With the beeb releasing Series 1 - 7 in blu-ray (£160 pounds ) I'm wondering if any word on a Series 1 - 4 blu-ray box set will be released at an affordable price as I already have Series 5 and 6 blu-ray.

Although I could be wrong, I'd say it's unlikely. The first four series weren't even filmed in HD so it's not going to be an amazingly different/improved picture on the Blu-ray's anyway. I doubt they'd have much market for them really.

But then as I said, I could be wrong.

Based solely on improved picture quality, there might be more of a market for S1-S4 Blu-rays in the US than the UK.

US DVDs are only 480 lines of resolution, while new upscales of S1-S4 would presumably be taken from the original PAL masters with 576 lines of resolution (that is already 20% more lines of resolution than the US DVDs).

Also, the overall file size of an episode will be larger on Blu-ray than DVD, bumping up the quality a bit in the US and UK.

Presumably, US DVD's of UK show's also suffer the reverse of pal-speedup (NTSC slowdown?) and so blu-ray would the first opportunity many US fans would have to own series 1-4 at their proper broadcast speed.

wasn't series 1 broadcast in 1963? and aren't a lot of episodes missing from series 2--4?

^ I believe most people refer to those as 'seasons' as opposed to 'series' these days.

Which is doubly complicated given that the UK and the US also define 'series' and 'season' differently too

It is new who they are talking about!

I think I read somewhere that the individual blu-ray boxsets of Series 1-4 might be released next year, after they have given this boxset a little exclusivity period first.

You are better off just watching your original DVDs and upscaling them, as the BluRays are upscales anyway. They were not filmed in high def. You can do this easily playing it back on the PC in VLC player if your Bluray does not support upscaling.

I'm holding out buying the Series 1 - 4 DVDS incase they come out on blu-ray that's why I'm asking

The BluRays are also less likely to show compression artefacts, I guess, because bandwidth and storage space are greater, and because the way extra data has been calculated gives greater redundancy versus the original. Plus you might end up with the series on fewer discs, which is a convenience gain?

That said, the BBC usually do excellent DVD transfers without any significant artefacts. So, yeah, probably no improvement.

the blurays are complete remasters of the original tapes and will be 1080p not 1080i the normal Dr Who BD are

1963-1989 were Seasons.
1996 was the T.V. Movie.
2005-Present are Series.

Seasons are done for shows which are set and which run (sometimes for decades like (1963-1989) Doctor Who or The Simpsons) until they are cancelled. They have a fairly set number of episodes per year and they show every year. Series are the newer style where they have to be re-upped for every series. They don't have a set number of episodes and they can go several years between series (look at Fawlty Towers (4 years between series) for a great example). Or, in the case of Doctor Who, they can spread a single series out over a couple of years. Thus, series are a lot more sporadic and unpredictable and, instead of being cancelled, they are simply done with the number of episodes and (in most cases) are simply never re-upped.

Hence, the BBC calling the old stuff Seasons and the new stuff Series is very, very accurate.

Thus, they are talking about the new stuff with Series, not the Seasons, which is what you were talking about.

Really?

Can you tell me why, throughout my childhood and certainly up until the beginning of the noughties if not later, the BBC never referred to seasons with regard to DW or any other show for that matter?

Any recent usage is surely just the adoption of a term used by the American TV industry.

While you are right that "Series" was the usual term used in the UK back when Classic Who was airing "Season" was also used.


A previous time this discussion appeared I found a scan of a Radio Times (BBC owned at that point) listing that referred to the "new season" of Doctor Who (a Pertwee one IIRC) starting that week.

Short answer: I do not know.

Long answer: I live in the US and they were always referred to as Seasons over here. I did a bit of thinking and research on the Series vs Seasons nomenclature and my above post was what my results were. Even if the old stuff was oftentimes referred to as Series, as per the previous post, it seems that Seasons were also used back then interchangeably. While the BBC may have settled into calling the old stuff specifically Seasons and the new stuff Series in order to differentiate them, (I know that Wikipedia uses this distinction), based on the style of the distinct way the show was run then and the way that it is run now, Seasons (old) and Series (new) do work very well as per my previous post.

I've got the Complete Specials Box Set on Blu-Ray. Now I don't know if it's my Blu-Ray player but, compared to my Blu Ray copies of Series 5 and 6 it's completely unwatchable.

It's so 'jerky' that I'm assuming it's some kind of upscale rather than from a HD recording. If that's how Series 1-4 would look then thanks but no thanks

I'm going to test it in a couple of other players but I'm not impressed.

I was looking at that. Now Series 7 has come out at 1080p - presumably to bring it in line.

I watched Waters of Mars on Blu Ray a couple of nights ago and it looked fine to me.

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=106

Covers for the Series 1-7 blu ray set revealed.
It is a 35 disc set.

Series 1-The specials covers are using the classic series logo, interesting. I wonder if this means that the new series dvd's might be re-released under the classic range.

New covers for series 1 and 2, which look quite nice.
Series 3 is a slightly altered version of the Woolworths limited edition cover,
Series 4 is also a slightly altered version of the HMV limited edition cover.
The specials is the same, just has the classic logo instead.
Series 5-7 are exactly the same.

Well, apart from The Next Doctor, all the specials were made in HD, so how they look has nothing to do with how the SD series 1-4 would look on blu ray. In fact, The Next Doctor would be comparable. I've got all new Doctor Who since the specials on blu ray, and it all plays fine on my blu ray player (PS3), including The Next Doctor and the DVDs of series 1-4.

I would guess your problem is due to your BD player.

I would need to see the difference between the 1080i BDs (which I already have) and the 1080p BDs to know if it's worthwhile updating.

Series' 5-7 were shot in 1080p but mastered in 1080i for broadcast (BBC HD can only broadcast at 1080i). The series' were released on Blu-ray in 1080i because that saved them doing another master. This new boxset has seen them go back to the original 1080p master for these series!

They WILL look better but probably not enough to warrant buying them for a second time if you already own the individual series Blu-rays.

As for series' 1-4, it's not possible for them to look as good as episodes shot in HD but we should still see a significant improvement. They may have done other alterations to the episodes (e.g. the soundmix, changing songs used due to rights issues etc.).

Is 1080i interwoven and 1080p progressive?

Interlaced and progressive.

It's quite a confusing area, but - I think - whether you'll see much of a difference between the original BDs and the new ones in the new boxed set comes down to the frame rate it was originally shot in.

True, full 1080p, implies a frame rate of 50fps (60fps in NTSC-land). Each frame comprised of 1080*1920 pixels.

1080i, on the other hand, captures only half the vertical resolution in each frame. Alternate frames have lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 etc. and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 etc.

In both cases the TV displays at 50fps. In the case of 1080i, the TV assembles the full resolution frame from each half and displays it twice.

1080i is a bit like the way film was always shot at 24fps, but when projected, each frame was shown twice, resulting in 48fps, fast enough to fool the eye's persistence of vision.

I would Guess Chris and David being classified as classic doctors would explain why they have different font to matt