Well, in the My Favorite Martian thread, I'd hoped to avoid too much harping about Fox and Lost In Space but the topic came up and I think this info should serve as a warning.

Fox claims on the Season 2 (Vol.1) set of LIS that they are "Digitally Remastered". Read it for yourself in big print on the box. Many people mistakenly associate digital remastering with mastering of the ORIGINAL source material. Hey, it's digitally remastered so they took that 35mm film out of the vault and made digital transfers...right? Wrong.

This is from Ron Epstein, moderator and owner of the hometheaterforum website:

"Fox Home Entertainment is using the 1988 1" video masters for Season Two.
This is the same source as the Columbia House VHS tapes and the
Japanese
laser discs, etc. Fox assures me, however, that these analog masters have
been put through an additional digital cleaning and color correction step,
so they should look better than ever (although not as "crisp" as digital
transfers would)."

Did you read that?

"...analog masters have been put through an additional digital cleaning..."

Oh, give me a freakin' break!!

To call these episodes "Digitally Remastered" on the box is, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright fraud.

The source material is 16 YEAR OLD ANALOGUE VIDEOTAPE. Suppose you take a photograph and then make a photocopy of the print. Then you take that photocopy and photograph it with a digital camera. Then you take the digital photograph (of that photcopy) and use it to make more prints. Is that digital photo a digital master? Yes...if you are Dan Rather.

Don't be conned.

Well it's from LAST CENTURY, and the antique methods used speak lots about 20th Century Faux. Just how low can Faux set the bar? Pretty low it seems. I thought the 1st season looked better on the tapes than the DVD's.

I thought the 1st season looked better on the tapes than the DVD's.

Fox released 12 VHS tapes of Lost in Space that were digitally remastered (The Columbia House VHS release is a different story). I have a few of those Fox VHS tapes and I can tell you that they are FAR superior to the 1st season DVDs. I've never seen the CH tapes so I won't comment on them.

This is especially ironic for me. I spent $3000.00 on a digital television. I just spent some big bucks on a new DVD player that can send a pure digital signal into a digital interface and bypass any analogue conversion.

So what am I stuck with?

I've got digital discs made from analogue masters...and I've got analogue tapes made from digital masters!!

Nice planning Fox!

For me, the highest quality video presentation of LIS is when I view it on the 13" TV set in my bedroom because it's the only TV I have that's still hooked up to a VCR.

This is a serious tangent, but it is just slightly related -- how long does "20th Century Fox" continue to use a name that will only serve to make them sound more antiquated as we proceed deeper into the 21st century? I expected them to start using the name "Fox" right after the turn of the century. Mildly surprised they haven't done so.

Qapla'

SSB

They'll probably switch to "Twenty-First Century Fox"

I had the complete set of CH tapes. When I first got a dvd recorder in Nov. 2002 the first thing I did was transfer over the LIS tapes. At the time a complete set went for around $800 on ebay and I wanted to get rid of them before word got out of the S1 dvd release. I put two episodes on each single layer DVD-R and maxed the bit rate by using the entire disc(approx. 100 min.) with no left over space. When the S1 box set came out I put a disc in one dvd player and the one I made in another, qued them to the exact same pot, hit play, and toggled back and forth. The quality was identical. You wouldn't be able to tell which is which if you didn't know. That's when I decided to skip on buying seasons two and three.
Season two of the tapes has color fading, really noticable with the colors of the shirts. Season three looks significantly better.

I have to ask the question again...even with all the problems with the LIS sets (and I won't disagree with anyone...Fox should be ashamed that they didn't do a better job with the transfers or source material - not to mention this consumer raping format of releasing half the season...Hell I got ALL of Season One for what they're charging for half of Season Two), would we rather have them or nothing at all?

Though I still have a VCR, all of my LIS, LOTG & VTTBOTS tapes were stolen long ago. If this is the only way I can get the series, I'll take it.

Just my 2 cents...

'Frets

I have to ask the question again... would we rather have them or nothing at all?

If this is the only way I can get the series, I'll take it.



In the long run, the BEST answer is that we would be better off with NOTHING.

You have raised a philosophical point which I have long pondered. At the risk of getting too deep, this is a wide question about industry and how it relates to consumers. It's something that goes beyond DVD.

I, for one (and maybe I am the only one...I don't know), am tired of consumers accepting inferior products from industry and saying, "It's better than nothing". The acceptance of low quality breeds more low quality. LOST IN SPACE is arguabley the most popular of the Irwin Allen series. If Fox can succesfully market inferior transfers of LIS, can you imagine what VTTBOTS will look like?

As a long time car buff (currently own '59 Corvette, '68 Triumph, '76 Trans Am) I used to read car magazines in the very early 1970's. I recall reading letters to the editor where other car buffs were complaining about the AWFUL cars we were getting from Detroit. They produced millions of two ton cars that got 11 mpg, rusted away in two years, and came with 6 month warranties. But people bought them. Foreign cars had virtually no distribution (other than Volks Wagen). You can't imagine what a strange sight a Datsun was in 1970!

The reality is that an undemanding public and a uncaring auto industry inadvertantly conspired to drive down quality and seriously damage the North American car business. Detroit produced crap because we bought crap. We put a few hundred thousand of our own auto workers out of a job because we encouraged low quality and allowed foreign industry to fill the gap.

If we had been more quality conscious in 1962 instead of 1972 and demanded better products, maybe CHRYSLER WOULD HAVE BOUGHT DAIMLER BENZ instead of the other way around!

Since this is a modeling BB, I will say that I extend that same philosophy to models. I don't buy snap kits with stickers. Buying snap kits with stickers just encourages the manufacture of more snap kits with stickers.

And I don't think that better than nothing.

Well, in the My Favorite Martian thread, I'd hoped to avoid too much harping about Fox and Lost In Space but the topic came up and I think this info should serve as a warning.

Fox claims on the Season 2 (Vol.1) set of LIS that they are "Digitally Remastered". Read it for yourself in big print on the box. Many people mistakenly associate digital remastering with mastering of the ORIGINAL source material. Hey, it's digitally remastered so they took that 35mm film out of the vault and made digital transfers...right? Wrong.

This is from Ron Epstein, moderator and owner of the hometheaterforum website:

"Fox Home Entertainment is using the 1988 1" video masters for Season Two.
This is the same source as the Columbia House VHS tapes and the
Japanese
laser discs, etc. Fox assures me, however, that these analog masters have
been put through an additional digital cleaning and color correction step,
so they should look better than ever (although not as "crisp" as digital
transfers would)."

Did you read that?

"...analog masters have been put through an additional digital cleaning..."

Oh, give me a freakin' break!!

To call these episodes "Digitally Remastered" on the box is, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright fraud.

The source material is 16 YEAR OLD ANALOGUE VIDEOTAPE. Suppose you take a photograph and then make a photocopy of the print. Then you take that photocopy and photograph it with a digital camera. Then you take the digital photograph (of that photcopy) and use it to make more prints. Is that digital photo a digital master? Yes...if you are Dan Rather.

Don't be conned.


Actually , Kevin Burns told me all that and then I told Ron Epstein.
And it's about 5 months old too I think... ?

Just saying this so you know where that statement/definition originated from.

I noticed this label on the box yesterday at the store and thought it was deceiving too. I didn't have much time to read the box to see if they explain it any better or not. I take it they don't by Brent's post.

So that was Kevin Burn's definition of the digital editing of S2 (Brent's Quote) - I am not sure what Fox Home Entertainment's definition of "Digitally Remastered" is ... :freak:

They shouldn't be the same - but it sounds like they are - which is wrong. :(

Mike

The acceptance of low quality breeds more low quality...
SNIP
The reality is that an undemanding public and a uncaring (auto) industry inadvertantly conspired to drive down quality...
SNIP
Detroit produced crap because we bought crap...


Oh Brent, don't go there...

As depressing a notion as it may be, we Americans are frequently content with mediocrity. Consider the food we eat... the officials we elect to office... the education we provide for our children... the popular culture we embrace... The list goes on. Why do you think Twentieth Century Fox makes films like Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes", "Daredevil", and "I Robot"? Because they can.

I'm sure the legal dept. at Fox Home Video didn't think twice before slapping a misleading lable on the "L.I.S." DVD. After all, who's gonna care? The good news is, there are still people out there who DO care about what they do and how they do it. There aren't a lot of them, but they make a big difference. To me, anyway.

A little quality can go a long way.

For the record, the large text on the back of the LIS boxed set reads:

"INCLUDES 16 COLOR
DIGITALLY REMASTERED
ORIGINAL EPISODES"

There is no further explantion. After that intro, we get (in smaller font) the standard pitch, "Get ready for another blast of classic sci-fi adventure..."

I don't want to sound like I have any more technical expertise than I really do. I don't understand the ins and outs of the electronic processes involved.

I'm an example of that old cliche: I don't know much about art but I know what I like :).

I can't say WHY some things look the way they do. But I do know this much: I own 1000+ DVDs, an expensive HDTV, an expensive DVD player and I know what crap looks like! I tried to watch the LIS episode "WILD ADVENTURE" from the new set and literally had to turn it off after 5 minutes. I was so upset by the picture that couldn't watch it.

I've a feeling this is happening more and more and it's all about profit margins and legalise: See technically, if you hook an analog 1" up to a DVD burner, you've just "digitally retransferred" it. Of course it's a digital copy of crap, but hey if you're a lawyer working for Home Video, who cares?

I work at Paramount, in video duplication, and yes, we use old analog 1"s as source masters all the time. Some of the assets we acquired when Viacom bought us seem to be only available on 1". We have no idea if negs even exist still.

For many studios' older, less trafficked properties, the 1"s they made in 1985-89 are still their masters of choice. My guess is that for Fox, making digi-beta copies of their old LIS 1"s was too expensive. To break into the vaults and retransfer the negs to D-5 or some other decent digital medium was going to eat into the minor profits this title would generate, so they went with the cheap and cheerful route.

Heck, when I look at "The Derelict" from my LIS season 1 set, It definately looks like it came from some slightly degraded analog source. There's no way it's a new negative transfer.

Bottom line: If you're buying DVDs of older, "cult" shows, chances are, the studio's home video department simply saved money by transferring whatever old master they had available. These people will not spend one red cent if they don't have to.

These people will not spend one red cent if they don't have to.

Newsflash: Rupert Murdoch caught in the act of being extremely cost conscious.

Bottom line: If you're buying DVDs of older, "cult" shows, chances are, the studio's home video department simply saved money by transferring whatever old master they had available.

I'm going to be a bit more specific in my complaint and say that the big problem isn't that LOST IN SPACE looks bad. The big problem is that it looks WORSE than any TV show I've ever seen on DVD!

That's what I can't figure out.

When you collect something (ANYTHING) you establish a quality yardstick. You learn what's good and what isn't. If you collect stamps, coins, old cars or antiques, you understand what type of quality to expect in a given era and a given price. When you want to add something to your collection, you can compare it to what you already own to determine whether or not it is a quality item.

In that past, when I've ranted about LIS, many people have said that they thought the quality was fine. Quality is a subjective measure and people are entitled to their opinion. But I've always asked, "If you think LIS looks fine, what are you comparing it to?"

Why does MR.ED, which was a synidicated show predating Lost in Space by about four years, look orders of magnitude better? The TWILIGHT ZONE is much better than LIS. GILLIGAN'S ISLAND is much better than LIS. MY FAVORITE MARTIAN is much better than LIS. As for the color episodes...the Gerry Anderson shows from the same era (THUNDERBIRDS, CAPTAIN SCARLET and UFO a couple of years later) look immeasurabley better.

If all those shows didn't look so good, I would have much lower quality expectations. But when I look at a dozen old TV shows in my collection and LOST IN SPACE is at the bottom, something isn't right. I wouldn't have thought that Rhino Home Video would put out a better product than Fox but thats the way things are.

Brent, I see where you're coming from with the car analogy, but we had choices back then and by & large we chose to ignore the imports. Flash forward to today and the word "import" is almost meaningless due to all the mergers and buy-outs (I drive a 2001 Dodge Avenger which is in reality a rebodied Mitsubishi eclipse).

My point was that while there are still choices (buy / don't buy from thousands of other DVD titles), for some of us these are the only versions of "Lost In Space" that are available. Yeah, I'd be happier if Fox had done the job right, but does that mean I shouldn't buy them? My kids are probably the only ones in their class who even know what Lost In Space is because they grew up watching it with me. We all like the show so I'll buy them even if they're less than perfect (not being videophiles, I doubt we'd even notice most of the problems you see).

I have a lot of bootlegged Beatles concerts on VHS & DVD. On most the picture quality is lousy and the sound abominable, but I have them for their historic value & because I'm a big fan of The Beatles. That's my yardstick: What else is available?

And of course Paramount had to add its two cents worth to the "bogus digitally remastered" DVD releases. I noticed the picture quality is "off" in the Star Trek first season episodes. At the end of the closing credits for at least one episode the paramount logo appears, and it has the 1978 copyright date, indicating the source was the video release. :mad:

When will these classic series get the high quality dvd releases they deserve?

I have all episodes on vhs and they were done in 1997, i am saving them for when i can get a DVD recorder and transfer them. the tapes are still in great shape and i wonder just how well i will be able to transfer them and once on a disk should last a long time. anyone know the life of a dvd compared to hi quality vhs video tapes ?

anyone know the life of a dvd compared to hi quality vhs video tapes ?


Its been stated that DVDs should last 30 years given proper care and storage (such as being stored upright, and watch the temperature and humidity), while VHS should be good for 10 or so years.

Nobody really knows how long a dvd will last yet. I've read anywhere from 2yrs to over a hundred. Poorly manufactured discs have been known to fail as early as 1 year after recording. I have tapes that are over twenty years old that still play fine. I'm betting they will last longer than tape.

The reason tape fade is because they are rolled up on themselves. A floppy disc will last longer. The magnetic field interacts with the ajacent fields on the tape when it is rolled and the fields of force begin to cancel themselves out much the same way waves in a pond gradully flatten out to stillness.

I will run the tapes from beginning to end and rewind them just to keep the tapes from being in one position for too long, and i just noticed, this is my 1,000th post !!!!