I have been hoping that they would eventually do a blu-ray by season release of the classic stuff (up converted as much as possible, the US would see some upgrade via PAL vs NTSC to 1040) which would not only provide a chance to vid-fire/remaster much of the old stuff, but also make things easier to store due to the amount of video which can be put on a Blu-Ray as compared to a DVD, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

They would need to first release everything for the first two Doctors, which makes the enterprise problematic for the next few years. Could you do it now for Doctors 3-8? Sure. However, I figure that they would wait until they can roll them out in order.

I've always wanted a classic series season by season boxset because storywise for me it would allow me to get to know the regulars and follow their progression a bit more enjoyably than watching different doctors all the time.
I remember when I was doing the rewatch thread last year and had to watch the stories in order it really increased my appreciation of Ian , Barbara, Vicki who I hadn't seen before.

I think the Key to Time season has been released but not sure about any others. The boxsets seem to go by themes but story choices seem a bit random at times.

I suppose there isn't anything to stop someone building their own seasons. I guess if they did do season boxsets some of the extras would have to go for space reasons and they must make a mint only doing one story at a time at the moment

I think the idea for the doctors box set would be far more likely to happen if the missing episodes rumour is true. If it is then the possible release would be years into the future. At the moment there is little point in releasing the second doctor box set.

Key to Time and Trial of a Timelord are the 2 season long Box sets that have been released.


As you say some of the other Box Sets are themed releases (all the Silurian/Sea Devils stories for example) but a few are chronological, though with usually only 3 stories in each.

To start with having the TV movie upscaled to BluRay and all of John Pertwee's seasons (as Spearhead from Space is already on BluRay) and making John Pertwee's 5 seasons a box set would be a start.
Then each of the 4-7 classic Doctors could get boxsets, including upscales to BluRay one by one, as all there episodes are still in the BBC's archives!
Its unfortunate about Doctors 1 and 2 episodes not being complete, but it should not stop Doctors 3-8 getting boxsets and BluRay upscale releases (including any bits done on film being redone in HD and added in for the BluRay release).
Like someone said if the BBC sold a boxset of each without any extras (on DVD and BluRay) and then a more expensive boxset of each with extras (on DVD and BluRay) then they would get better sales.
As some people would just go for the cheaper ones with no extras and others who want them will pay.

If all the missing episodes of the first two Doctors can be found, then they will be able to release whole series and maybe whole Doctor boxsets! but we will have to hold out on that!

The thing is, I really don't think they would upgrade to BluRay. They release the Classic stories because they know that there's a heavy nostalgia value, and of course you've got a massive fan base. But Joe Public is not going to buy them and the BBC are hardly going to want to highlight the cheap production values.

Whereas with the new stories coming out, Joe Public might well buy those on Blu-Ray because they will look nice on his hi-def telly and because releasing something on Blu-Ray suggests a degree of popularity.

Well when BluRay becomes 'the' standard Im sure the classics will receive the BluRay treatment, if only because that would be the only thing on sale one day!
Also the TV Movie really should get an upscale treatment as Im sure that would add something to it! Even if its only having the correct 24fps framerate where it was shot originally on film!

Also for the Americans and places with historical NTSC type analogue TV, the BluRay would add quality back in, over having it in a 480i DVD transfer!

I doubt they will.


They will probably get re-released on whatever storage media comes after Blu-Ray but as long as DVDs can be played in Blu-Ray players then there's little point in putting the Classics on BR.

Will it? You can still play DVDs in BluRay players. Videos became obsolete because you can't put a video in a DVD player and there was such a big difference between the mediums. BluRay is basically a better type of disc.

Since I already have all of the episodes now I'm not sure I could justify the expense of buying them all again in box sets!

I could see it being appealing to people who don't have many of a particular Doctor or season, though.

Blu Ray might be a way to get me to do it but, not for the quality, as I doubt it will be much different to the upscaling I get anyway. The main advantage of putting the classics on Blu Ray would be compactness. All those DVDs are certainly taking up a lot of shelf space!

Thats part of my thoughts behind it! A box set of a classic Doctor could be on 1-3 BluRay disks, but it would take about 10 or 15 disks most likely to cover the same on DVD!

This is exactly what I've been hoping they'll do sooner rather than later. If you add up the total cost of the single releases, and the double dips, it's frightening! Add in the difficulty in finding all the DVD releases now and avoiding as much as possible the double dips it's not something I'm contemplating.

However, a boxed set of all or a boxed set per season or per Doctor should work out much cheaper overall. They could leave gaps in case any more currently missing episodes turn up. Of course getting them all at once means finding all that money in one go too.

I'd go with BluRay for preference as the physical storage space requirements would be much less than DVDs, and it would help our NTSC-bound cousins to get a slightly improved picture too - at least from 625line PAL onwards (was early Hartnell originally 405 line?).

I fear it's not going to happen though.

HD reveals flaws in earlier shows only because the screen sizes HD enables are so much larger. Back in the day of CRTs and 625 line, some people used to have 27" screens. They were too big for 625 line and looked too soft and blurry even then. Modern screens are able to handle scaling up low (SD) resolution images better than old large CRTs, but they still will look soft and blurry. You can't put back in detail that was never there in the first place.

Fact of life for some old material.

For me, the benefits in watching true HD material (which can be old films and old filmed TV shows) and modern movies on a large screen far outweigh that disadvantage.

Upscaling to HD may well reveal certain flaws but a DVD played in a BluRay player on a HD TV will do exactly the same!
The BBC could go and clean up the picture in any shots that need it meaning that a BluRay upscale release would be an improvement all the same!
Also even though it would be upscaled, an episode could be encoded in such an efficient way, that it would take less space on a BluRay than an episode originating in HD!
So we could still get an entire Classic Doctor's episodes on say 2-4 BluRay disks!

The Future of Doctor Who watching (when Human Brains have developed enough to process 178 different things at once )

lol I see that it couldnt be a perfect grid as that wouldve needed 192!

Err yes? I was actually arguing in favour of BluRay you know!

Some people (not me) seem to think that HD's not a good idea because it reveals problems in some older programmes that SD conceals.

I'm in that camp I'm afraid. The percentage of low quality releases far outweighs the HD ones. But we forget, there was a time when the idea of being able to have a copy of your favourite movie/TV show to watch at home was phenomenal.

I'm not sure I understand your point about low quality releases? There have been plenty of poor DVD transfers, as there have been BluRays.

Or do you mean range of titles? Yes there are more titles available today on DVD than BluRay. DVD had the same issue with back catalogue titles for many years - and still does to some degree as there are still many films and TV shows that haven't been released on DVD (and some rightly so! ).

DVD has been around much longer than BluRay. SD has been around much longer than HD, but that's no reason not to adopt HD. Would you have stuck with Black and White TV when colour came out or with 405 line when 625 line became available?

Some older TV shows are worth seeing in HD because they were originally shot on film. Unfortunately for classic Doctor Who all except one were shot almost entirely on video with no prospect of an image quality improvement.

Even when a source with enough resolution is available to make HD worthwhile (i.e. film) there are other types of defect that can be revealed like coffee stains on shirts and nails in sets. These kinds of things had to be removed when original Star Trek was released in HD, for example.

I suppose you could make the case this is a little unfair to the original makers in that you're not seeing them as they intended - on a small screen with (relatively) poor resolution. I still think it's very much worthwhile.

I mean range of titles, rather than the quality of the remastering. The majority of films are not remastered, so you still have fuzziness and artifacts. HD isn't sentient- it can't recognise the difference between details and artifacts- so logically the artifacts become more noticeable as a result.

Artifacts tend to be the result of the quality of the upscaling process don't they? That's where Blu Ray can be better quality than the automatic upscaling your TV does for an SD source because the upscaling process can be controlled at the source without having to rely on the TV or Blu Ray player's software which may vary in quality.

No the bbc wouldn't go yo the expence of blu-ray

Yes, but if we're on this line of thought then upscaling to 4k would be even better. Magazines always upscale everything because the modern printing process also has a concept of resolution (albeit not exactly the same one). You can't tell because the output has such a high resolution.

It's a simple fact that if you scale 576 visible lines to 1080 visible lines, you can't distribute them evenly. You can use processing to try to hide the difference but at the cost of detail. If you do it well then it will hopefully be like the way that compressing video loses detail: it's gone but you can't consciously tell.

A few years ago the New Yorker offered for sale every single back issue (about 80 years' worth at the time) on a single hard drive. It was something like US$100. It then eventually became a ten-disc DVD set which you can now pick up for something like US$10. I guess that'd be the concern. If they put everything together in one then how long would it holds its value? You can keep drip rereleasing individual stories but what do you do when the whole lot are already available in one chunk?

They'd also worry about piracy with that specific technological choice. The New Yorker archive is all but unusable because it's stuck inside some painful custom application.

I'm not sure what you mean by "remastered"?

Almost all films, when they're prepped for HD or BluRay are scanned at 4k or 8k. That's a much higher resolution than HD. 8k is a similar resolution to that of film itself. From these digital masters downscaled copies are produced to be HD masters for BluRay. Other copies are made, downscaled further to be SD masters for DVD.

Any digital artefacts you have seen will have come from upscaling from a low res (standard definition) scan or source. The scans made for DVDs wouldn't be a high enough resolution for HD, though in the early days of BluRay a few titles were released from scans originally made for DVD and they were universally panned for not being true HD.

The BBC would only need to release all classic Who stories separately once though at the highest quality they could.
Then do season boxsets, net Doctor boxsets for Doctors 1-3. If/when they find missing episodes they could do season boxsets of the fist two Doctors and then Doctor boxsets.
If and only if all missing episodes are found, then after they have done first season then Doctor boxsets, then they could do a full Classic Who boxset!
They could then after that do a every Doctor to that point boxset, and redo each time there is a new Doctor.
With each new Doctor though they wouldn't need to recompile the media for old content, just rebox each Doctor boxset in a new overall box with the new Doctors boxset!

Yes the old content would loose some value over time, but if they have already made the best copy they can, then it wouldn't matter as no new work would be needed on it.