Everything looks better in HD… right?

Not sure why your post merits a thumbs down.

I completely agree with you on sound. We have an early 42″ plasma that actually has reasonable sound quality, but feeding Dolby Digital through a receiver and getting the surround sound effects is another world of sound, a door banging behind you, a helicopter flying across the room, being in the midst of the action.

Thank Alfa some think I should have restricted myself to commenting on the actual video formats but the convo is also about your enjoyment of what you watch , that needs sound unless it is a pre- 30,s movie you lose out big time on the actual enjoyment of the film/DVD . I will give you a “thumbs up ” to see how people react.

I agree with Alfa and have neutralised the scoring.

TV sound has gotten poorer because people wanted them thinner and thinner plus any audio enthusiast is expected to be using a surround receiver anyway.

It does indeed, but you might be surprised to see just how cunning some of the algorithms in video editing are becoming. I suspect it won’t be long before we see old, video-sourced material being refreshed at much higher definition. To a limited extent that’s already possible but video editing continues to move in bounds.

It’s very good, and the US shows are normally archived in their original 35mm prints. But there’s still a big market for Star Trek.

We are big fans of Star Trek and have re-watched nearly all the series and films over the last few years. Next Generation is our favourite, but Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise were even better second time around.

We have Star Trek the original series recording at the moment but not on an HD channel. Although the recordings are quite good, I think they would be even better on an HD channel. So we are hoping one of the other channels will show it soon.

I’ve been watching ST Voyager recently on Netflix. I was reminded about why I didn’t really put in in my ‘really want to see again’ category. All series take a while to hit their stride and ST Voyager was no exception. But despite doing what ST has always done well (present current moral issues in a hypothetical future setting) the background knowledge that Kate Mulgrew, portraying the apparently Bipolar Janeway, made life extremely difficult for Jeri Ryan on set because she resented a good looking (some say stunning) woman being brought in ‘to boost ratings’ changes the way I perceive the scenes which involve them both, sadly.

As an aside, ST Voyager used models and not CGI until season 3, when it moved over the CGI. In terms of overall quality I’d place ST-TNG first, ST-DS9 second, ST-TOS third and Voyager last. TOS lost both money and its way in season 3, and the egregious Shatner (unpleasant individual in real life) always seeking the limelight did the franchise no favours.

No, ST:V was the first Trek to use only CGI and no models.

And I agree Kate Mulgrew should not have treated Jeri the way she did. She was particularly upset over Jennifer Lien being fired to make room for a model to bring in sex appeal. For a show that was supposed to be progressive with regards to women, I can understand why KM was so angry, though I can’t understand why she blamed Jeri for it. Fortunately for Voyager fans, Jeri’s performance was absolutely fantastic and the character was written beautifully. They should have fired Garrett Wang instead of Kes. Kes was just coming into her own, and Harry Kim never did anything for the show except detract from it. In fact, if he had been killed off, it would have been the character’s one and only dramatic contribution to the show. But alas.

(No offense to GW, but the character was just a bunch of blah taking up space.)

Star Trek has a history of treating its female actors poorly (Grace Lee Whitney, Gates McFadden, Terry Ferrell, Jennifer Lien) It’s too bad KM chose to make Jeri’s experience on the show miserable in response to their mistreatment of both female actors and characters.

Very philosophical Bishbut and I cant argue with your logic . My problem is I was born with an engineering type critical brain that easily spots small flaws in man made equipment and cant help being irritated by it and wondering how to overcome it. I would love to be born accepting things as they are but not in this incarnation . Without a critical sense we would not get very far in human evolution , tools would not be envisaged , inventions would not be made , we would be lucky to get farther than the wheel. Actually I have small demands on humanity – a small cottage in a country setting with a garden and a small stream nearby, the birds singing in the trees , wildlife all around , a few white clouds in the blue sky , a gentle breeze, vegetables growing nearby . Then I woke up to reality but one of our ex posters has said he is living my dream and -yes – I am actually jealous .

When our CRT TV finally gave up in 2005 we bought a 42″ Pioneer Plasma TV – quite a shock to adjust to such a change! Terrific picture but we to received no HD channels. Then we installed Freesat and compared HD and ordinary. Frankly, the difference was not significant so we never go out of our way to watch HD. Whatever, the picture we get is perfectly satisfactory.

The trouble is, the standards we used to be satisfied with – take cars for example – become eclipsed by higher standards that we now cannot possibly do without. Annual mobile phone change for example. Personally I’m too mean to do things like that; my 10 year old Nokia does what I need and I don’t want to find out I need more. What you’ve never had you’ve never missed? But my new car has head up display, speed limiter, auto hold and parking sensors and I now want those!

I think TV is slightly different. Wide screen was the most important change, because it more closely mirrors how we see the world. But TVs are very different in the way they process the image information and what looks stunning on one TV can appear lacklustre on another.

Last year we bought a 55″ Samsung that was a top of the range model and a W? best buy. The difference between SD and HD on that set is frankly astonishing, but the set’s electronics upscale existing image feeds to close to 4K – its native resolution – so just about everything looks better. In the dining room our Bravia 46″ looks feeble by comparison, and it’s also worth remembering that images shot especially with the 4K market in mind are likely to appear stunningly effective.

The best test is Last Night of the Proms. That exposes differences in processing capabilities and sound output. We use an optical feed into our 9 Channel surround system, and that really does make a massive difference.