was model work though. the podrace arena, the base on Naboo, the mini Death Star (or whatever the big grey thing is they blow up at the end) were all models, for example. there’s more but those are just the bits i can think of off the top of my head.

  • Series III Remastered actually has a number of random model shots thrown in there, including a few normal Starbug fly-bys. My theory is that they’d basically run the budget dry by III, because the Remastering gets substantially more crap at that point.

    Not as crap as The End, clearly, but that was where they had to get all their initial excitement to play with the new toys out of the way.
    Mind you I haven’t actually watched Remastered in a number of years, and even then I just enjoyed the novelty of spotting the changes.
    They did it because they redesigned the Blue Midget to have legs for a gag (and maybe because they thought it was crap I don’t know) but surely you’d think “if I change this then I can’t use these amazing high quality model shots” and not do it.
    They clearly didn’t have the money to reshoot that chase with the Remastered models, or they absolutely would have. The original plan was always to film new model shots and only utilize CGI for the bits that physically could not be created with models, but we all know how that turned out.

    That’s what I’m saying though, even before the set back of having to do more CG (which you could blame on production really, the model being too big for the camera to get around it in the VFX studio available is just making your own problems, I know that BBC VFX were moving around a lot but just play it safe, make it a reasonable size) they probably didn’t have enough budget to shoot 3 series worth of model shots with newly built models at a time when models and model shots had become really expensive.

    Alarm bells should’ve been ringing at the costing stage.

  • the real question is, why does the CGI in Remastered look so bad? just a year later, Chris did the CGI for VIII and most of that actually looked pretty good- i still maintain that shot of the ship in Krytie TV almost looks like an actual model, and the rest of it isn’t half bad either.

  • No, the CGI in VIII is in fact also shit.

    It’s marginally less shit than Remastered, I grant you, probably because an actual new TV series had a bit more money to play with than the remastering project. But it’s still shit.

  • The story of the Second Polymorph was one change in Remastered i never really found to be too bad, since the original ending is a bit crap anyway.

    This. I think both are shit.

  • >i never really found to be too bad, since the original ending is a bit crap anyway.

    “The second Polymorph, which was less intelligent than the first,stowed away in Lister’s clean underpants drawer, where it died of old age many years later.” is “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet” levels of shitness.

    Apparently this change was because fans kept on asking Doug what happened to the 2nd Polymorph. This is where “fan service” gets you.

  • >i never really found to be too bad, since the original ending is a bit crap anyway.

    “The second Polymorph, which was less intelligent than the first,stowed away in Lister’s clean underpants drawer, where it died of old age many years later.” is “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet” levels of shitness.
    Apparently this change was because fans kept on asking Doug what happened to the 2nd Polymorph. This is where “fan service” gets you.

    Kochanski is Red Dwarf’s Poochie now haha

  • The original Polymorph ending is way better than the Remastered, its a horror/monster movie type ending and it suits the episode pretty well.

    The remastered ending just feels out of place. what is the point is showing another one exists just to give a text screen explaining what happened to it straight away after?

  • a lot of The Phantom Menace was model work though

    I know, but Otoh Gunga, the power generator room(s) on Theed, Boss Nass, Jabba, Jar Jar etc weren’t. It’s more a question of trying to do the CGI on a shoestring and sixpence over two weeks than trying to do CGI in general. All of the “model shots” in Rogue One were CGI, and could have fooled me.
    A lot of the stuff on AotC I know was models which were built full-sized, then scanned into the computers and recreated digitally.

    Then again even in big budget movies with top tier model effects, I often cannot make myself see anything but a model. I’m way too aware of the processes that go into making VFX shots.

    I can’t either but I don’t really let it bother me. I know how the Death Star Trench run was done, I can still marvel at the spectacle/sheer technicality of it all. I know Grievous is just CGI but I still think he looks great and it only pulls me out of the story when effects are particularly bad. Even watching Classic Who try to do alien worlds for £20 an episode, if the writing and atmosphere and the acting is good enough and everybody is taking it seriously I can still be drawn into a story.

    The Bodyswap chase is so obviously modelwork, but it is so obviously -fantastic- modelwork that I love it.

  • this. how is it that with millions and millions of dollars of budget, a lot of movies have CGI that looks like it was done for about $10? where did all the money go?

    Various reasons. Outsourcing the CGI work to minimum wage workers who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your movie and just want to go home on time as opposed to doing them in-house with immense care and dedication like on Dead Man’s Chest or Revenge of the Sith, giving the companies very little time to produce their work (due to either incompetence, fast turnaround or production problems — see Series VII) rather than the years and years of work that went into something like Lord of the Rings, hemorrhaging the budget for CGI specifically, thinking it doesn’t really matter, and seeing how much you can get away with in terms of all of these factors before a modern audience starts to react negatively, for example.

  • It’s between now and the death of the universe (played by someone who isn’t Morgan Freeman)

  • I want that temp cover to be the Series XIII logo. They fixed the spacing on the letters.

  • Ooh ‘eck, what a bargain! I need to replace my US copy of X, but I’m broke right now.

  • I want that temp cover to be the Series XIII logo. They fixed the spacing on the letters.

    Huh? In terms of kerning that’s the same logo as the XI/XII one, isn’t it? They’ve just cut off part of the W and the A. They used this version in the promo adverts for both those series I believe.

  • ‘Both cheeks man’ is in there to stop anybody getting too excited about this.

    Both Cheeks Man is classic Dwarf. So is An 83 Year Old Dad. Fight me

  • Both Cheeks Man was funny, i thought. Generally I thought the whole of that bunkroom scene was funny to be honest

  • Yeah, I’m eager to get some proper details on this. There were quite a few preview videos for the recent Doctor Who set, so hopefully it’s not too much to expect that at some point.

  • As for pre-order deals, I’ve gone with £36 at Zoom as Zavvi are pretty unreliable in terms of despatch/delivery times, whereas with Zoom you’ll definitely get it on release (or likely as not the Thursday or Friday before).

  • As for pre-order deals, I’ve gone with £36 at Zoom as Zavvi are pretty unreliable in terms of despatch/delivery times, whereas with Zoom you’ll definitely get it on release (or likely as not the Thursday or Friday before).

    Have you actually ordered it then? I thought I might wait and see what Doug’s got to say about it tomorrow.

  • I ordered it as soon as the listing went up in case the price changed in the meantime. I can always cancel the order if it turns out it’s all just 16 discs of Remastered or something.

  • I don’t own XI and XII on DVD or Blu-ray because i wasn’t that impressed with them but i definitely plan on getting the 1-8 Blu-rays. yes series 8 is abit of a turn off, especially since it seems to be a box set type deal but you take what you can get and i am curious to see how 1-6 look in HD

  • surely if they’re releasing it on lovely high-quality Blu-Ray, they’re going to do something about the VII Starbug? it didn’t look good to begin with, surely it’s going to look even worse in HD. i have no idea what the budget for the Blu-Ray release is, but surely they’ll do *something* to those awful shots? or is this going to be like the main series DVDs where it’s all as-broadcast?

    the whole idea of a Blu-Ray release raises a lot of questions about what they’re going to do with it, and obviously we’ll find out when there’s an announcement but it still seems rather strange to do something like this when the I-VIII DVDs already exist with a plethora of lovely extras and animated menus.

  • You’d imagine all the special features will be going over too. And the non re-mastered linked Bodysnatcher stuff. Got a few Blu-rays to fill.

  • I’d hope so. If it’s just the episodes in HD and nothing else, what’s the point?

    Well the episodes aren’t going to be in proper HD so I don’t think the gulf will be an issue. It’s not like you can rescan tape and get 2K, the difference will be in the improved encoding and colour correction, they’ll just be upscaled.

    Just encoding them in a way that’s better than a mid 2000s DVD would be a massive improvement.

    And it’s convenient to have everything together obviously. So I want them even if they don’t look any different.

  • Really they should throw in the Remastered and Bodysnatchers stuff since the bodysnatcher collection doesn’t seem to be available to buy anymore.

    I don’t care about the Remastered stuff but its clear some do care about them and its apart of Red Dwarf history so you might as well throw it in.

  • Maybe they could put Re-Dwarf on, but I can’t see how they could include things like Doug and Ed’s commentaries without having the remastered episodes on too, so that’s 5 extra episodes.

    Bodysnatcher, The End Original Assembly, the gallery and the two series documentaries should be on there though.

  • Given that space shouldn’t be an issue, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t include all of the original extras on the Blu-Rays (other than minor rights issues like the music for the montage featurettes).

    Unless we’re getting lots of new extras, which would obviously be even better.

  • Given that space shouldn’t be an issue, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t include all of the original extras on the Blu-Rays (other than minor rights issues like the music for the montage featurettes).

    Unless we’re getting lots of new extras, which would obviously be even better.

    I don’t think many tears will be shed if they’re not there haha

    I’d love a 30 year retrospective though. Talk to people who are in, and like Red Dwarf, and discussion about the wilderness years and shiz.

  • Maybe he got the date wrong and meant Friday. That’s when TOS updates usually are, isn’t it?

  • I ain’t expecting any new extras since it would be cheaper for them just to use the ones they put together for the dvds and throw them on there instead.

    Although i would like a Rob and Doug commentary but i ain’t holding out hopes for it.

  • If doug makes an announcement it will probably be later tonight since TOS can still give an update tomorrow on the subject.

  • Well if Doug has any more ‘announcements about nothing’ or ‘dates that don’t matter’, he can just tweet out a tease hysterically and I’ll come pelting across the internet.

  • I just hope most of the extras from the original eight series’ DVDs are brought over, I wonder if it’d be possible for Beat the Geek to be included on the release too, that’d be cool.

  • Well unlike The bodysnatchers Collecton i think you can still buy Beat the Geek so that may not be necessary.

  • >Well if Doug has any more ‘announcements about nothing’ or ‘dates that don’t matter’, he can just tweet out a tease hysterically and I’ll come pelting across the internet.

    [Applauds]

  • I’d probably buy a Blu-Ray player, HD TV and the boxset just for a Doug and/or Doug & Rob commentary track.

    If I recall correctly, Playsation 3s can play Blu-Ray discs? So if you have one of those, you’re already sorted.

  • Beat the Geek would need redoing to go on a Blu-ray I think. I’m almost certain Blu-rays don’t access data as quickly as DVDs, which are already slow. And I’m pretty sure interactive dvd games survive on being as quick to the answers as possible.

    Obviously they can access more data though so you could do a much improved version with Java, which I think is in the Bluray standard.

  • Well if Doug has any more ‘announcements about nothing’ or ‘dates that don’t matter’, he can just tweet out a tease hysterically and I’ll come pelting across the internet.

    Took me longer than I’d like to admit to realise this was a reference and not just you being passive aggressive

  • Doug you’ve got 67 minutes until I label you a “reyt little shit” for getting me excited for no reason.

  • So are we looking at 11:30 on the official site tomorrow then?

    To be honest it’s just nice to know there’s an official announcement on the way, whenever it turns up.

  • The announcement is up on TOS, and it reveals fuck all other than the release date (which we already knew) and that absolutely nothing will be changed in terms of the actual episode content.

  • This presumably means we’re getting the episodes as-broadcast, so no Tikka To Ride Xtended or Back In The Red Xtended? (despite them being the superior versions of the episodes)

  • Well, not really. Just because Amazon lists something it doesn’t mean those details are correct. People around here should be savvy enough about how the industry works to know that release dates and schedules change, and sometimes things show up on there that don’t happen at all (hello, Mr Movie Book). The listing on Amazon showed up far earlier than it should have done and there’s not much we could do about that, just as we couldn’t say “This is definitely happening on this date” until it was definitely happening on that date. And you might not believe this but I can assure you that the release date absolutely was not confirmed and official and ready for public announcement until this week.

    So well done, pat yourselves on the back, you “knew” this stuff sooner, but guess what! Lots of people didn’t, as evidenced by the replies already this morning. So to those people, this is news.

  • It’s not news, it’s olds.

    EDIT- Just saw Seb’s response, my bad. I do think Doug tweeting out the release date two days before the actual announcement made everyone think the announcement was going to be something more than just the release date, though.

  • There are no new effects, no re-recorded lines, no cut jokes, and no mysteriously appearing skutters. Just the Red Dwarf you know and love… given a fresh polish to look and sound even better than ever.

  • Could have just put a link to Doug’s tweet.

    The revelation that If you know something, you don’t truly know it until someone who also knows tells you you know is life-changing however haha

  • Well, not really. Just because Amazon lists something it doesn’t mean those details are correct. People around here should be savvy enough about how the industry works to know that release dates and schedules change, and sometimes things show up on there that don’t happen at all (hello, Mr Movie Book). The listing on Amazon showed up far earlier than it should have done and there’s not much we could do about that, just as we couldn’t say “This is definitely happening on this date” until it was definitely happening on that date. And you might not believe this but I can assure you that the release date absolutely was not confirmed and official and ready for public announcement until this week.

    So well done, pat yourselves on the back, you “knew” this stuff sooner, but guess what! Lots of people didn’t, as evidenced by the replies already this morning. So to those people, this is news.

    I was referring more to the fact that Doug has been tweeting quite regularly about it for months and months to his 30,000+ followers on an account which I would consider equal to TOS in terms of its Red Dwarf news legitimacy. This isn’t old news in an ‘I know something you don’t know’ way, it’s old news in an ‘already revealed via a major official Red Dwarf internet outlet’ way. I’m not trying to be a downer on the fact it obviously needs formally unveiling, but it’s just weird to imply that all knowledge of it before today was illicit, unofficial or a mistake, and even weirder to make an issue out of it.

    On this side of the fence we’ve been through a 2-year onslaught of the XI episode guide leak, the clapperboard, the Krysis early release, the XII steelbook titles, Norman Lovett’s loose lips, the T-shirt we were supposed to pretend wasn’t being missold for a fiver, Ray Peacock mentioning the Polymorph, Google Play mispricing the soundtracks, the IMDB credit for the Female Cat extra, the press photo of Butler, Hollister’s face in the XII trailers etc etc everybloodyweek for two years, and I’m not apologising for having had my absolute fill of being gaslit in adherence to protecting a corporate PR campaign that I have literally nothing to do with. I’m not paid to *care* about something as trivial as ‘reveal’ timetables going off-piste, and I shouldn’t have to. But this wasn’t even a ‘leak’. And to me, it’s little more than bemusing that the official website of Doug Naylor’s company exclusively announced some news in August that its CEO already announced in February. That’s all. There. I hereby apologise for being bemused at something bemusing.

  • I was referring more to the fact that Doug has been tweeting quite regularly about it for months and months to his 30,000+ followers on an account which I would consider equal to TOS in terms of its Red Dwarf news legitimacy. This isn’t old news in an ‘I know something you don’t know’ way, it’s old news in an ‘already revealed via a major official Red Dwarf internet outlet’ way. I’m not trying to be a downer on the fact it obviously needs formally unveiling, but it’s just weird to imply that all knowledge of it before today was illicit, unofficial or a mistake, and even weirder to make an issue out of it.

    I wouldn’t say he’s been tweeting about it “quite regularly” (something about eating roast beef here), he’s mentioned it a couple of times and obviously to the eagle-eyed observer who spotted the tweets there’s a pretty clear implication of “This Blu-ray is actually happening, and probably in October”. But there is a difference between hinting at the possibility of something happening and then the actual confirmation that it’s officially happening.

    From the point of view of whether or not it matters to fans on here, that might seem like splitting hairs. But you can see why it’s annoying to me that having finally been able to make an official announcement about this (because the date was actually not completely confirmed before this week) it’s met with “Oh, boring, we all already knew this”. Not least because you only have to look at the replies on Twitter and Facebook to see that this is news to a lot of people. Not everyone follows Doug on Twitter, not everyone pays attention to the fansites. There is value in doing these kind of announcements properly and large-scale and frankly it’s a pisser to see an immediate reaction of bored entitlement.

    Will you be like this if and when series XIII gets commissioned? “Oh, well, Radio Times already said it was happening, so this isn’t news”.

    And to me, it’s little more than bemusing that the official website of Doug Naylor’s company exclusively announced some news in August that its CEO already announced in February.

    Can you point me to where in February Doug said “BBC Worldwide have confirmed that they are definitely releasing all eight series in a boxset on October 1st, they will be restored versions of the original episodes”? Because if you can’t then I take issue with your suggestion that what was announced today was “already announced in February”.

    I’m not paid to *care* about something as trivial as ‘reveal’ timetables going off-piste, and I shouldn’t have to.

    I’m not asking you to care. I’m just taking issue with the snidey pissy comments.

  • Also, if it’s “bemusing” to you that you can’t tell the difference between an individual getting away with saying something on their personal account and a corporate account not being able to say the same thing due to embargo restrictions then… well, I think you’re lying about being bemused because come the fuck on, you know how things work better than that.

  • I hope the no changes also means “see you later Alligator” is intact. The weird Netflix “here we go” song is jarring.

  • Anyway, look, it’s not my place to police how people react to things, so I’ll just fuck off and leave you all to it.

    Hopefully at least someone can understand why I was annoyed, which is that this is a pretty big deal and as much as people already knew about it I was excited about finally getting to go official with it and bring out more information as we go along. So to come here, to a site I’ve been visiting for a decade and a half and contributed a lot to for five years, and see a load of people pissing on my chips, was not fun.

    But that’s my problem not yours and you shouldn’t moderate your reaction to things based on the fact that I’m around. The easier solution to that is for me not to be around.

  • I think it was that Doug’s tweet from yesterday already had “October 1st” in it, so myself (and presumably others) expected a little more from the official announcement than a reiteration of that same date.

    It’s understandable why you got annoyed, but then I think it’s understandable why others got annoyed too. If the announcement contained the cover art, or perhaps a glimpse of what the improved picture quality would be like, there would be much rejoicing. And obviously that stuff’s going to come closer to the release date, but Doug saying “Big Announcement Tomorow #RedDwarf #BluRay #October1st” stirred up a fair bit of excitement for something more than the release date shown in the exact same tweet.

  • Yeah, I think the issue is more with Doug on Twitter rather than the announcement. Not everyone will be reading his Twitter feed, but the 30,000 who are had the confirmation and release date given to them alongside the promise of a ‘big announcement’ – it’s not surprising that some of them will feel underwhelmed when the announcement largely just repeats the confirmation and release date.

    The actual post on the official site is completely fine, obviously. At first I was annoyed that we didn’t have a long list of extras, the front cover, etc., until I remember that this is exactly how the details of the original DVD range was rolled out. So ignore the moaners, Seb. And give Doug a slap on the wrist (or a spit on the wrist) for his revealing tweets making it all seem a bit anti-climatic.

  • Seems like everyone has got pissy chips.

    You can say we didn’t know officially but we knew it was coming and when, either for months (since the pre-orders went up etc) or days since Doug said Blu-rays I-VIII October 1st on twitter) but hardcore Dwarf fans knew that it was coming and we are disappointed that we know nothing new.

    No-one is saying that the Bluray isn’t potentially a big deal (although it’s hard to say how big a deal because we haven’t seen it or know what’s on it) or that the TOS article is badly written or anything, just seems a bit underwhelming since I’m sure the majority of the people who are inclined to check TOS without Twitter or Facebook links probably knew everything said already (unofficially). I don’t know your numbers or anything though so fully accept I might be way off and TOS might get loads of casual traffic.

    At least the people outside of this website reacted in the way you wanted, which is probably who you want to reach anyway, since we’re all probably going to buy it regardless.

  • Listen, I’m sorry my tone there was a bit harsh (there are external reasons for this which I apologise for not keeping under control), and it’s nothing personal. Likewise, I genuinely appreciate that you still pop up here. If there was anything outright nasty there I offer genuine apologies for it. I do stand by what I said but I didn’t need to be so shitty about it.

  • …
    …

    Well I was certainly excited about the official announcement! Not a whole lot of completely new information of course, but it’s good to know that this is all definitely happening, and that there’s definitely not going to be any Remastered style shenanigans.

    Also, I quite like the version of the logo where the text is blue rather than red. It’s nice.

    I’m looking forward to hearing about cover design, extras etc. in the coming months, but if nothing else this is the perfect opportunity to get BtE-XII on Blu ray without making a sub-optimal DVD spine continuity choice.

    Ooh, I just had a thought: there is a non-zero chance that this box set will come with a booklet! I’d give both my appendixes for a good Red Dwarf Blu ray booklet, I would. However, I will settle for a nice sticker on the cover.

    Anyway, where can I contribute to the fundraiser to replace Seb’s pissed-on chips, and maybe get him a 1.5 litre bottle of Pepsi and a Pukka Pie too? We need to repair the schism. :-/

  • At least thats how it is for me. I don’t know you could have more than a litre of anything with a meal of pie and chips

  • While obviously declaring the interest that Seb is a very close friend, for me the blame for any disappointment in today’s announcement lies with the guy who tweeted about it two days in advance, not the guy who made the announcement.

  • I don’t know you could have more than a litre of anything with a meal of pie and chips

    Resealable bottle caps, bloodteller. They’re great. I highly recommend you look for the drinks which have them in your local supermarket.

  • While obviously declaring the interest that Seb is a very close friend, for me the blame for any disappointment in today’s announcement lies with the guy who tweeted about it two days in advance, not the guy who made the announcement.

    Although it didn’t feel like Doug told us anything we didn’t know already from a months-old Amazon listing, so it felt like the cat was out of the bag way before his tease (whether or not the details were finally nailed-down behind-the-scenes).

    Regardless, I think everyone is happy to have it officially confirmed and looking forward to hearing more about it.

  • It was a shame that the news sort of dribbled out over months to die-hards, rather than being announced properly. A satisfying solid turd is a lot more enjoyable than diarrhea for much the same reason. But for fans who don’t frequent web forums or twitter and visit TOS, this may/will still be a surprising and welcome turd.

    PS. I need a poo.

  • A satisfying solid turd is a lot more enjoyable than diarrhea for much the same reason.

    Thank you for the insight

  • Does Rimmer Poo?

    You know, for fun

    Does he have hard light shite?

    Indestructible bum eggs.

    Use them to patch holes in the hull.

  • Er, so, anyway ..

    I don’t have a bluray player. I’ve never really understood the difference between them and DVDs other than being ‘better’. Could someone explain what the beter’ness is? I only have a pretty average TV that’s several years old and a bad eye for seeing the difference in quality of things.

    Most blurays seem more expensive than their DVD counterpart, so what are you getting for that money?

  • My TV is a quite old, relatively small and pretty blocky CRT so I doubt any amount of Blu-Rays will make things look better

  • You probably won’t tell the difference in audio. The visuals are strikingly different in proper HD mode on a proper HD TV. You’ll need an HD TV to actually use a Blu-Ray player of course.

    If you’re not actually that fussed about super-amazing-realistic-quality picture, then it’s not worth the investment. It’s one reason I’m yet to bother.

  • Much higher resolution, bitrate, probably colour depth, Blu-Ray players work better with HDTVs, etc. If you aren’t fussed about picture quality all that much then just putting a DVD into your computer is basically fine. Do they have better audio as well?

  • Yeah Blu Ray’s offer far superior picture and sound quality to DVDs but if you have a TV that’s less than 40″ the picture quality probably won’t be all that noticeable (or at least that’s what I’ve always seen as the general rule of when Blu Ray is “worth it”) and you’d need something to support your HD flat screen TV to get the benefits of the better sound. I had a 40″ TV with a soundbar when I started buying Blu Rays and found the difference in quality to be very much noticeable.

    The format has really made me explore film in a way I never did before, as old films getting the right treatment can be the real highlights of the format and the great presentations are a great excuse to check out old films that you may not have had the chance to see. Arrow Video did a release of The Thing last year (which I had seen numerous times before) that looked so good it was like seeing the film for the first time. It was a beautifully filmic presentation that felt like it was very much in line with the original intentions of the film makers in a way that previous home video releases never did.

    HAVING SAID THAT, and as others have mentioned, these episodes of Red Dwarf are coming from an SD source so I wouldn’t suggest that anyone rush to get a Blu Ray player/HD TV so they can enjoy this release. There are still benefits that can be brought to an SD source by Blu Ray but I’d wait for the reviews to see if the jump is really worth it. It’s all in the execution with this one.

  • The Doctor Who Season 12 release which is likewise from an SD source looks great. A good improvement on the previous releases for that season. Red Dwarf should be an even bigger improvement as the first few series of Red Dwarf didn’t have the best presentation possible even for DVD.

  • I feel like had Doug done the Earth episode from series 8 as a final we would still have got BTE onwards. It just seems like something Doug would do just because he wants to make more and like the ending of Series 8 it will just be ignored or Doug will say its a parallel universe or something like that as an excuse to allow it.

  • >You’ll need an HD TV to actually use a Blu-Ray player of course.

    Ah. Yes. That’s pretty obvious when I think about it now. My current TV is perfectly adequate for my needs for now, so guess I’m not going to be a blu-ray customer.

  • The big question, of course, the important question everybody is forgetting, is: Will this release come in a cardboard sleeve?

    And perhaps more to the point: Is this getting a US release, how will they handle the 25fps conversion, and will they fuck it up as badly as they did the Red Dwarf X release (which got slowed down to 24fps, but not pitch-corrected)?

  • The big question, of course, the important question everybody is forgetting, is: Will this release come in a cardboard sleeve?

    And perhaps more to the point: Is this getting a US release, how will they handle the 25fps conversion, and will they fuck it up as badly as they did the Red Dwarf X release (which got slowed down to 24fps, but not pitch-corrected)?

    I predict one of those half cardboard sleeves that only covers the bottom and it’ll say 30 years of Red Dwarf or more likely 30 Smeggy Years Edition. And the release will be region free and the same for everyone. I don’t know whether thats good for Americans or not though.

  • >And the release will be region free and the same for everyone

    Can’t be the same for everybody as many US players/TVs cannot handle 50i. It would need to be converted for any US release. Really baffles me though. UK players/TVs can handle everything so the only thing holding it back is the occasional region locking.

    The conversion process is much better now than the conversion used in the past for DVD/broadcast as shown by the Doctor Who Season 12 set. If the UK version isn’t much of an upgrade, the US version should be for fans out there. Unless they fuck it up.

  • >And the release will be region free and the same for everyone

    Can’t be the same for everybody as many US players/TVs cannot handle 50i. It would need to be converted for any US release. Really baffles me though. UK players/TVs can handle everything so the only thing holding it back is the occasional region locking.
    The conversion process is much better now than the conversion used in the past for DVD/broadcast as shown by the Doctor Who Season 12 set. If the UK version isn’t much of an upgrade, the US version should be for fans out there. Unless they fuck it up.

    Thought to get the Blu-ray licence you had to be able to process all forms of Blu-ray. 24/25/30/60, but from looking doesn’t seem so, but plenty support it from what I’ve seen so maybe importing might be worth it if there’s no region lock. PlayStation 4s and Xbox One’s will be fine too.

    Shouldn’t be a problem for the TV itself, the panels are all the same anyway.

    Maybe it’s worth having a Twitter with Doug before it goes to the printers, get some clarification.

  • The PS4 – and in fact any Sony-branded Bluray player – cannot play 1080i50 discs, but the Xbox One can.

  • It’s fucking ridiculous that we even have region coding any more. Why can’t we just have a universal format for crying out loud?

  • It’s ridiculous that we haven’t just sorted out this framerate nonsense. Isn’t everything digital now anyway?

  • Region locking is relatively rare on Blu-Ray. It is always worth just giving bluray.com a quick check before you buy to see if it is locked though. Criterion Collection is a big one that is locked, I seem to remember.

    I have found that importing Region A releases is sometimes cheaper than buying the UK alternative. I ended up getting the US Austin Powers trilogy and the UK version of the first film (unedited in the UK but edited on the US) for cheaper than it would cost to buy just the UK trilogy. You also find that the US version has more in the way of bonus features.

  • It’s ridiculous that we haven’t just sorted out this framerate nonsense. Isn’t everything digital now anyway?

    Yeah, every time I read one of these threads it baffles the hell out of me. I can’t quite work out why there isn’t just a universal standard for presenting TV and film on digital screens.

  • It’s ridiculous that we haven’t just sorted out this framerate nonsense. Isn’t everything digital now anyway?

    Yeah, every time I read one of these threads it baffles the hell out of me. I can’t quite work out why there isn’t just a universal standard for presenting TV and film on digital screens.

    British TV and US TV are different frame rates which is fair enough, no need for a worldwide standard framerate because the only reason hardware can’t play everything is software, what we need is worldwide standard software.

  • It’s fucking ridiculous that my XI/XII Blu-rays are slowed down without adjusting for pitch. I just cannot fucking believe it. What idiot made that happen?

    I personally love Dave era Dwarf, but the American releases are just…

  • A damn shame this still has to happen for US viewers of all UK shows. The worst is when the US masters with the fucked up frame rate is then used for the UK release such as happened with New Doctor Who Series 1-4.

    The big benefit for UK buyers of all films and TV on Blu-Ray is that it comes in the correct frame rate. I’d say this even tops any improvement to detail or picture/sound quality. Crazy to think I was watching stuff with 4% speedup for all those years. It is why I am really hoping to see a remastering of some other favourite shows such as Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Buffy, Angel and the rest of 30 Rock after season 1. I’ve got the complete set of Quantum Leap on the way next week which I hear looks amazing on top of now being in the correct frame rate over here.

  • I just did a big Twitter thread about the 1080i50 issue, because it was that or get up and go for my daily walk.

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