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Showing posts from July, 2023

AI on Classic Doctor Who. Why it's bad.

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   I can’t believe I am writing a post like this, but I really fear for the future of The Collection.     The restoration work carried out on Classic Doctor Who had always been to such a high standard. When the show started coming out on Blu-ray in 2018 I was incredibly impressed how the picture looked. Free from DVD compression, allowing the master tapes of episodes shot on 2” or 1”inch video tape to shine through. There was picture noise, a bit of blurriness at times, but that was ok. No-one complained because we all knew how the episodes were made back in the 20 th Century. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. So I have to question why BBC Studios decided to risk all of that by starting to use AI to upscale the footage? In principle it may sound good, maybe even beneficial to the episodes, but the problem is AI is just what an algorithm thinks an image should look like, leaving in its wake a huge number artefacts that change how an episode looks. P...
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New Nu-Who box set?

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With the interesting news that the BBC are releasing a complete “Nu Who” box set in Region 1 (USA and Canada), this release could offer a diamond opportunity revisit some of those releases. Especially earlier titles that the BBC released on Blu-ray.     When the BBC chose to ‘remaster’ Series 1-4 on Blu-ray in 2013, they were designed for the Region 1 market. The new copies that were made were poorly done, resulting in the episodes running at a lower frame rate, which slows down the episodes. Other mistakes were also made like the misspelling of Phil Collinson’s name on the Rose credits. These discs were then used in the UK as well. We didn’t need the change in frame rate and have to put up with the slowed down episodes. Whilst the picture quality is better, the DVD’s still have some quite big benefits over the Blu-rays. Early 5.1 mixes that were created for the box sets are controversial in the sound mix. Audio levels were adjusted meaning dialogue in places became unclea...
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