Before and After

Matt and I have Season 3 of TNG on Blu-ray, and it's pretty special. Even low effects episodes are delightful, like Who Watches the Watchers with all its outdoor splendor look great in HD. Anyone who hasn't gotten to Booby Trap yet is in for a real treat when they see the Promellian battle cruiser. Some more specific comments on each episode will be forthcoming, but I wanted to share this now. I watch the discs on my computer, so it's easy to pull up Netflix and look at before and after shots. I was watching The Defector, and captured these screen grabs. The top is from Netflix and the bottom from the Blu-ray transfer.

In case anyone was sitting on their hands until the comparatively more awesome Season 3 to get the Blu-rays, what in the name of sanity are you waiting for? It's not just the detail itself on the ships themselves, though that is awesome. The engine on the bird of prey and the individual windows on the warbirds look particularly good. It's also that the black is so much blacker since the background wasn't degraded by multiple composite layers. The lighting is also less harsh, particularly on the bird of prey wing in the forground and on the drive section of the Enterprise. I don't know if that was a result of the transfer or some kind of manipulation of the original image, but the magical omnipresent light source in deep space looks softer and much more uniform. 

What struck me the most is how much better the scene looks as a piece because of the detail and lighting improvements. The SD version looks like what it is, several two dimensional images layered on top of each other. The HD looks like a three dimensional scene you could fall into, which could reasonably happen given the amount of time I spent staring at the picture. 

So for anyone who hasn't gotten the Blu-rays or just not season 3 or is having any hesitation about buying a series they have already purchased at least once, enjoy this image, then go buy it.