Red Dwarf: Reimagined

[Smeg4Brains]

Just stumbled across this on YouTube. Someone has tried to make the beach scene from BtL look more like a tropical paradise and less like Rhyl. Personally, for a fan project, I think they’ve done a pretty good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRoPw291Qo4

Topic

[Dave]

Yeah that’s pretty well done. Nice job.

[Flap Jack]

Very nicely done indeed. The producers of Remastered are looking on with intense jealousy.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Until the comparison I thought all they’d really done was brighten it a little.  On that wide shot especially I thought I was just watching the original footage.  Really well done.

[Jenuall]

Yeah that’s very impressive, definitely helps to give everything a brighter and more tropical feel but without making it look too “processed”

[steveg1988]

If remastered was done in 2022, this is what it would be like. the tech of 1998 was limited, as was the analog to digital conversion for the editing of the master tapes. 

[International Debris]

It’s kind of sad that they spent so much time and money on Remastered and ended up with something that has actually dated far worse than the original.

[steveg1988]

Honestly, remastered was there to help sell the show to more audiences that were not there the first time round. It was fairly short-sighted to have them do it then. The Blu-Ray set with its color correction actually helps make the show feel a bit better produced since the skin tones aren’t as washed out now. In all honesty the best way to remaster it in 202x would be to find the 35mm film for the model shots and rescan them in at a HD resolution, and find any early pre-edit tapes of the show and recompile it from there. Some doctor who DVDs have done that, Remberance Of The Daleks went back as far as the tape trail let them so the DVD looks better than broadcast. Since it is not as degraded due to a copy of a copy from whenever they made an edit.

It’s kind of sad that they spent so much time and money on Remastered and ended up with something that has actually dated far worse than the original.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The truly damning thing about Remastered is that Howard Goodall lent the master tapes for the score to them, and not only were they not used, GNP somehow managed to lose them completely. That’s why all the recycled music cues are in mono in the Dave episodes.

[Dave]

[GlenTokyo]

Bluray set was still the bigger swizz for me. 
AI upscale which only occasionally looks better and a colour grade, and with constant bigging up/ lack of expectation setting from Doug/ GNP. At least they showed us remastered before we bought it, we knew what it was, they tried something to freshen it up and it didnt always work, but I’d love to see a proper remastered now, get rid of the AI(?) upscale, the detail doesn’t exist, don’t make it up. As above, get in the archives/ Rob and Doug’s self storage units and lofts and try and find anything better than what they put on the DVDs. Ask Pete Tyler if he has a secret stash of model shots and scan them at the highest resolution and edit them in. Don’t replace the exceptionally high production value model shots with CG. A nice grade on the episodes to make them look as nice as possible and make the box art not shite.
If they could update the special feature included on the DVDs with higher resolution images that’d be nice too. I’m sure they were scanned in at a decent resolution even in the early 2000’s and are more likely to still exist somewhere.
I’d snatch their hand off.

Maybe for the 50th anniversary 

[Dave]

Honestly I don’t think I want any new versions of the existing episodes at this point. Each time it’s just something new to moan about.

The DVD/BR versions are fine even if that’s as good as it ever gets, perfectly watchable.

Making any more changes at this point would just be a whole new can of worms.

[Jonathan Capps]

I’m not even sure there was any AI involved in the upscaling. We’d be noticing some strange artefacts from it, I think.

[Flap Jack]

AI upscale which only occasionally looks better and a colour grade, and with constant bigging up/ lack of expectation setting from Doug/ GNP. At least they showed us remastered before we bought it, we knew what it was, they tried something to freshen it up and it didnt always work, but I’d love to see a proper remastered now, get rid of the AI(?) upscale, the detail doesn’t exist, don’t make it up.

I’m not even sure there was any AI involved in the upscaling. We’d be noticing some strange artefacts from it, I think.

Yeah, I’m almost certain there was no AI upscale, just a normal upscale. Ironically, after the Blu-ray release I recall people discussing how an AI upscale could have been awesome (and I think someone actually AI upscaled a short clip as a proof of concept?), because an AI upscale, if done well, would have actually made it look like it was filmed in HD. But it would be way too expensive to do that, especially considering the size of the home media market. Not even the classic Doctor Who blus get AI upscaling.

On the whole, I hugely disagree that the Blu rays were more of a disappointment than Remastered. It’s true that the upscale wasn’t revolutionary, and it’s true that there were no wholly new special features to make it a must buy, and it’s also true that they messed up in authoring 2 of the discs and had to offer replacements, and yes, “Thanks For The Memories”… but ultimately the episodes do look better (in my opinion anyway – going back to DVD on a big enough TV, it is noticeable) and none of the colour grade decisions stuck out to me as looking wrong. It all looked as good or better than DVD to my eyes (plus the minor improvements of having menus that are quicker to navigate, and making most of the Bodysnatcher Collection content more easily available). It’s just debatable whether that’s £40 of improvement.

Remastered on the other hand, well, I don’t really need to reiterate all of the weird decisions that were made there. I don’t think the fact people didn’t have to buy it first makes up for the egregious changes it made, while also carrying the implicit threat of taking inspiration from George Lucas and becoming the canonical versions of Series 1-III, for a while.

[GlenTokyo]

The colour grade is fine, that’s a good thing for me. I think some of the later episodes do look better but the earlier episodes look a little worse on occasion or just the same really, since most things I watch DVDs on have fairly competent upscalers built in.
The main issue for me though is as above, the bigging up. I was always dubious because we all know Red Dwarf was filmed on one inch tape, but the way Doug canned it because it wasn’t going to be good enough, and then revived it made me think maybe they’ve actually got something worth putting out. Maybe they’ve got the OB film stuff and scanned that in, and some model shots. 
With the disk issues and a few general errors it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was watching remastered as it came out, and I was young, so maybe I’m less harsh on it with my nostalgia spectacles on, it’s very much crap, but I feel like what it did do with the audio (not the replacement of music cues though) and the grade was more worthwhile at the time than the bluray set was at the time.

I was perhaps too young to perceive the threat to the OG versions or realise why it was bad. I probably like Episode 1 at the time.

I generally don’t like upscaling things and calling it HD though, even AI which can look good with certain inputs, the thing isn’t there, just make what is there as nice as possible and release it in SD with a better encode, maybe put 3 series on a disc so it doesn’t cost us as much.

To be honest this has all been coloured a bit by getting a new expensive phone and finding out that a lot of the camera features have AI upscaling and AI interpolated frames haha 

[Warbodog]

I don’t think the fact people didn’t have to buy it first makes up for the egregious changes it made

Remastered was a video release first in 1997 and broadcast from late 1998-99 (series VIII aired between II-R & III-R).

The most random Red Dwarf trivia I have is I remember the trailer for Balance of Power remastered used non-remastered clips, including ship shots.

[Flap Jack]

The main issue for me though is as above, the bigging up. I was always dubious because we all know Red Dwarf was filmed on one inch tape, but the way Doug canned it because it wasn’t going to be good enough, and then revived it made me think maybe they’ve actually got something worth putting out. Maybe they’ve got the OB film stuff and scanned that in, and some model shots.
With the disk issues and a few general errors it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Well, imagine how sub-par the original attempt must have been!

I guess it depends on how much is genuinely the fault of Doug and the other Blu ray producers, and how much is self-inflicted. If they had the budget to upscale/remaster Red Dwarf 1-VIII in HD, but didn’t have the budget to add new special features, and didn’t have any film footage to re-scan, then they probably did the best they could, and had to sell it as hard as they could. Perhaps it was overhyped on their part, but they couldn’t exactly say “hey, so Red Dwarf Series 1-8 is coming out on Blu ray. It’s fine, but not a huge upgrade. Maybe get it if you don’t have it on DVD already, but if you do have it on DVD maybe wait for it to go on sale, or just not bother”.

My optimistic perspective is that it’s a minor miracle that a BBC Dwarf Blu ray set was even feasible, and we were additionally lucky to get all 8 together, and not just 1 or 2 individual sets before the series was abandoned due to low sales. How many 80s/90s sitcoms are available on Blu ray? It can’t be many.

I also suspect that some people in GNP had to push hard to get the Bodysnatcher Disc to happen, so I appreciate that.

I was watching remastered as it came out, and I was young, so maybe I’m less harsh on it with my nostalgia spectacles on, it’s very much crap, but I feel like what it did do with the audio (not the replacement of music cues though) and the grade was more worthwhile at the time than the bluray set was at the time.

I was perhaps too young to perceive the threat to the OG versions or realise why it was bad. I probably like Episode 1 at the time.

Hmm, well I guess the grade wasn’t, but were any audio changes carried forward to other releases? Because the overview of Remastered is a bunch of changes that they ultimately went back on, which doesn’t make it seem especially worthwhile. (Except in the sense of getting overseas sales at the time, of course.)

Then again, perhaps being so different makes it interesting enough to justify its existence, even if most of the changes are arguably bad. Fair enough, taste is subjective and whatnot.

I generally don’t like upscaling things and calling it HD though, even AI which can look good with certain inputs, the thing isn’t there, just make what is there as nice as possible and release it in SD with a better encode, maybe put 3 series on a disc so it doesn’t cost us as much.

Although it might not seem like it, I trust that upping the resolution to 1080p does squeeze the maximum amount of detail out of the source, even if it’s a very small difference. An unusual “SD on BD” type release would just mean the quality improvement would be even smaller, and make the release even harder to justify, even at a lower price. I can see where you’re coming from though.

Remastered was a video release first in 1997 and broadcast from late 1998-99 (series VIII aired between II-R & III-R).

Ah, OK. I was just going off what GlenTokyo said about them showing Remastered before people bought it. Did this not happen at all, or was that just in the form of trailers?

[Warbodog]

Oh yeah, it was advertised on Red Dwarf Night in Feb ’98 when they showed The End and clip/s in the A-Z. And after only seeing the general ‘1997’ date for the project itself, I’ve just found confirmation in Kris Carter’s Drive Room that the videos actually started releasing at that same point in ’98 after all.

[Flap Jack]

Ah ha, OK, that clears that up. Thanks!

[GlenTokyo]

Hmm, well I guess the grade wasn’t, but were any audio changes carried forward to other releases? Because the overview of Remastered is a bunch of changes that they ultimately went back on, which doesn’t make it seem especially worthwhile. (Except in the sense of getting overseas sales at the time, of course.)
Then again, perhaps being so different makes it interesting enough to justify its existence, even if most of the changes are arguably bad. Fair enough, taste is subjective and whatnot.

I generally don’t like upscaling things and calling it HD though, even AI which can look good with certain inputs, the thing isn’t there, just make what is there as nice as possible and release it in SD with a better encode, maybe put 3 series on a disc so it doesn’t cost us as much.

Although it might not seem like it, I trust that upping the resolution to 1080p does squeeze the maximum amount of detail out of the source, even if it’s a very small difference. An unusual “SD on BD” type release would just mean the quality improvement would be even smaller, and make the release even harder to justify, even at a lower price. I can see where you’re coming from though.

This is what I mean really, the changes made were a change with a reason good enough to justify the experiment. I can’t say for certain re: whether the audio made it anywhere else, but after all the work that went into it I wouldn’t be surprised if the pre Remastered fiddling but better quality versions did end up on the DVD, are their dubbed versions of the original DVDs, if so that would be the Jem Whippey tape transfers wouldn’t it? 

I just don’t think the changes for the bluray particularly justify it, I think a consolidation boxset bluray (SD but retransferred if they had the tapes) with a couple of updates or new things in HD (like any model/ OB shots and high res images) would have been just as worthy, arguably more worthy.

I can’t say I’m an expert at upscaling so I’m likely talking out of my backside, but I imagine the original transfers for the DVD were MPEG2 which is fine for the time. but If they’d have had the tapes and could transfer them with a modern codec, I think that would have been an appreciable bump in image quality because there’d be less blockiness when stuff moves, which would then maybe make the scaling really worth it if dragged up to 1080p. Being 1 to 1 pixel ratio for your TV possibly helps in some way, but I think the modern codec would actually give you more to work with because less of the detail is lost in motion.

I know a lot of people like the blurays, particularly for the menus and the added Bodysnatcher stuff, they definitely have value in that regard, but for me, as a Red Dwarf fan with the DVDs and the Bodysnatcher Collection, I was disappointed at what was implied and what turned up. 

The box art is just shit though, no-one will get me to mellow on that.

[GlenTokyo]

And yeah, I meant the Red Dwarf night spot for showing us what we were getting into. We got nowt from the bluray.

[International Debris]

Is the colour grade on the Blu Ray really that good? I’ve only seen side-by-side screenshots, but my main takeaway from it was that it basically undid most of John Pomphrey’s lighting decisions, which was enough to make me decide not to bother with the release by itself.

[Author]

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