MLAM168

For those who haven’t seen it over on Blu-ray.com, I’ve created 4 parts of detailed posts about the Knight Rider Blu-Ray releases and a review of the Turbine set plus a detailed comparison of it against the Mill Creek set.

If anyone fancies a bit of bed time reading over a cup of tea/coffee or hot chocolate, then feel free 😃

Part 1 - Technical Background about HD Masters
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=20906926&postcount=688

Part 2 - Blu-Ray Releases Spec Comparisons
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=20922444&postcount=708

Part 3 - Turbine Knight Rider 40th Anniversary Blu-Ray Review
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=20944025&postcount=742

Part 4 - Turbine Knight Rider 40th Anniversary vs Mill Creek Detailed Comparison and Analysis
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=20979991&postcount=771

poorcomputerman said:

MLAM168 said:

poorcomputerman said:

They definitely recreated the Knight of the Drones intro. The person that did the work said that they made their own and said when they compared it to the original that it was just like it. It looks close but not 100% perfect to my original VHS airing on the premiere date.

Agreed on that, I’m pretty sure it’s that 0.5 second shot of KITT’s dash that is different as that shot can’t be found anywhere, Baobab Archiver has done his own recreation of it and had the same issue.

The shot in question looks to be in the same “take” as the replacement shot but the speed is different and I think the display underneath it says something else.

Still, it’s miles better than having the regular Season 3 intro 😃

It is great as far as I am concerned.

Agreed, what else have you noticed that is different from the original to their reconstructed one?

poorcomputerman said:

They definitely recreated the Knight of the Drones intro. The person that did the work said that they made their own and said when they compared it to the original that it was just like it. It looks close but not 100% perfect to my original VHS airing on the premiere date.

Agreed on that, I’m pretty sure it’s that 0.5 second shot of KITT’s dash that is different as that shot can’t be found anywhere, Baobab Archiver has done his own recreation of it and had the same issue.

The shot in question looks to be in the same “take” as the replacement shot but the speed is different and I think the display underneath it says something else.

Still, it’s miles better than having the regular Season 3 intro 😃

Here’s something I’ve just discovered today.

Apparently the French Blu-Ray release from Elephant Films has Stereo for Season 4, sadly Knight of the Juggernaut is edited in to 2 parts but does anyone have it to see on the off chance if it’s Stereo along with Burial Ground?

I highly doubt it as if Turbine couldn’t get them I can’t imagine Elephant Films would be any different.

Baobab Archiver said:

Fullmetaled said:

The turbine releases video is even a huge upgrade its sharper brighter and black levels and the colors are better.

I haven’t got the US set to compare to but if the evidence is to be believed it is a good upgrade. I was given a couple of stills from the Turbine set for the episode Give Me Liberty… Or Give Me Death. I’ve corrected the Colorspace issue on the UK set and compared the screenshots. They are almost identical. Certainly the colour is indistinguishable from the Turbine set. The Turbine shot had marginally better detail / film grain. It just shows how frustrating it was that the Fabulous Films set had the colorspace issue as they were very good transfers.

I think in motion the Turbine may show more of it’s strengths over the Fabulous Films release by virtue of being a newer encoding/compression of the masters as software gets more and more optimised, Turbine probably done these late 2021/early 2022 vs 2016 for the Fabulous Films transfer.

Though from what I’ve seen colour space issue aside, the Fabulous Films release trounces over the Mill Creek release which seems to be the worst and it comes with lossy Dolby Digital audio vs DTS for the others.

Turbine supposedly got several masters from Universal and picked the best ones to work with so I’m curious to know how much restoration/remastering work Turbine put in or asked Universal to do.

I’ve got a friend who has the US set which has the syndicated cut of it.

If that’s the case then just speculating here, universal must have remastered the DME tracks from the original masters and supplied to all the distributors.

Makes you wonder if they had a new master track with When Doves Cry for “Dead of Knight”.

Any joy from your friend yet?

I remember on the US DVD version from 2005 ish, Knight of the Drones was missing “Little Red Corvette” in the start of the second act with the shots over San Francisco leading into the club with the women dancing to no music again.

Did this get corrected on the BluRay? If so then how does it sound vs original broadcast?

That’s the one I’ve got in my stash too I think.

I see ok, keep us posted on what your friend says.
Is he going to be checking it all or only stuff you have concerns over?

The one part of a box set right?

Knight Rider Historians has a video on that comparing all 3 versions, have you seen that yourself?

https://youtu.be/au69yNAGpLo
About 6 minutes in.

I’ve just watched it myself and see what you mean, the clapping is very obvious on the silent version, you can still hear it on the Turbine release but of course drowned out a bit with the Prince song.

I can’t hear any obvious fluctuations in volume on the Turbine version, though it’s not the most fair comparison with a nearly 40 year old VHS tape vs a new lossless HD master, it sounds far more crisp anyway but yes very little if any clapping on the NBC broadcast.

Of course and no denying that, I guess it’s 99% done it’s as near as original and unless you do a A/B comparison it’s not obvious.

That is true about NBC, unless it was something done in agreement with Universal for premiere night only and long junked.
Who knows unless someone from NBC at the time is on here!

Baobab Archiver said:

I know I’ve seen that but even so. I have a Burial Ground VHS NICAM recording from the UK Bravo channel around 2000. I recall when I last played it, the sound was only on one channel. I left it and didn’t bother exploring further.
When I next get my VHS deck set up I’m going to capture it and listen to the audio more carefully.
It could possibly be that it was just the 1 channel of the stereo which should be pretty easy to tell when listening to the opening theme.
If that is the case, it introduces the possibility that the original stereo master was damaged or discarded when it was found to be faulty.

Although I don’t own this set, my initial thoughts from reading about it were it is indeed the ultimate set for collectors.

However, I do have some concerns for it’s completeness. I’ve asked a friend to compare episodes to my reconstructed ones.

One that is now confirmed is evidence that the Knight of the Drones intro on the set is probably reconstructed rather than original. That isn’t a problem in itself - in fact, it shows great dedication on the part of Turbine in putting it back together. The result though is that it is missing the short sequence of KITT’s dash that was unique to that opening. They’ve replaced it using a similar shot, just as I did when I recreated it myself.

Hi,

You’ve probably seen my posts on the other forum, it was myself that approached Turbine on Facebook about the two episodes in Season 4 being in mono.

I’d be very surprised if they didn’t put the effort in to find stereo tracks for them given the love and care done for the other bits.

In regards to Knight of the Juggernaut, do you have the Knight Rider VHS Volume box sets released around 2000?

One of them had that episode on it and I wonder if that’s Stereo.

What concerns do you have in it’s completeness if you don’t mind me asking?

In regards to the Knight of the Drones intro, are you referring to the very brief full shot of KITT’s dash just before he drives past the explosion?

I do wonder if the intro was done by NBC for premiere night only and only on video tape for TV transmission.

This is the only plausible explanation to me, it also makes sense as Goliath has been said to have had a extended teaser before the start of the episode which again hasn’t been seen since it’s premiere and that was definitely created by NBC.