On being a sucker

Much as I hate to be sold the same thing twice, so far all the evidence shows that I’m a complete sucker when it comes to reissued DVDs. It’s particularly difficult when the temptation is more than any mortal could resist. For example, the Firefly TV Series being remastered in High-Definition. Sob.

Of course, there’s the small matter of not owning an HD-Ready TV or DVD player, but these are mere trifles. It will be mine. Oh yes.

What’s heartening is that there’s felt to be market for this kind of thing. It looks like the remastering is for a TV airing initially, but no doubt the DVD will follow. It’s easy to imagine some of the older shows that were shot on film, such as the original Trek, being remastered and reissued on DVD in similar quality. Where we’ll lose out is with the generation of shows that were shot and edited on videotape, where the potential for seeing them in high quality doesn’t really exist (barring the invention of CSI-like levels of image enhancement technology.) So ironically we may well end up with classic older series being more future-proof than TV of the late 80s and 1990s, including the later iterations of Star Trek. (If memory serves, TNG was shot on film but transferred to video for the effects work).