Will it ever happen? Would you want it if it did? Any changes you'd like to see from the previous Matrix edition set? Lots of vintage anime has been coming out on Blu-ray lately so why not G1?

 

I think it would be nice! The blue ray Movie did well if I do recall, so why not the rest!

 

Eh, why the hell not.

 

I'd be down for Blu-ray. I can't imagine it would take a great amount of work to get them there. The episodes were remastered for DVD and Discovery Family broadcasts (the latter in HD), so 1080p HD should be rather easy. I'm not sure what special features you'd put with it though. And I'm betting the cost will be somewhat prohibitive.

 

Depends what comes in the special features.

 

If it was a full on, fixed every fixable error, cleaned up the video and stuffed it full of every bonus applicable type of release, then sure. It'd be worth it just to get it down to just a few discs and now that there is uncovered unused audio there's something new to put in it as well. Especially if it was edited into an extended episode option.

 

If it comes without the extra added sounds and is not too expensive, I might bite again. But I'm pretty happy with my DVDs so far. But I'd rather have it really remastered.

 

Nah, in all fairness the cartoons are pretty shit and I only own them on DVD as a nostalgia thing.

 

The head of Shout! Factory talked about this a little when I brought it up in one of the TFTM Blu-Ray threads. The problem is that the only known surviving film reels of the episodes are the very unfinished versions that were used for the Rhino DVDs. The restored S!F versions spliced in footage from the aging, standard-def broadcast master tapes.

This leaves only a few options for putting together a Blu-Ray set, and none of them are great:

1. Scan the unfinished footage to 1080p and use it as-is. It might look crisp, but it will be full of crazy errors.
2. Scan the unfinished footage to 1080p and correct it digitally. This would cost a lot of money compared to most TV restorations. The restoration for the Voltron DVD sets was considered extensive, but even that was mostly just splicing footage, adjusting colors, and re-adding text and logo overlays onto footage that had already been remastered for release in Japan. This would be far more extensive than that.
3. Up-convert and de-telecine the Shout! Factory standard definition versions. This is the most feasible option, but the benefits would be marginal. It might look better than letting your TV or DVD player do the scaling, but not enough that most people would notice at all, and there would be no additional visual detail. The best benefit (I'd buy it for this, but I'm not typical) would be storing the footage at 24 progressive frames per second instead of 60 interlaced fields per second.
4. Combine 1080p scans of the useable film footage with up-converted footage of the corrected scenes from the master tapes. Very iffy idea. On the S!F DVDs, if you're looking for it, you can already spot the difference between the shots that are remastered from film and the ones that are edited in from the tapes. The difference would be far more pronounced and potentially distracting in HD.
5. EDIT: Fifth option - the Blu-Ray standard allows standard definition video, so they could just put the series out at DVD quality with several more episodes per disk than the DVD sets, instead of remastering it. Meh.

Sunbow and Hasbro never had the corrected footage on film, as that was sent to them already on tape. So, unless Takara or Toei discover a cache of lost film, we're probably out of luck.

 

Exactly this. Got all of G1 including the Japanese stuff on DVD which is good enough

 

It would take something grande to make me want to buy the entire series again. Simply having it on blu-ray is great for people that have never owned it, but for those that do- nah.

As mentioned above, I'd want a true remaster. Colors fixed, missing frames of animation restored (even if you have to hire new animators to come in & redraw the inbetweens), every single fixable error fixed (as mentioned in an above post), make sure the correct voices are coming out of the characters (no more of Starscream's voice coming out of SkyWarp- fix those colors!), and just ... yeah.

Now if we're getting really crazy & money were no issue, I'd so go nuts & replace all the TFs with cel-shaded CGI models so they look correct in every frame. The TF: Devaststion game showed that it can be done, but to really do it justice, they'd have to spend a lot more time on the faces & facial expressions. That's where Devastations' character models fail.

And if you're going to do that, then go one further & make the camera angles & action shots more dynamic ala' the remaster of the original Star Trek. Rather than sticking with the same handful of sideview shots of the Enterprise cruising across the tv screen, they allowed for the inclusion of more interesting camera angles here & there to mix things up. It looked really good & did it all in the same amount of screen-time.

Up the frame rate from 4 frames per second on the TFs to 30 or 60 fps (though that might make everything else around them look funky by comparison. Maybe not such a great idea). Though for shots featuring only TF characters, it could feasibly be done without having to worry about the rest of the original hand-drawn cels now looking choppy next to them.

This is insane, of course. It's basically asking for the entire series to be remade for a blu-ray release. Just my fantasy.

 

Im in the maybe, maybe not camp. They would have to do something pretty spectacular for me to get a blue ray set. Happy with my dvd set.

 

For me, the dvds are fine. Not sure how much clearer they could get the picture to be really. The movie did come out great on Blu-ray though, however that was made for the cinema so more quality went in probably.

What I wold rather have is the Vince Di Cola soundtrack of the movie to be released. I had a burn of the cd that was at Botcon years ago but the CD is falling apart.

 

I'd only want it if they did a full 1080p restoration. If they are just upconverting the original DVDs they can keep it, my hardware generally can upscale DVDs better than your average DVD->bluray lazy conversion.

 

They already did that

 

Hmm. Has anyone done a CGI remake of any episodes, just re-animating everything and using the original audio? Kind of like Optimus Timelords stop motion remakes. Those take forever though. Once the models are done the CGI could be done pretty quickly.

 

No. Season 2 was mostly awful with crap like Alpha Trion and Kremzeek. I liked Season 3 though.

Now if they redid Headmasters with proper voice actors and the G1 background music I would. Oh and get rid of Headmasters awful ill fitting theme tune.

 

I'm fine with the DVDs. Honestly, the artwork isn't clean enough to warrant the higher definition. I doubt it would look much different.
That is… Unless they cleaned and color corrected all of the art goofs. Then I'd be in!

 

When other then Botcon?

 

No interest in BR editions for me. I'm quite happy with my DVD sets that I rarely watch anyways.