This is in reference to Battlestar Galactica The Complete Epic Series. I've noticed in spots (i.e. the scene in the pilot when Adama and Tigh are conferring while sitting in Viper cockpits, and in a good portion of the episode "The Magnificent Warriors") that it appears that there's a grainy quality to the image. I was under the impression that digital remastering cleaned up things like old grainy film. What's up?

BTW- In a post I made a few months ago, I wondered if anyone had problems with the Space Above and Beyond box set when it was a Best Buy exclusive. I found a forum where that topic was covered. There were a LOT of people who got discs that had little pits in the metal layer of the discs, some played, some froze (I finally managed to get hold of a copy that had the defect to a lesser degree, though still visible, but the discs play just fine after going through six or seven different sets).

I notice grainy quality in other DVDs.I guess they take short cuts on remastering them.

The Space Above and Beyond set, the first set I got was bad, but the second set was ok,I guess I was lucky, not having to keep getting sets.

I'm not familiar with the shots you're talking about but if they are composite sfx shots then "cleaning grain" can present a real problem. There's only so much that can be done to "clean up" any film and that is largely dependent on age, cost, and extant source material.

Grain extraction can be a very expensive and time-consuming process. Probably beyond the scope and $$$ of what Universal Home Video wanted to spend on the release of the TV series.

Film grain doesn't bother me. Anything that originates on film is going to have grain. Period. Transitions, visual effects, optical zooms, pans and recompositions, forced processing, duplicating, etc., all contribute to the amount of grain in a film presentation. It also adds to the "character" of a film. Removing too much of it during a video transfer can significantly alter that very same character, often in a negative way.

Take the DVD release of Citizen Kane, for instance. This is a case where they went overboard on grain removal. While the picture looks undeniably "perfect" in nearly every scene, it certainly does not look at all like what moviegoers would have experienced back when it was originally released. In fact, it looks so good that you would almost think that it was shot on high definition video, rather than film. Not necessarily what the filmmakers intended.

Take the DVD release of Citizen Kane, for instance. This is a case where they went overboard on grain removal. While the picture looks undeniably "perfect" in nearly every scene, it certainly does not look at all like what moviegoers would have experienced back when it was originally released. In fact, it looks so good that you would almost think that it was shot on high definition video, rather than film. Not necessarily what the filmmakers intended.

Good point.

A great example of how it's done right is The Kids are Alright. It was restored, after MCA butchered it for VHS, to represent exactly what movie goers saw when it was released. You can watch it with a new 5.1 audio track, or with the original mono track. Check out Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere-the audio's terrible, sounds like it's being played through a garden hose, but it's how it was.

As for BG, I think it's pretty good considering the age of the show. Compare it to Airwolf, Proof through the Night is just about unwatchable.