So I was watching one of my favorite YouTube channels (Technology Connections) recently, when the channel casually posted a video about how DVD re-releases are worse quality than their previous imprints.
Now, Alec Watson (who owns the channel) seemed more amused than anything about this fact, but by the end of the video I was bloody furious! You might be wondering why worse DVD quality matters at this stage of the game, but as someone who likes to collect physical media, I can tell you this is a nasty surprise.
When “New” Means Worse
To understand how these new DVD releases have been downgraded, you need to know one or two things first. The most important is that DVDs largely come in two varieties: single-layer, and dual-layer. Dual-layer discs have a capacity of around 8.5GB and single-layer discs top out at 4.7GB. When DVD video is encoded, it’s done to provide the best quality at the target resolution. Usually 480 or 576 pixels high for NTSC and PAL regions, respectively. With the width varying between widescreen and 4:3 aspect ratio content.
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For movies, a single-layer disc is usually enough, though longer movies or those with lots of extra features might use a dual-layer disc. For TV series however, it’s typical to use a dual-layer disc to get the most episodes on a disc as possible.
It’s mainly TV series that are in question here, because what Technology Connections points out is that newer releases of some TV series are single-layer now, whereas the original release was dual layer. The original DVD master has been re-encoded to fit into nearly half the space.
This is exactly what people who pirated DVDs back in the day used to do. Since blank dual-layer discs were rare and expensive. You would use special software to compress the video more so it would fit on a single-layer blank. You’d also usually strip out any special features to give the main content the most space possible, but clearly they can’t do that with an official reprint of a DVD series.
This leads to a version of the show or movie that’s visibly worse quality, as the bitrate takes a hit and the image holds less detail. Especially in motion.
Why They Do It
While physical media sales have slumped over the years, there’s still plenty of money to be made selling DVDs to millions of people out there who still watch and collect them. Especially for classic series that aren’t always available to stream.
The companies bringing out these lower-quality DVD releases are most likely doing it to save money. It’s just a few cents per disc, but if they don’t think anyone will care then saving a few cents at the cost of one intern spending an hour or two recompressing a DVD image is probably worth it in their eyes. They also wouldn’t re-do the set on more discs either, since that would mean a ground-up authoring of the DVDs and not just squishing down the original master.
Why This Is Outrageous
Am I making a big fuss for nothing? I hope not, because, from my point of view, this is a horrible practice. First, consider that for many standard definition TV shows and movies, the home DVD version is the best-quality copy there is. There is no Blu-ray version, there is no HD version. Usually because the show was mastered in SD, and either wasn’t shot on film or that film is no longer usable.
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Consider Star Trek:The Next Generation. It was possible to make a wonderful HD version of this show, because they could re-scan the film at a higher resolution. It was still an enormous task because all the CG had to be redone, and all the episodes had to be re-edited according to the original edit notes. It cost a huge amount of money, but was worth it for such an iconic series.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9, on the other hand, was shot on tape and not film. So there is no extra detail to extract. I bring this up, because, as per Technology Connections, DS9 is one of the rereleases affected by this issue.
By reducing the video and audio quality of these releases, I’m robbed of the opportunity to own and preserve the best version of the show. Maybe that could be excused if these new releases were labeled in some way, but as far as I can tell, the packaging, labeling, and everything else on the outside is identical.
Year
1987
Genre
Sci-Fi
4K
No
One of the few Star Trek TV series to get a painstaking HD remaster using the original camera film negatives. To date, this is the most ‘HD’ that classic TV Star Trek gets!
How to Avoid Getting Burned
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The fact that it’s not clearly marked which releases are which, makes it easier to accidentally buy the degraded release of a DVD. In some cases, however, there might be a “single-layer” or “dual-layer” marking on the DVD cover if you’re looking at it in-person. If you’re wondering about a given DVD release, it’s probably best to do an internet search to see if the original release was dual layer or not, and then whether later releases are now single layer.
If you already bought the DVD set, put a disc into your computer’s DVD drive (you do have one, right?) and then check its size. If it’s 4.7GB or less, that’s a single-layer disc, and you might still be able to return it to Amazon, assuming you’re not happy with the image quality.
If there’s a Blu-ray version of a show or movie, then it might be a better idea to get that version. However, if it’s been upscaled in order to make the BD release, that upscaling process may also have introduced visual artefacts. So check reviews of the Blu-ray version.
The main reason I haven’t been hit by this myself yet, is that I buy most of my DVDs used, and so they’re from earlier production runs. That’s also a viable strategy, if you’re OK with a little wear and tear on the packaging, though I never buy used discs with signs of damage.
What really irks me is that even if this practice was reversed (doubtful) it wouldn’t remove all the lower-quality discs out there, but at least now we all know what to look out for.
