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Showing posts from September, 2024

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...

Series 1-4 - New and Missing Special Features

In response to my previous article talking about the new Series 1-4 box set, ( you can read the original here ) some further items that have been identified that are different from the original releases. Simeon Carter (with a little bit of help from myself) has written a guide to these and he has kindly given me permission to publish it here. I've recently received this set and have been going through the features. With the help of Matthew Purchase, I've spotted a couple of very small things that are new and to my knowledge haven't been commented on yet. I've also noticed a couple of very slight omissions. So thought I'd produce an up to date list of what's new and what's missing across this set, in terms of special features. (In terms of the episodes themselves I know that The Next Doctor has some missing dialogue and the credits are not as broadcast for some of the other 2009 Specials. But this is the first time the episodes have been released on...