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Thanks, it looks like the version I've got is the 2004 release.

Here's a screenshot comparison from the same frame: https://imgsli.com/MTU5NTY2

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Jim_Hall wrote:

The Mill Creek edition is garbage as far as video quality.

Yep it's pretty bad.  Here's my attempt at cleaning it up so far...

Scene 1 - city square
Scene 2 - forest
Scene 3 - studio
Scene 4 - end credits

To see the actual quality you'll have to download the files and play them with a media player.  The version that plays embedded in your web browser is Google/Youtube's transcode of it, not the original file.

Filters used in this order:

DeCross (reduce analogue rainbow dotcrawl artefacts)
Detelecine to 480p
Deflicker filter (reduce field alignment drop shadow lines)
Convert colourimetry to HD Rec.709
4x AI upscale to 2880x1920p
Downscale & sharpen to 1440x1080p
Slight colour saturation increase

I played around with noise reduction but didn't like the result.  Might have to play around with the thresholds a bit more.

Got the NN scaler working and the results are great: https://imgsli.com/MTU4MDUx

But it's far too slow, about 0.3fps on a GTX 1070 (about 3 days for a 42min episode)

Does anyone know where to buy Season 5 on Universal NTSC DVD?  I can't find it anywhere, even a used copy.   I've already bought the Mill Creek NTSC release but it has the field alignment issue.   I've bought the PAL DVDs but could only get seasons 1-4.   PMs very welcome!

btw I did some experiments in Photoshop and can reproduce the Muck Creek field alignment issue exactly.  Trying to figure out a way to reverse it in Photoshop, then once I know it works in theory it should be translatable to an Avisynth script.  But I'm still not sure if the damage is done in a way that is reversible or not.   It's kind of like lossy vs lossless compression - one of them can be reversed to get a 1:1 copy of the original, the other cannot.   Reversing the field alignment issue may still be lossy.  I think if I knew the exact scaling factor and algorithm they used for the digital zoom which put the fields out of alignment, then maybe I could reverse it 1:1.

The only way Sliders get rescanned is if a reboot kindles interest in the old show

Got the 2008 Universal PAL release today and sadly it appears identical to the 2013 Via Vision PAL release - the MPEG2 streams have identical file sizes, and MediaInfo reports the same properties for both.    Visually I can see no difference with an A-B comparison in photoshop toggling the second layer on and off.   

The Via Vision PAL box set from 2019 is I believe identical to their 2013 release since the product codes printed on the case spine are the same for both, eg. "VVE454" for season 1 & 2.

Universal NTSC version is still a month away from eBay international shipping, so no Sliders for a few weeks

Universal NTSC packaging is bulky and the cardboard looks a bit tatty in seller's photos, so I'll probably store the discs in the Universal PAL cases.   That way it's still Universal - consistent with the printing on the discs, just a "better" version of Universal

I might still keep the PAL discs as a reference in case I come across some odd episode that might be cleaner.

Oh and if you hadn't noticed in the screenshots I posted earlier, the PAL version can also be much dimmer in terms of brightness, so that's another reason to dislike it.

This back and forth between pnuematic and ireactions is just like the Professor and Quinn talking about string theory.

Well, Earth 211 is a quick read. It's just the synopses of the episodes, not full scripts.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030711182 … efault.asp

I think only an insane person would try to write full scripts for even a mini-season of SLIDERS.

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

TemporalFlux wrote:

With today’s nominations, we now we have a Sliders type movie that stands to sweep the Oscars.  How much longer can Universal ignore what they’re sitting on?

They keep waiting on a prestige creator / showrunner

I guess they’re not interested, but I still think Seth McFarlane / David A. Goodman would be perfect.  Seth has a development deal with Universal right now

Probably, SLIDERS reflects how it came from creators who had previously worked on the NAKED GUN series and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- comedies and parodies. In contrast, THE X-FILES was based on KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER and inspired by the Watergate scandal; THE X-FILES was a criminal procedural in a world of horror while SLIDERS was a dramedy drawing on the talent of sketch comedians.

IOh, in X-CAST, I've just come to the segment where Carter says he wasn't aware that Gillian was quitting until he read about it on the internet at which point he decided to create a cliffhanger with Skinner getting run over -- except Gillian didn't say she was quitting until well-after that episode had been filmed.

I think that AI has its place as an assistant. When writing my fanfics, I had a lot of help: Transmodiar helped me better understand the screenplay format. Nigel Mitchell came up with all the alt-world concepts. Slider_Quinn21 made my last script readable, something I struggled with due to the densely layered plot.

I think it'd be great to use AI to determine if the writing is sufficiently visual, to accumulate scene description details for a human writer to select, to offer dialogue suggestions drawing on machine-learning to review every line of dialogue ever spoken by Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John in any production to create a reference base of their specific vocal mannerisms.

As it stands, any 'writing' from AI is just pulling words from pre-existing content, using thesaurus-algorithms to paraphrase the nouns and verbs and adjectives, rearranging the clauses by assigning importance to any sentences with key words relevant to the query, and presenting a mismash of semi-random content that has been given a bit of polish to somewhat hold it together. An AI episode of SLIDERS would just be inserting the character-names into a STAR TREK or STARGATE screenplay, moving around the language and replacing and paraphrasing names and descriptions.

AI stands for artificial intelligence, but as it stands, it's not really that intelligent. I'd call it assistive iteration; it's not creating, it's just repeating, recombining and repackaging content from different sources, and all those sources were first written by a human. AI is a useful tool to algorithmically review your own writing to determine if your writing is clear, readable, consistent, meets formatting requirements and to gather research, but as a writer, AI basically the Season 3 staff of SLIDERS ripping off popular movies.

If you look on some of the AI-generated plots for SLIDERS on Reddit, the stories are obviously just LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, STARGATE and STAR TREK synopses that have been randomly recombined.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SLIDERS/commen … r_sliders/

The explanation is that we as an audience were almost role playing as Sliders.  No matter how strange or awful the slide was, we kept jumping into the vortex each week hoping that the next slide would bring us back home to the show we used to love.

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I honestly don't remember thinking it was as well done as I did on the last watch.  Maybe my age.  Either way was quite an interesting story.   Far better than the super hero schlock of today.

I fundamentally disagree with this on every level. The entire thesis of THE X-FILES seems to be: you can't make a difference. No one can make a difference. Mulder can't do anything about the alien invasion except talk about it. Scully can't seem to get anywhere in her career: no matter how many times she gets fired or quit, she ends up working at the most disdained department in the FBI.

Even the evil characters can't seem to accomplish anything on THE X-FILES. The alien invasion is never coming; the Syndicate is constantly referring to how "the date is set" and "they're coming, they're here, they've been here for a long time, they're only coming back" and then Season 10 went and declared that the alien invasion was never happening at all and all those ominous, mysterious men were wasting their time.

In addition, THE X-FILES also seemed to be unable to grasp the concept of education. Mulder and Scully never seemed to collate and accumulate their details on the monsters or the Syndicate: by Season 11, they were as incapable of stopping monsters as they were in Season 1.

This is the antithesis of a superhero movie. The superhero movie declares: we can all make a difference and anyone can be a hero. Even the most obnoxious or easily dismissed or ordinary can be heroes. Tony Stark is a drunken moron tripping on ego and liquor; when stripped of his wealth and luxuries and forced to survive, he discovers he has what it takes to battle war itself.

Dr. Donald Blake seems to be a crazy person who thinks he's the Norse God of Thunder and here to help people; it turns out he actually is Thor. Steve Rogers is a washout and a reject who can't find shoes small enough to fit the feet on his frail frame; he is determined to battle Nazis and is given a body that is as strong as his decency of character. Everyone has it in them to be a hero; it's just that not everyone looks hard enough or digs deep enough to find it.

And I know what some will say: well, that's a fairy tale. THE X-FILES is far more realistic (because yes, a TV show about aliens made of black oil colonizing the Earth with bees and supersoldiers is truly very grounded), THE X-FILES' cynicism is believable. But cynicism is easy. Despair and depression and giving up are the easiest options for a person and for a storyteller. It is much harder to tell superhero stories than it is to tell X-FILES stories.

One of the hardest parts of writing the TV show SUPERNATURAL, I think: it has to be finding a way for Sam and Dean to find some solution to beat the monsters of the week, to defeat Lucifer, and to, in the final season, take on God Himself. But THE X-FILES takes the easy way out by never having Mulder and Scully triumph.

Writing THE X-FILES is shooting fish in a barrel: raise mysteries and don't resolve them, create monsters and don't find a way to stop them, have two lead characters passively wander through the story and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Superheroes take much more talent.

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's shiny suit and Arturo's bow tie that the opinions of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV.