Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition DVD Box Set

Phil-YAI · 18-06-2009, 10:44 PM

Can anybody who has bought the "Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition" DVD box set, tell me how the picture and sound quality compares to the previous release, please.

Many thanks.

rojgelf · 19-06-2009, 3:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phil-YAI

Can anybody who has bought the "Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition" DVD box set, tell me how the picture and sound quality compares to the previous release, please.

Many thanks.

Here are some screen shots comparisons, just from 3rd series which was particularly bad in the old set, not had time to actually watch any of the remastered episodes yet.

Blackadder screenshots

Phil-YAI · 20-06-2009, 2:25 PM

Thanks for posting the screenshots.

There seems to be some improvement, but not a huge improvement.

rojgelf · 20-06-2009, 2:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phil-YAI

Thanks for posting the screenshots.

There seems to be some improvement, but not a huge improvement.

Yes, I'll try and watch on my big screen later, only looked at my computer so far.

rojgelf · 21-06-2009, 7:23 AM

watched xmas carol last night, picture was excellent, don't have the specials in my old boxset so don't know how much of an improvement.

David Mackenzie · 21-06-2009, 4:46 PM

"Remastered" can mean just about anything. Those screen shots aren't very conclusive though - the "new" ones have been Deinterlaced with a crude Blend filter so are vertically blurred. The old haven't been deinterlaced at all.

It looks like the new one has been run through a noise reduction process and the old hasn't.

shortround · 22-06-2009, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

"Remastered" can mean just about anything. Those screen shots aren't very conclusive though - the "new" ones have been Deinterlaced with a crude Blend filter so are vertically blurred. The old haven't been deinterlaced at all.

It looks like the new one has been run through a noise reduction process and the old hasn't.

Are you sure you haven't got the shots the wrong way round? I noticed the artifacts as well, but then realised that the new shots are actually on the left and not on the right (you can tell by the file names). Although the site says 'old v new', it should in fact say 'new v old'.

The artifacts also may be a result of the method of screen capture, rather than indicative of what's actually on the disc.

David Mackenzie · 22-06-2009, 1:37 PM

Yeah, I was looking at the filenames themselves.

shortround · 22-06-2009, 3:05 PM

I really hope they haven't deinterlaced it like you say. I'm hoping it's a side effect of the way the screens were grabbed.

It seems like a crazy thing to do considering DVD is an inherently interlaced medium. In order to deinterlace a video source for DVD, I'm assuming they'd have to 'drop field' it too, which means we won't even be seeing all the frames (fields) that exist!

Anyway, I have this on order, so I'll try and get some more shots up when I get it.

David Mackenzie · 22-06-2009, 3:50 PM

Oh no, they won't have deinterlaced it - it'll just be the screen grabs.

rojgelf · 22-06-2009, 7:15 PM

All screenshots were taken with WinDVD 8, with window at 1024*768.

Ricky27 · 23-06-2009, 11:22 AM

I didnt think the picture on my complete collection was all that bad and these screen shots dont make me want to buy this new version atall, but great if you havent already bought, or if you only got the box set with just the series in it.

Bit of a cash in IMO.

shortround · 23-06-2009, 12:10 PM

Well, after doing some comparisons, I can say that the 'improvement' in this new remastered edition is marginal at best.

I had always had the suspicion that the original DVD releases were transferred from battered broadcast dupes, rather than from the original master tapes. This is the only reason I could think of for why they always looked so terrible.

It seems my suspicion was wrong however, as I'm assuming that, if there were indeed master tapes that hadn't been previously used, then they would be used for this set. The difference is so marginal however, that one can only assume that this is indeed how the master tapes look - pretty terrible.

So I guess all they've really done is a bit of noise reduction and a bit of brightening to give the false impression that they are from a superior source. While it certainly is a small improvement, I wouldn't say it's worth anyone buying this new box set if they already own the previous one, unless they abosultely must have all the new bonus features (which in this case amounts to the new commentaries on a few episodes, and the 'Rides Again' documentary).

The intro to The Cavalier Years still contains the damage that causes the picture to go fuzzy for a few seconds and the sounds to go wonky too right at the beginning. On an old VHS 'Best Of Comic Relief' tape I have from years ago, this damage wasn't present, so one can only assume that the master tape was damaged sometime between then and the first DVD release.

Christmas Carol is still censored (missing the 'next year they want us to nail up the dog' line from early on in the episode), despite the fact that it is present on the original US region 1 release (Christams Carol is a special feature on the series 3 disc in the US). I can't for the life of me think why this line is still censored in the UK, it really is pathetic.

I haven't yet checked if the Scarlet Pimpernel poem has been reinstated in series 3 ('...and what's that revolting garlic smell?'), but somehow I doubt it. The only version I've seen it intact is in the UK laserdisc release from years ago.

Anyway, here's some shots for you to make up your own minds. Bear in mind though, that the 'old' shots are from the NTSC releases (I bought these over the UK versions because they actually had some special features!), which will have a slight resolution disadvantage over the UK versions (480 v 576), which could mean that the improvement between both UK versions is more subtle than highlighted here!

Also note that, due to the non-square pixels used for DVD and the fact that I have not resized the images, the aspect ratios will not be correct.

Series 1

old 1 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7738/ba1old01.png

new 1 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/120/ba1new01.png

old 2 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7830/ba1old02.png

new 2 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/369/ba1new02.png

old 3 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/3111/ba1old03.png

new 3 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/6264/ba1new03.png

old 4 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/504/ba1old04.png

new 4 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5081/ba1new04.png

old 5 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/8363/ba1old05.png

new 5 http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7946/ba1new05.png

shortround · 23-06-2009, 12:22 PM

David Mackenzie · 23-06-2009, 12:34 PM

Your old release is in NTSC?

In any case, I think that's just about as good as it's ever going to look. That's what happens when you shoot Video...

shortround · 23-06-2009, 12:38 PM

shortround · 23-06-2009, 12:46 PM

shortround · 23-06-2009, 1:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

Your old release is in NTSC?

Yes. The original US releases contained the specials as extra features, whereas the original UK releases were barebones, so I imported the NTSC versions.

What I'm not sure of is how the 50i source would have been converted to 60i. Frame stepping through shows that there are 60 individual images, so I have no idea where they got the 10 extra frames from, unless they are entirely interpolated. You seem like you have a technical knoweldge of this sort of thing. Do you have any idea of the process involved in this type of conversion, or any links to info?

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

In any case, I think that's just about as good as it's ever going to look. That's what happens when you shoot Video...

I agree. Like I said before, I had hoped these transfers would be culled from a superior source. But it seems there is only one source available, and it's a pretty poor source at that.

What would have been great is if they went back to the original 16mm film elements for all of the exterior shots and telecined them at high definintion. However, I'm guessing they wouldn't have archived the elements to begin with and probably just scrapped them once they'd been telecined for editing.

Of course the ultimate way to do it would be to release it on blu-ray. I realise the resolution is fundamentally limited by the video source, but the benefits would still be twofold:

- Professional industry standard upscaling prior to compression.

- Superior compression from high bitrate AVC encoding.

I think the low bitrate mpeg2 encoding on the DVDs is one of the main areas where the image quality is let down.

David Mackenzie · 23-06-2009, 1:23 PM

v

Quote:

What I'm not sure of is how the 50i source would have been converted to 60i. Frame stepping through shows that there are 60 individual images, so I have no idea where they got the 10 extra frames from, unless they are entirely interpolated. You seem like you have a technical knoweldge of this sort of thing. Do you have any idea of the process involved in this type of conversion, or any links to info?

Oh man - you're ASKING me to talk about standards conversion?

Like you say, the motion will have been interpolated up to 60i. Going from 50 to 60 usually looks a lot better than going the other way around.

Depending on when the conversion was done (and the quality of the equipment), it will either be field blended or motion assisted. The former method just blends fields to match the output (60hz) regardless of what's going on in the frame. The latter actually uses motion detection and selectively shifts blocks around, so results in a lot less motion blur.

Quote:

What would have been great is if they went back to the original 16mm film elements for all of the exterior shots and telecined them at high definintion. However, I'm guessing they wouldn't have archived the elements to begin with and probably just scrapped them once they'd been telecined for editing.

Yeah, they did this for Doctor Who I think. The modern-day CCD telecine looks 100 times better than the milky, blown-out CRT based equipment they used back then.

Also, although I haven't seen it in motion, I don't think MPEG-2 will be holding it back that much (unless you're seeing obvious block artefacts when it's in motion). The image is very soft so shouldn't be too hard to compress.

shortround · 23-06-2009, 1:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

Depending on when the conversion was done (and the quality of the equipment), it will either be field blended or motion assisted. The former method just blends fields to match the output (60hz) regardless of what's going on in the frame. The latter actually uses motion detection and selectively shifts blocks around, so results in a lot less motion blur.

Thanks for the info. Judging from that description, I think they used the latter method, as none of the frames are completely messed up with motion blur or blended fields or anything.

Ricky27 · 23-06-2009, 2:01 PM

I have stacks of BBC comedy, sci-fi,drama and apart from the later series such as the office/Life on Mars etc all Dr Who/Blakes 7/Only fools etc that was shot on video look quite quite grainy, but the Dr Whos are the best of the bunch with a alot of attention and corrections on pic and sound done by the excellent Restoration team.

Shame they arent allowed to work their magic on all vintage BBC dvd releases.

David Mackenzie · 23-06-2009, 2:04 PM

It's an even bigger shame that BBC routinely junked material they thought was useless in the 60s and 70s.

shortround · 23-06-2009, 2:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shortround

I haven't yet checked if the Scarlet Pimpernel poem has been reinstated in series 3 ('...and what's that revolting garlic smell?'), but somehow I doubt it. The only version I've seen it intact is in the UK laserdisc release from years ago.

I take that back! Just checked, and the pimpernel poem has been reinstated!

David Mackenzie · 23-06-2009, 2:14 PM

Why was it ever removed? I'm not too familiar with the programme.

shortround · 23-06-2009, 2:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

Why was it ever removed? I'm not too familiar with the programme.

I read about it ages ago, so can't remember the details, but it was something to do with rights issues. I think the quoted poem may be copyrighted (excepting the 'garlic smell' line of course!).

Ricky27 · 23-06-2009, 2:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Mackenzie

It's an even bigger shame that BBC routinely junked material they thought was useless in the 60s and 70s.

Couldnt agree more, i cant believe noone had the sense to keep what took so much effort to make in the first place.

iDarren · 22-10-2009, 2:13 PM

What are the chances we'll ever see this and Fawlty Towers transfered to Blu? (I know they are SD).

David Mackenzie · 22-10-2009, 4:09 PM

If they're both shot on video, I'd guess "never" - or at least not until BD overtakes DVD in terms of mass acceptance.

Timmy. · 28-11-2009, 11:31 PM

I'm tempted to buy this anyway.. and give my old Complete Edition as a Christmas present.

It has extra content... Is it good extra content?