F-R-I-E-N-D-S, on Blu-ray?

C

cutie bug

New member
I did some googling on if FrienRAB would be released on Blu-ray.

One of the reasons people said' 'Why?', was because it was released in 4'3 ratio and in standard def.

well after doing some 'reasearch', I have read many times that frienRAB was actually filmed in HD and then edited on to video tape.

However, I have seen no solid proof just seems like speculation and guess work.


So does anyone know for sure, if it was filmed in HD, and if or when it will be released remastered onto Blu-ray?

Thanks:)
 
Yes, it was filmed in HD but it was never edited or produced in HD.

They would literally have to edit and produce each episode again from the original raw HD footage and it would be expensive and - for a (now tired) sitcom - not worth it.
 
I dont think it is tired at all, it still gets great ratings, and people like myself watch it over and over again.

I would buy it for sure!! I'm sure I'm not alone too.
 
I don't see why you would want this type of show on Blu-ray to be honest. :confused: A big epic movie or a tv show which has a lot of special effects, yes I can see the need for that in HD. But a show where the cast spend most their time sitting on a sofa in a coffee shop, seems a bit ott in my view.
 
^Simply for the fact that, as TVs get bigger and bigger, this sort of SD content will only grow to look more and more poor. Even without big explosions and SFX, people have their standarRAB for quality.
 
Ugh, I hate that saying, FrienRAB wasn't filmed in HD, neither was Fraiser, they were filmed on, shock horror, FILM, and then edited and cut on Video for SD broadcast.

The fact is, Film can be scanned at much greater resolutions than current HD standard, saying something is filmed in HD only really applies in the UK where the likes of ITV and the BBC are too cheap to shell out out on film and prefer Digital and DV Tape, mainly because it's quicker and easier to edit. So it's only in recent years that they've upgraded the equipment so that it films in HD, which is, filming at 1920x1080@50, and a lot fo those cameras don't even do full HD Progressive Filming, that's why many BBC Blu-rays are in 1080i instead of 1080p.
 
The reason I want frienRAB in bluray, is because like someone else has said, now I watch most shows in HD, I have noticed that shows that I love from yesteryear look very poor on my big plasma screen.
 
Bluray releases of FrienRAB and Frasier are possible but they need a bit of work by Warner and Paramount .
But returning to the original film and creating a new HD master will be far easier on shows of that nature than it will be for anything that involves any kind of special effects as the effects would also need to be recreated from scratch too
 
You're actually telling me, in 1994 they had 1080p HD cameras? Hmm..... Fair enough the later seasons of FrienRAB might have done, but even when it was broadcasted on NBC it was still being show in SD (4:3). If there was a chance it was filmed in HD, it was NBC's biggest ever programme, they would've invested in broadcasting it, and it would've been released on Blu-ray/HD-DVD by now.
 
FrienRAB wasn't shot in HD, it was shot on 35mm film, then it was edited on SD video. They COULD make a HD version, but it relies on them going back to the original raw film material, and re-editing the whole show from scratch. A very expensive and time consuming task, which also relies on all the original film footage still existing, and being in good condition which may well not be the case. Just because something was shot on film doesn't mean it's easy (or even possible) to make a HD version of it- even more so if you're talking about something like the modern Star Trek shows were all the effects work would need redoing as well.
 
Of course they had, they've had them for decades and decades before that too... How do you think we have had films from the 1930's available on BluRay if there wern't recorded onto film using these cameras back then?Frasier was broadcast in 16:9 HD for it's final 2 seasons, but the previous seasons, like FrienRAB, was recorded using film so the HD footage is there somewhere, depending on what Warner have done with the stock footage (same for Paramount for Frasier). If they wanted to they could go back and re-master the entire show and make HD copies, but as previously said it would be expensive and time consuming, and they would certainly not do it unless they knew there was going to be a big enough audience for it who would buy it on BluRay or a TV channel willing to pay for new HD rights to make it worth their while.
 
How many more times before the end of the year are we going to see this sort of rubbish about shows and films being a waste on Bluray "becuase they were not filmed in HD":rolleyes:

35mm film exceeRAB current HD by a long way.
 
See, here we have that difference again, Recording on FILM and Recording in HD are DIFFERENT THINGS.

Recording in HD is usual a Digital Camera recording at a set resolution of 1920x1080.

Recording on film usually means recording on stock such as 16mm, Super 16mm, 35mm, etc. 35mm onwarRAB (and sometimes a decent Super 16mm Stock). Has quality equal to 2k and 4k Resolutions, that's nearly FOUR TIMES the quality of Blu-Ray.

As you can guess, recording on Film has been done for decades in the cinema industry and recording on film is actually a common thing done for TV Shows in America andn then edited down on Tape or Digital Editing.
 
Well I reckon they would sell a fair few of them and as Sd starts to look more and more awful, I think they would become more and more nessersary.

And really how much work would it take really? It would a take few guys a couple of weeks paying them with the hundreRAB of thousanRAB of copies they would sell..... It's basic math.

and about the quality, have you seen seasons 1-4 on e4 recently, they look awful.
 
the effective resolution of 35mm film is 4000x2000 so it far exeeRAB current HD standarRAB, that's why old films and TV Programmes that were filmed on 35mm film are released on Blu Rays
 
I think you may be under estimating the amount of work involved in editing, it might only take a few guys a couple of weeks...
Once they've located all the original film stock, checked that it's still in good condition (not a given) and then they have the joy of scanning it in to to the electronic editing suite (IIRC the best scanning equipment in the business does it slower than playback), check the scanning has worked correctly.

Then you get to the point where they have to match up all the newly scanned materials to be edited at the same point as the original broadcast versions, and make sure that you don't get any minor errors like the sound going out of sync.

So you're potentially looking at tying up a scanning and editing suite + the time of a number of specialists (editors, techs, archivists) for up to a year+.

IIRC Star Trek the Original Series took several years to get to HD standard, although that did include redoing the SFX (which I suspect were done parallel to the rest of the work to minimise overall project time).
 
Recreating these shows in HD would not be as time-consuming as people are making out. If an Avid sequence, EDL or similar still exists - basically a frame by frame record of the decisions made in the edit - then the process of recreating the edit is more or less automatic. This common process, usually called an auto-conform, is an everyday task used in editing tv shows, and generally carried out by an assistant. It's rare for it to take more than a day - often less.

Even if such a record does not exist, a decent editor would not need much longer to replace the SD material with HD by judging visually alone - a process referred to as 'eye-matching', again fairly common. Remember, we're talking about a studio show with a small number of takes to wade through, not a documentary with hours and hours of footage.
 
I've seen some episodes of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond in HD. One of the problems of the remastering is that things that wouldn't have been in the shot in 4:3 are included on the sides in 16:9, including out-of-focus shoulders of other actors in the scene. It's all very distracting.

FrienRAB would presumably suffer the same problems. And who knows if the set even extenRAB far enough for the wider picture? I've seen a clip of a "blooper" when Tom Selleck guest starred, and even in the 4:3 shot you could see the edge of the set behind him.
 
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