I had a chance to watch Inner Light, one of my favourite episodes of NG, it’s the one where Picard lives a whole life on another planet.
I started noticing thick noise or graininess in some of the deep colors, like the back of Picard’s red jacket. I saw the same sheen of grain anytime there was adverse lighting such as the over-bright conditions outside in the sun or darkened shadowy areas. I was a bit disappointed thinking they’d clean up better. But overall, when lighting was good (which is 85-percent of the time) the picture quality was impressive. Skin tones looked amazing and detail popped.
Outer space scenes were particularly remarkable and the USS Enterprise from outside looks very clean and polished as you can imagine a Federation starship to be. Maybe a bit too clean however, evidence that you’re looking at a plastic model. But that’s a minor nit to pick.
Overall I found it impressive. I was happy that they maintained the show’s original 4:3 aspect ratio and didn’t attempt to widen the shots. It would have looked cheesy if they stretched it out or artificially added anything.
If you’re waiting for the show on Blu-ray to come out season-by-season based on the sampler episode I saw it will look good … but I think they could have done a little better job considering the price each season is going to fetch, the dedicated fans and the amount of work they put into the space scenes and recreating the special effects.
