301 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I just did a comet vs. german release vs. original up-res samples comparison on goodfellas.

then universal dvd Rules of the Game vs. german release.

On the dvd/sd on blu-ray comparison, there was a clear advantage to the german release.  The universal release had a comparative noisy haze over the entire picture.

On the greatfellas comparison, the upres blew the german release out of the water.  The german release was an order of magnitude better than comet.


it's difficult for me to say if the german release looks better than peacock on goodfellas.  Close ups may be better and peacock seems to have more of a greenish hue to the image (i think) but on farther shots there is a far amount of pixelation on the german release that is smoother with peacock.  Then again, standing 12-14 feet, away the german release just looks better.


Here I compared Rules of the Game (s3) Universal to Turbine and strongly favored Turbine.  I wonder how screenshots of the files would look.  I wonder how much blu-ray players are affecting universal and turbine quality.   At the top of page 6 in this thread, we both provide screenshots of our respective Turbine Goodfellas experiences and we get very different results...

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302 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

One thing to also remember is how different Goodfellas looked for you vs. me.  I had what seemed to be a lot of pixelation (compression artififacts?).  I know it's S2, and you're talking about S1 above but the image looked terrible.  That said, I mostly found S2 episodes better on turbine than universal.


Another relevant comment, perhaps somewhat related

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303 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:
ireactions wrote:

I'm always surprised by the sound of Kari's voice when I haven't heard it for awhile. It's higher-pitched than I remember. I don't think poorly of her post-Season 3 acting, but she'll never be a favourite for me. Certainly, she never turned up on camera drunk like, say, Jerry O'Connell.

**

It's strange: for Universal DVDs and the Turbine SD blu-ray release, the video quality across the individual non-Pilot episodes of Season 1 are not consistent.

Universal DVD:
On the DVD (which uses the NTSC masters): some episodes have serious aliasing issues where lines that should be straight and smooth are instead jagged and pixelated, and when the camera moves, those jagged lines become further pixelated (the term is moiré pattern). The episodes that suffer from this: "Prince of Wails," "Fever," "Last Days," "Eggheads" and "Luck of the Draw."

"Prince of Wails" is glaring when the sliders encounter the army in Oakland: the humvee and the car suffer severely from jagged lines. "Fever"'s scenes in the drugstore are really pixelated with the racks of herbal medicine. "Last Days"' opening shot of the quiet residential streets are distorted. "Eggheads" looks especially bad with the scene where Arturo meets his wife. "Luck of the Draw"'s fashion display looks hideous.

I'm not sure why these five specific episodes have these aliasing issues more severely than the other three non-pilot episodes on the Universal DVD. It may be a DVD authoring issue where the interlaced format for those four episodes had the incorrect settings for encoding the video with odd and even fields, a mistake that the Turbine release didn't repeat.

Turbine SD blu-ray:
These jagged edges in the NTSC DVDs aren't in the PAL-sourced SD blu-ray from Germany, although these versions of the episodes are blurrier. But "Summer of Love" is strange: it is so much blurrier than the other seven non-pilot episodes and severely desaturated, missing almost half the colour from the NTSC DVD version. This is odd because the other non-pilot Turbine episodes of Season 1 are not as blurry or colour-drained as "Summer of Love."

Episodes 103 - 108 Turbine episodes of Season 1 ("Prince of Wails" to "The King is Back") are suffering only from about a 10 - 15 per cent loss of colour and about a 15 - 20 per cent loss of contrast. "Luck of the Draw" from this set isn't missing any of the colour compared to the Universal DVD, although it has the same lack of contrast as the previous episodes. And 103 - 109 are all, compared to the Universal DVD, missing about 20 - 25 per cent of the Universal DVD's sharpness (which wasn't that sharp to begin with).

I'm guessing that the NTSC analog videotapes were duplicated to PAL and stretched, and analog copying creates a faded second generation copy; "Summer of Love"'s PAL master may have been made from a copy of a copy of the NTSC tape.

I'm now wondering if Turbine's versions of "Prince of Wails," "Fever," "Last Days," "Eggheads" and "Luck of the Draw" might be a better bet for low-gain upscaling. The AI could try to sharpen the SD files to be closer to the Universal DVD version while still leaving it at 480p to avoid all the AI distortions, and then Avidemux could use bicubic or Lanczos scaling to bring it to 1080p while also moderately increasing the colour and contrast.

Well I guess this speaks to the inconsistency between episodes with s1....

You mention a lot of things here with turbine vs. Universal.  Related to that I seem to recall strongly preferring most episodes of s2 turbine over universal (with goodfellas being an exception bc it played really pixelated and jaggy on my equipment).

However I think I recall maybe preferring s1 on universal vs.turbine and I just tried to find what I wrote it anything in this thread and don't see notes.

My blu ray player that could handle the pal format has since broke.

You could see my comments on S2 here.

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304 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

But I have to be honest, with pneumatic informing us that the Turbine blu-ray is actually poorer than the DVDs, I'm not really filled with confidence in my assessments anymore. I'm going to take a GPU-powered nnedi3 run at these files one last time.

Well I'm a bit confused too, because I seem to recall evaluating the blu-ray and thinking later production episodes were better. I was using a junky blu-ray player too.  I have to look back in this thread to find the comments, just to make sure I was comparing to dvd files.

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305 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

This lensdump site doesn't work for me. I've tried three different browsers and the images don't load.

This happened to me too in chrome.  Right click the image and then select "Load Image"


I've never seen this before on the web; the image initially loads then breaks.  But anyway, right click it and click load image and it should work.

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306 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Ireactions deserves the credit here for making it happen. )

In terms of episode comparisons, S1's pilot looks like it has best grain in NTSC (or is that just bc it's darker?), best coloring in PAL.  Turbine looks the worst.

I'm super surprised how different they all are.

On episode 104, NTSC clearly has more information (quinn's eyes are a good point of reference), PAL smooths it out, and Turbine just gets worse (including the color).

S2 - NTSC seems to have once again more data in the image, pixels of info (which is odd bc I thought PAL had more lines of resolution?); PAL and Turbine look remarkably similar here.  They pal/turbine definitely has a smoothness vs. more pixel feel to the NTSC data. NTSC has slightly better coloring (although not sure, maybe there is room for debate).

S3 -- NTSC clear winner, Turbine and Pal are essentially indistinguishable but Turbine may have a 2-3% edge.

S4 -- NTSC winner (look at quinn's face or roof shingles as a point of reference).   What's odd is the Pal/Turbine images appear to be stretched vertically (taller).   I think this stretching may be causing more blurryness?

And Turbine seems a bit better on this one, look at this as a reference:

https://i.ibb.co/60jWk9L/image.png

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307 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Very interesting reactions.  The previous topaz pilot as you know I think is stellar but it definitely had smoother textures so it's interesting to hear you say you are getting more detail.  Although maybe that's partly the extra resolution rather than upscale method. 11% is a lot.

ireactions wrote:

I'm not sure Topaz AI can do better than nnedi3, but after my Turbine experiments, I'll certainly drop the 540p file into Topaz AI and try different upscaling methods there.

I think you tried double upscaling (lanzos/topaz?) in the past and it was a dud.  I wonder if there is any possibility of gains here since you mentioned more detail in the image (presumably for topaz to work off of).  But maybe it won't be true grain info to work off of. Maybe a straight topaz would be better than nnedi3 to topaz (though possibly not better than nnedi3 itself).

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308 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

"Summer of Love" and "Luck of the Draw" seem unusually fuzzy. "Eggheads" seems all over the place in image quality. "Last Days" and "The Weaker Sex" seem middling. "Prince of Wails", "Fever" and "The King is Back" seem better than the rest. This suggests at least three different kinds of videotape.

I'm not sure there's a rationale based on content. "Summer of Love" and "Prince of Wails" are on opposite ends of the quality spectrum and both have high special effects sequences. "Summer of Love" and "Last Days" are at opposite ends of the production order and yet, both are low quality.

I wonder if Temporal Flux would know anything about how these episodes were produced, eg if they had different teams dividing up the work, and perhaps using different practices or equipment/resources.  Because they were shooting one a week, maybe post production required different teams working in parrellel because post product required a lot of time and the schedule demanded it.

I guess the credits may give us information about the different crews involved.

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309 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@ireactions -- that's interesting that bilinear may be better for some vs. bicubic for others.  Obviously, you are still evaluating but as we've talked about in this thread before, it has always felt like there's some lack of consistency between episodes -- and it was never clear if it had to do with how they were  shot and just the characteristics of the filmmaking, or some post production process.  I mean, some episodes just seemed really awful in the old VHS looking style but I never understood if that was just because of lighting and cinematography, or more at play.

The fact that you have had such good results wiht the bilinear does feel like a breakthrough.  Quite exciting actually.

If you are using a video card for processing now, I would think about doing a sample of gaia vs. artemis for anything with topaz.  I don't know if the processing time will still be multiple times what artemsis would be (and if so, forget it), but in general, at  least with the pilot, and perhaps something else, there may be enough "good" source data in there for gaia to take advantage.  It seems to be designed for content that does have enough foundation of that data.  A limited 30 second  clip may tell you.

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310 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

11% seems substantial and who knows - that may come through in the final results.  The currrent topaz pilot looks incredible to me but i'd say up close, right in front of the tv, it's clearer it's not HD. I wonder if you'd get more out of the lines of resolution now.

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311 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Roku in the u.s. and Peacock (subscripition) has Seaquest, which was produced by Amblin/Spielberg, and got the blu-ray treatment as a result.  It's all in HD, with a true re-scan.  I'm watching off streaming but I am quite surprised how favorably the pilot of Sliders with topaz compares to it.

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312 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@ireactions Don't want to distract from the current course, I love that you've identified the probable algorithm your blu-ray player used to upscale s1 well (on Turbine).

But, regarding the Pneumatic edition, what is your guesses as to how it would affect the pilot, given the pilot didn't have the same level of issues as the rest of s1, but Pneumatic's avi synth changes obviously had such a strong impact on cleaning up ep. 102-109?


I do have one question on this:

As for the Universal files: pneumatic's QTGMC deinterlacing and detelecining have created a fairly clean set of files. I think my grain additions were a mistake.

I suspect that pursuing the illusion of sharpness with grain and increasingly complex scaling algorithms is trying to build on a foundation of sharpness that isn't there.

It may be better to just use pneumatic's QTGMC script but edit it to use bicubic scaling to prioritize smoothness over sharpness in these low-grain, low-detail videotape files. But I'm going to start with the Turbine files first since I've already seen how that can turn out pretty well from my $35 blu-ray player.

Is the TIVTC still being used?  As I recall, that yielded very good results for 102-109.

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313 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ha!

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314 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

I haven't been a big fan of the grain, and find it feeling like it's a "dirtier" tape/image.  I mean, I think I may be more ok with flat/smooth more than you, but I've usually added the smallest amount of grain possible when using VLC player on files, so I think tiny texture is good.  But not floating/dancing dots that maybe also not feel natural.  But I also don't like authentic grain, over exposed 16mm look either.

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315 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

I think you hit the nail on the head on this.

And on one thing you noticed, it is a weird phenomenon where the wide shots look more fuzzy/vhs-ee and the closer stuff  is more in acceptable territory (from the perspective of DVD-like quality).

But, I would much more prefer that contrast than lowering the quality on close/medium shots.  In fact, as I recall now pneumatic made one artistic decision to go for a more universal look, and actually did try to make it more consistent.  Or, maybe that was between episodes rather than shots?


Another thing I am noticing, is that at least on my tv, playing off a USB connected to theTV vs. a PC connected to the  tv with a USB  cord may make a difference.

When it's connected via a PC to tv, the TV has a "PC Mode" option that comes up (standard, movie, custom, pc).  I think the PC Mode somoething with the gamma colors, or maybe just how it handles or processes closes, or maybe some lines of resolution thing...    there's something about it that elevates the color in a more semi-vibrant, real-life way than the darker look we otherwise get.   I guess on PC mode it's also using VLC player but VLC player on its own doesn't do this.

The old samples of Topaz, which I will compare this weekend, to the new stuff, my memory has them looking a better color-wise and so I want to next check out pneumatic playing off the laptop-connected-to-tv to see how it plays.

Perhaps similar to what you are saying here:

Another feature of the player and the TV: my blu-ray player seems to amp up the saturation levels for standard definition content and my TV's energy saver settings (which I use to watch SD content on low backlight) also have increased saturation. This filled in the colour that seems to be missing from the blu-ray files, so the Turbine video image seems reasonably colourful when the files themselves look really washed out.

I'm convinced that, in addition to the upres your blu-ray seems to be able to do on turbine, along with capturing the coloring that specific VLC settings (which i've posted here in the past) plus gamma/pc mode changes could probably push everything even further.  To more the "ultimate" version.  At least with current technologies.  I have not been able to achieve the color quality of PC mode with just adjusting VLC settings alone.

I also have a hunch with your blu-ray player that the upscale algorithm is either really f'cken good OR it's really simple and basic (e.g. way simpler approach than topaz), and that simple/basic formula works well on Turbine.   I also have a hunch that maybe that your blu-ray player won't do upscaling on content in the same way unless it reaches a certain level of poor?  Maybe it doesn't reach that treshshold algorithmically with Universal, but some logic kicks in with Turbine (that may not be triggered with Mill Creek, or it is but Mill Creek source doesn't upscale well with it's algorithm).  I don't know, just throwing out guesses.

One thing that is nice about Pneumatic edition is, I dont think I've ever seen the S1 lettering so sharp on an HD tv.  It's a jarring pleasant surprise to see clean lettering.  And less wobbling on that initial wide shot of the street from the King is Back episode.

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316 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

So, I have to do more comparison, backdating to the original topaz samples, but I have to say, comparing the most recent samples on a USB drive plugged into a TV, it's not even close Pneumatic S1 vs. Turbine S1.  Pnematic s1 is just sooo much better.   Not even close better.

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317 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

So checking ireactions samples so far....

I agree, this, while not an order of magnitude of a "level-upping" is definitely a strong and impactful incremental improvement.  It's the general fuzzyness, wobblyness, distortion that is gone.

I'd say that one of the big tests, Prince of Wailes, is definitely definitely better.  And  I see it with King is Back.  Even Fever is definitely better though  I have to say I was disappointed that the celebration ("you're rich!") scene at the beginning isn't as clear/sharp as I've always hoped for.  That scene has always bothered me.

One note regarding the asthetic choices:  so for me close up, I find the grain a bit distracting as it's a little bit too much added noise.   On a laptop, when you are watching close up, I guess you could say it's a bit of a negative for me.

However,  I think at a distance, cast to a tv, if would show its value.  Living room distance.  So I can see arguments in both directions.

Overall, I'd say it's quite impressive what pneumatic and ireactions have managed to do.  Basically take away some of the harshest flaws of the S1 episodes, while leaving room in the future for new technologies to come in and try to extract more out of the frame, and perhaps build a more realistic proxy to how the film footage may have looked.   For now, our mad scientists have definitely extracted the best out of these babies as possible, and Universal should be commissioning them (or at least Peacock) to do a substitute for what a restoration would be.

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318 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(712 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Definitely Tracy and Marc are enormously talented people in their own rights, with very different skill sets of course.  I agree that Marc would probably know how to approach things differently, in a more palatable manner. 

I guess what I'm saying though is, people are who they are, and I just accept the situation as such.  Tracy comes with his quirks, like I do mine, and while I'd never utter that phrase about "never being woke" personally, because I think there are certain implications to it (or stuff I don't agree with) I can kinda accept if that's what netted out in this situation, because, well, tracy doesn't like wokeness and at the same time, he's also the guy who'd you want to do a proper revivial/sequel.   

Sure, I'd like Marc's way of putting things over Tracy's.  I just don't see a realistic scenario where we would have gotten that.  Maybe had they built a relationship before then.  Jacob Epstein was someone who was involved in the pitch though.  Yes, saying certain things are a huge red flag that will be quite a problem for a studio in this day and age.

Also, FWIW, Marc has some upset backers of Space Command.   That doesn't make him bad -- he's actually an incredible salesman (to raise the money he did) but he also got super enthusiastic and bit off a lot.  Meaning the Space  Command project has people who gave money who I guess haven't gotten what they expected. I don't think Marc intended to do anything bad but he just was trying to do somethign quite ambitious.  And all that takes a ton more time, money, and complications than perhaps he was prepared for.  It's also worth noting he couldn't get Space Command greenlit (by the studio system).  That doesn't make it unworthy.  Perhaps had a studio believed in him, he would have created something with a cult following.  He probably didn't have a recent enough tv hit to have the political juice to push something like that through.  I believe his initial plan was to do a pilot via gofundme, then get a studio to greenlight a season and instead he had to do the whole thing off gofundme (with "investors").

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319 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(712 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Tracy is brilliant.   Not everyone may like his politics.  And to some degree aspects of California have declined, and some long-term residents are gonna have an issue with that, and it may color their politics as well, or how  they see the democratic party (which tracy was once a part of before his libertarian days).   He may have moved to a rural area just to get away from some of that stuff.

The UFO thing actually he was way early on in some ways.  Legendary Pictures just bought a tom delonge project (based on his books).  Obama's own production company is producing a spec Blacklist entry, about the benny and barnie hill story.  CNN was slated to air a 5-part series that ended up on nat geo because the Warner entity started cutting costs.  And I think showtime just had a jj abrams doc series on it.   Tracy could dive in more given the market is growing, but I am not sure he's that motivated  to.  His collaboration on his last doc series with James Fox went in a creative direction he didn't want (he wanted it like a big movie theatrical feature).  It ended up being a pretty successful independent doc though, which the Ready Player One producer got involved with.

If tracy said some stuff that didnt fly well to the peacock folks, what are ya gonna do.    I'd be interested to see the result of it.   I am not sure if some of his perspectives would offend any fans or not.  of course we wouldn't want that.  But i usually find it interesting what  tracy has to say.  To him though i would say, he needs to keep in mind that people come from different situations in life, and it wouldnt be a bad thing to recognize some of their circumstances led to a different set of events in their life.   The world is a complicated place.

ALSO: at the end of the day, Peacock was never gonna seriously act on sliders.  They were checking it out, but they were never gonna justify doing it, because the property, while having high brand recall, just does not have a concentrated enough, passionate audience they could tap into drive premium sign ups.  And while broad it's not really broad in the way they'd need to for getting back their $ on ad supported streams.  The series really needed to be brought back 5-to-7 years ago if it was ever gonna be brought back in live-action television form.  I think the better approach now is novelization, audio, comics, nfts/web, or remixing the old shows (eg pop-video, vh1 style, audio commentary) or turning them into an audio-formatted listening series with new explainer material to fill in visual gaps).

On the flip side, technology is on our side for fan driven stories in this universe.  The tools keep getting better.  Maybe in five to 10 years, fan fiction will become much more dynamic, and studios may even be able to better profit.

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320 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

One small step for sliders, one giant step for sliderskind

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321 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Interesting thoughts @ireactions.


One thought.  I did find an algorithm made in the academic world to add grain to an image.  It's open source and I posted the code here and corresponded via email with the creator.

I'm gonna see at some point if I can get it running on a server.   It would be interesting to try a two minute clip with it processing to add grain and see if topaz has more luck with it.

The algorithm is supposed to really not just layer a flat dots all over the image.  It's really supposed to be better but testing is seeing.  I'm not optimistic though.

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322 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@ireactions your artistic choices have always been the right ones.


All that being said, as a general note to both our artistes.   I may not have the familiarity or possibly the aptitude to match what you are doing.  But I do have the similar nit pickyness.   On my bucket list is editing an ultimate version of the best of whatever we can pull out of these files with the magic of technology.  That means splicing close up shots / medium shots / wide shots on a timeline (which I know I can do, as I've done that stuff before).   And possibly adjusting color or even sharpness to individual scenes.   That will be a project I hope to do one day, when I have the leisure time [not something my life affords at the moment].  It's something I would quite enjoy.

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323 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Well, this is interesting:

https://twitter.com/ItakGol/status/1645491031071236120

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324 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

It's working! Thanks, pneumatic.

I added the AddGrainC plugin and now I'm making various tweaks in pneumatic's script (and using Hybrid to give me the command lines needed to add into the file). I think it'd be nice to add in some film grain to fill in the blurriness and also up the contrast and saturation so that the episodes look a little less like the faded VHS cassettes they are and a little closer to the digital videotape look of Season 2 (although it'll still fall very short). Not every episode is in the same state: "Summer of Love" seems really blurry but pretty well-saturated; "Prince of Wails" seems a little undersaturated but pretty sharp; "Last Days" is downright muddy in its blurriness. I'm making those tweaks on an episode to episode basis with some thought to RussianCabbieLotteryFan's tastes for more colour.

I'm also experimenting with Lanczos4Resize or nnedi3 to bring it to a 1080p container. Which one would pneumatic use?

I know the resulting file won't be 1080p quality. But as pneumatic said earlier, it's worthwhile to avoid individual TVs or media players adding any more scaling artifacts to files that are already not in great shape. pneumatic has made them look far better than they ever have.

thank you!  i've spent the last five minutes trying to find an emoticon to express my gratitude on that (but having trouble finding a small one).

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325 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:
ireactions wrote:

I'm also experimenting with Lanczos4Resize or nnedi3 to bring it to a 1080p container. Which one would pneumatic use?

I'm using Lanczos or Spline36 only because my HTPC isn't powerful enough to do TIVTC + QTGMC repair + nnedi3 upscaling in realtime.    If you have the power to spare you might as well use nnedi3 as its very good at antialiasing high contrast edges - https://imgsli.com/MTU5MTAz

Huge difference!

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326 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:
pneumatic wrote:

Well, I'm officially stumped.   I'm looking at the opening scene of S01E06 Last Days from the Universal NTSC DVD (disc ISO, not someone else's transcode) and I'm seeing deinterlacing artefacts BAKED INTO the source.  These artefacts are not present in another copy of this episode which was transcoded by someone else....
I'm not sure what's going on, either there are multiple Universal NTSCs with different image quality, or whoever did this particular transcode of it is wielding some voodoo magic video processing that I cannot get my head around.

For completeness here's a short clip of that scene with vs without QTGMC repair - the difference is quite astonishing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D4PEbu … share_link

wow.  this is what i kept saying about old sliders content looking like it was poorly kept film stock or 3rd generation vhs footage.  the undulating waterfall effect, the vibrating lines.  the crappy, faded color.

that's definitely a lot cleaner & more stable.

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327 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

I know I'm supposed to get up to speed with STAR TREK, but I suddenly felt this urgent need to rewatch XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS which is a really fun show, basically Wonder Woman in a hilariously anachronistic-modernist mythological Greece.

Then it occurred to me that my XENA viewing experience would never truly be complete unless I also rewatched HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS which is basically Superman in a hilariously anachronistic-modernist mythological Greece. Then it occurred to me my XENA-HERCULES viewing experience would never be truly complete unless I watched YOUNG HERCULES as well which is basically SMALLVILLE in a hilariously anachronistic-modernist mythological Greece.

These 90s syndicated fantasy shows are fun and Hercules and Xena are such great characters: Hercules is a relentlessly good natured, affable, charismatic hero (too bad Kevin Sorbo's gone insane) and Xena is like a female version of Wolverine: cunning, assertive, ruthless, noble, tormented, sardonic and with a bit of a mean streak.

May not be getting to STAR TREK any time soon...

Was Hercules with Ryan Gosling? 

I think I saw  it streaming on the NBC app a couple of years ago, pretty wild that existed.

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328 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@quinnslider  it seems like artemis, artemis dehalo (is that the same thing?) and gaia may be the top algorithms.... ib used a lot of artemsis bouncing between different quality settings depending on the season, i believe.  his process is written up on page 1 of this thread....

(also gaia is slower but you may have enough processing power to use it -- it may be more ideal for later seasons).


On a general note, picking up on some of what ib was saying on limitations with topaz, I was thinking the next great future technology might not focus on existing film grain, but rather re-build the image altogether.  taking the input of what you have given it, comparing to what a house in HD should look like, or a grey coat, or a piece of furnature, and rebuilding each element in the frame, trying to closely match its form and lighting but also recognizing what in HD it should look like.    as ib has explained, currently a solution like topaz is grabbing on the grain in the image to understand it better and building out from there, but when you have sources that lack grain (which Sliders s1 is limited on outside of the pilot) it's hard for topaz to get much more out of the image in terms of filling in missing lines  of resolution.    i will say it was much surprior to what an avisynth script was able to do with my brother's old documentary footage, so I think it is indeed quite an accomplishment.   but in the future of any of the technology for this use case may be more similar to the AI image generators we have now, only 1000x better and better able to accurately reconstruct what a 4k scene should reasonably look like based on a low quality source.

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329 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Na you're both artists and craftsmen and preservationists and poets!

It's thrilling to have a corner of humanity that takes on these interests and values.

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330 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Or was the non hd color version more how it played on the old tube tvs?

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331 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:

Here's that first qtgmc preview again, but this time tagged with SD colours - specifically "-colorspace 6 -color_primaries 6" in ffmpeg (6 = rec.601/smpte170m)

qtgmc 720x540p60 Rec.601 tagged.mkv

I'd expect VLC should read the tags and do the conversion properly.  Without the tags VLC probably just assumed nothing and didn't do any conversion, which is fair enough.

yes, now the colors of qtgmc.mkv match the bwdif + qtgmc repair.mkv

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332 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

One question, when you compare the reds between the two videos, are they the same for you?

edit: here's a before/after:  https://imgsli.com/MTY1NDY1

For  reference, look at Arturo's skin pigment and red coat.

Yep, it's way off on the old SD one, and I'm pretty sure it's cause your media player isn't converting SD colours to HD colours to suit your display mode which uses HD colours.

But that's my fault cause I assumed that media players would see the file's resolution is SD and convert them to HD colours, as that's how mine operates - https://imgsli.com/MTY1NDcz

I'll run off another copy with the mkv file properly tagged for SD colours and then it should look fine on your end and all media players.  Sorry about that - good catch.

edit: btw, the colour is still slightly different on mine too, and I think it's cause my media player uses slightly different formulas to do the conversion compared to the Avisynth filter I used.

I'm using VLC, which is obviously a pretty sophisticated media player..

In the old SD one, are you suggesting that it isn't doing shades of colors well, so it sort of averages out a given tone to the nearest SD color (which may be more pronounced)?

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333 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:

May have found a good balance with an alternative QTGMC solution.  It's like the original QTGMC solution but resolves a bit more resolution when camera is still.

Pros:
* full 480p resolution on static elements (credits text, moments when the camera is perfectly still etc.)
* QTGMC smoothing and antialasing on moving parts of the image (also reduces moire more than QTGMC alone)
* perfect frame pacing (spinning earths and Mindgame sections are 30fps & 60fps)

Cons:
* no smoothing of the field alignment issue on static elements (since those are just weaved to 480p)

Preview: bwdif deinterlace + qtgmc repair.mkv

Looks better overall to me.   Compared the two files (qtgmc.mkv to this one)

One question, when you compare the reds between the two videos, are they the same for you?

edit: here's a before/after:  https://imgsli.com/MTY1NDY1

For  reference, look at Arturo's skin pigment and red coat.

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334 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(431 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/stat … 1698696224

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335 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

It did upscale to look pretty good.  BUT, ireactions later used topaz to upscale the documentary for us with Topaz (artemis dehalo algorithm) and it was substantially better.     And things looked so gorgeous, he got a license to topaz and did it in the gaia algorithm, which he showed the end result to a tv producer, who could not even tell the footage was shot in 2003 and resuscitated from old dvd files!    So since you are really into this stuff, I would just suggest you look more at Topaz as well.   I could be wrong but I am not sure avi synth is as powerful of a tool for certain use cases.

I'm sure Topaz can do a better job than nnedi3, I just don't have $300 USD to spare right now.  Although I see they have a free trial version so I'll check it out for sure.   

edit: unfortunately I cannot use it as it's Windows 10+ only.


I am on Windows 8, so I can relate.  They are dropping a lot of browser support for it even.

I didn't realize Topaz was $300, my brother got it on sale for $160 (still very pricey of course).   It would be nice if they offered one-time upscales based on the length of content but maybe it doesn't fit their business model.

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336 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(185 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

TemporalFlux wrote:

A couple of random articles lately that just seem like a Sliders reality:

Rotary cell phones:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/02/ … cellphone/

Ugly sweater camouflage:

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/7720902/ca … nition-ai/

you always find the best stories lol.

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337 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@pneumatic  that's all great info, especially on the colors.

Just some anecdotal information:  my brother once used AVI synth scripts to upscale old compressed DVD images of a documentary he created back in 2006.  The image was originally shot in hd on digital but then ripped off of old dvd files he had from the final produced product.     He spent a lot of time getting the script correct for the settings, to find optimal settings.  This was around 2015 I believe.

It did upscale to look pretty good.  BUT, ireactions later used topaz to upscale the documentary for us with Topaz (artemis dehalo algorithm) and it was substantially better.     And things looked so gorgeous, he got a license to topaz and did it in the gaia algorithm, which he showed the end result to a tv producer, who could not even tell the footage was shot in 2003 and resuscitated from old dvd files!    So since you are really into this stuff, I would just suggest you look more at Topaz as well.   I could be wrong but I am not sure avi synth is as powerful of a tool for certain use cases.

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338 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ha, from 2017

http://www.ipol.im/pub/art/2017/192/

http://www.ipol.im/pub/art/2017/192/Fil … POL.tar.gz <-- code
https://ipolcore.ipol.im/demo/clientApp … tml?id=192    <-- demo

I wonder if this would apply at all to content like sliders 1, or if it doesn't have the baseline the algorithm depends on.

Edit:  Not too impressed with the demo.

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339 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

I'm seeing the same issues even with 540p AI upscales. I don't know what AI algorithm is really right.

AI upscaling from SD to HD is operates best when analyzing the film grain and extrapolating from that to recreate an approximation of the original film image. That's how a fuzzy but grainy SD image can look great in AI-HD. It's is why Season 2 in its blocky graininess looks very good after an AI upscale. This is why the very grainy Seasons 4 - 5, even in hypercompressed Mill Creek discs, looks terrific after an AI upscale.

Season 3 doesn't really look that much better (and no worse); there isn't that much grain in the SD image, but there's enough SD detail for AI to sharpen, so a good image in SD looks good in AI-HD.

With Season 1 after the pilot, there's a lack of detail, some artifacts from the detelecining/deinterlacing, and a lack of film grain. The grain just didn't survive the film-to-analog videotape transfer. Without grain, AI will just inflate the existing lack of detail and artifacts with more pixel contrast and create bizarre and distracting anomalies.

I think I'm going to run through pneumatic's processing advice again, but this time output the file to 1080p with Lanczos scaling just to see how it looks.

In a perfect world, perhaps an aglorithm could add grain back into the image based on lighting and assumed contouring of image.  And then you use the added grain to upscale.  Of course, perhaps an upscaling algorithm could guess upscaling technique based on assumed light/contour shaping as well.   I guess something like that doesn't exist now, because this sort of content (flat without grain) is a smaller use-case for the upscaling marketplace.

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340 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

I've had a look at "Fever" in progress of the AI upscale to 720p and... I do not like what I am seeing. The TIVTC + QTGMC transcode had its flaws like how the skin above the actors lips looks white instead of skin coloured. In the SD transcode file, the softness of the image means this flaw blends into the picture and at living room distance, it's a non-issue. But in the 720p upscale, that white line is enhanced and sharpened and you can't unsee it or look away from it.

I think pneumatic just getting a decent image out of these poorly handled DVD files for 102 - 109 was a huge achievement. I think I'll take until tonight to decide if I'm going to continue with this upscale or whether or not I'll just see about Topaz AI sharpening them up as 540p files (and hope that doesn't add more image flaws while offering few gains).

It would be interesting to see whether you think the original topaz upscaled files is inferior to Pneumatic's method with topaz sharpen and no upscale.

Also, while not likely, is it possible that a different topaz upscale algorithm would provide better results on pneumatic's method than was previously used?

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341 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

this is cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRpT2Jp8PfI

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342 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:

3. Fine details appear sharper and resolve more detail than QTGMC (example) but image is noisier as the noise isn't getting treated by QTGMC's lovely interpolation smoothing.


I do think in spite of that the QTGMC is preferred for the reasons you cite here.  It's certainly noticable in comparing the clips you've shared.  And the zoom on that image comparer shows a signficant difference (with streaks running across the detelecine)

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343 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(31 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

My memory is terrible.  My dad died when I was younger, and I essentially erased all the memories of him when I was younger.  Instead of doing that, I basically erased *everything*.  Not only is most of my childhood just completely gone, but I have trouble remembering tons of stuff that happened afterward.

No need to feel sorry for me - I had a great childhood regardless.  I only say that to illustrate that I have a handful of memories from that time in my life.  And one I can remember *very* clearly is sitting in the office of my mom's boss while she worked late certain nights.  I had a McDonald's fried chicken sandwich (which I can almost taste), and I was watching TV on one of those old TVs.

I was watching Sliders.  I don't remember which episode but it would've been season 1.  I was blown away by the concept, and I thought it was so much fun.  I can't remember many birthdays, trips, or stuff like that.  But burned into my memory is eating a McDonald's chicken sandwich in an office "late" on a weekday, watching Sliders.

that is an incredible story.

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344 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

@pneumatic 

you mentioned electing to go with the lowest common denominator for consistency reasons rather than handling content on a case by case basis.

i'm wondering, having done some inspection of season 1, what is your sense of the varation between episodes and if you were to group the episodes to tiers (by quality), assuming you have an opinion on this, what would they be?

we've talked on the past here about some of the variation in s1 and have had various theories about it, whether it be in the post production process or just the lighting used when shot.

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345 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

I'm not sure why QTGMC results look so much better than Handbrake's decomb. Maybe pneumatic can explain that.

just did some minor googling -- it seems maybe QTGMC is generally considered better than handbrake for deinterlacing (not sure if this diffs with decomb) because of a better algorithm.  maybe it is more intensive (and therefore requires more software and perhaps slower process).

@pneumatic  -- i see you used the "slower" mode.  have you compared vs. what i presume would be a "slowest" mode?



*****

Perhaps offtopic but, I made some adjustments in VLC when opening the file.

https://i.ibb.co/v1TQLRq/image.png

Colors more natural, additional sharpening, and I think (unless I am crazy) the banding removal rather high helped.  But I am not sure there are bands to remove?  In any case, the denoiser made a nice difference in the advanced settings.

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346 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(31 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

OK, so basically in 2023, Quinn is the professor's age in 1995.  Or close to it.

So, John the actor was about 50 years old when he played Arturo in the pilot. Or 49.

Jery O'Connell is now 49.  Jesus christ they are the same age.

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347 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

pneumatic wrote:

For season 1 I'm probably going to just use QTGMC deinterlacer on the lot.  I subjectively like the way it looks and it will keep season 1 looking consistent from episode to episode.  If I try to do special processing on a per-episode basis to extract the most out of each episode, I'll end up with some episodes looking sharper than others.  If I switch to PAL for those episodes, the colour grading of the PAL version can be noticeably different.  I think I'd rather go with the lowest common denominator and keep the whole season looking as consistent as possible, within limits.

Here's a preview (download the file - the version that plays embedded in your web browser is Google's transcode and doesn't represent the quality).  I'd recommend viewing it on a TV at normal viewing distance, if possible.  I'm interested to see how it compares with Topaz as I'm not familiar with that product. The previews on their website seem to be quite impressive though.

looks pretty good.   especially the close up stuff.

this has upscaling to 720 using that open source software?

definitely think you can get gains out of topaz.

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348 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(31 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Question.  What would Quinn's age be today vs. the age of Arturo in the pilot?

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349 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Bob Gale interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKJHclItjbA

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350 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

I've been AI upscaling episodes 1.02 - 1.09 of SLIDERS. No increase in resolution, just adding graininess to the 480 image to fill in the blurriness. It looks passably okay on my 55 inch HDTV at living room distance, but it's very grainy and staticy. I think a part of the staticy look: the latest Topaz AI has a minimum grain size setting (1 on a scale of 1 - 15) and no longer lets me reduce the grain to 0.1 - 0.9 on their scale. All the grains are way too big, distracting rom the image instead of giving the impression that the image is composed of the grain. I think, once I finish my XENA cleanup on the first season (removing the blocky digital videotape distortion), I'll take another run at SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09 with the older version of Topaz and set a finer grain level.

Does the software allow you to use previous models easily, or do you have to rollback or use some hack?

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351 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(185 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

Every time I log into Dall-E or ChatGPT to get a sense of how to use these tools conscientiously and effectively, I just get error messages.

Same

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352 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(185 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Well, this is certainly a way for anyone who wants images accompanying their sliders writing to get such images..

https://twitter.com/svpino/status/1635611742008147968

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353 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Let this inspire us!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixPBhkmBHKw

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354 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(934 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

You are quite the forensic scientist to figure that out. So that means they did additional processing after ripping the dvd?

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355 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

If you want to watch CONTINUUM on Amazon Prime via Canada, you might try using a VPN with a Canadian connection..

not a bad idea, I just assumed they used the location associated with the  account's address but perhaps not.

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356 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Lego_Sliders wrote:

Here is a funny music video with Jerry in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWF0nPG … p;index=25

wow, that was a different time in the world!

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357 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(1 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

YouTube Rewatches:

Relatable Reviews:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlf8 … Dh8B5Zn9Wq


Various:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeEk … nCIWN59s_R

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358 Topic by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(1 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

There are seven podcasts dedicated to rewatching Sliders, which is quite impressive, with new ones coming out as recently as this year.

Here is a list of the podcasts, ordered by when they first debuted:


Sliderscast


Rewatch Podcast


Circling The Vortex


Slidetastrophe


Catch You On the Flipside


Three Truths and a Slide Podcast


Infinite Retrocast: Sliders

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359 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

ireactions wrote:

CONTINUUM is still on Amazon Prime here in Canada.

I have to say, while I enjoyed the first season, I found the second season a little confusing, found the third season impossible to follow and found the fourth season to be... a little confusing.

You are lucky smile

I guess since it was produced by a Canadian studio, and only make its way to the u.s. through acquisition, perhaps doing a deal was easier, or there is just a greater affinity for it there.

I thought it was a bit ahead of its time.

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360 Reply by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan

(687 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

Isn't it weird how some tv shows just disappear afterr maybe a brief syndication run?

Continuum is not in the "rotation" so to speak with streaming since it left netflix about 5 years ago or so.  And the blu-rays are all quite expensive.

I wonder if this sort of stuff is mostly a product of whether a major studio fully owns it or not.  I think a lot of stuff that gets regularly passed around is probably part of package deals for huge libraries.

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