Next Gen on Blu in 2012... and sooner?!

Lots of cool news makes its way out of Comic-Con each year, but this is really exciting. According to a very reliable report, the long-awaited Star Trek: The Next Generation in Hi-Def project is coming our way in 2012 - and a taste even sooner than that!

The challenges in upgrading Next Gen were formidable - while the show was shot on film, all the effects and post production was done on SD analog video. So  to convert the series to HD  all the original camera negatives would have to be scanned in HD resolution, then all of the special effects and post production would have to be completely redone in HD using a similar CG upgrade process akin to the remastered Star Trek: The Original Series. They'd essentially have to rebuild each episode for HiDef. Because if they just upconvert from 480i to 1080p, they are going to find a lot of angry Blu-ray fans. But rebuilding the show in HD is obviously a time-consuming and expensive process.


As reported by Bill Hunt at the phenomenal Blu-ray website, The Digital Bits, his sources at Comic-Con confirmed that the wait may finally be over:
"Multiple sources I spoke with at Comic-Con have also confirmed our report from earlier this year that CBS is hard at work on Star Trek: The Next Generation – Remastered for Blu-ray release starting sometime in 2012. The latest word is that 4 test episodes are currently being worked on for release as a sampler/demo BD disc of the project, and that sampler disc will somehow be available to fans by the end of this year."
2012 is Next Gen's  25th anniversary.The remastered project for Original Series Trek was released in 2006, just in time for the 40th anniversary. Can't wait to find out which 4 episodes are coming our way!