# Are the original Twilight Zone eps remastered? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 6, 2019, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043 "2019-02-06T01:41:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/1 "2019-02-06T01:41:15Z")
If that’s the right term. I’ve cued up “You Drive” from season five and it looks sharp as hell. Meanwhile DS9 looks as fuzzy as it ever did. Which is not to say it looks bad but… ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/2 "2019-02-06T02:34:27Z")
the prints shown of the syfy channel have been because they bought them and digitally redid them , other channels might be renting syfys prints So it depends on the channel ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/3 "2019-02-06T03:15:30Z")
Twilight Zone was probably shot on film, and DS9 on video. They were likely both remastered, but film gets much better results from that than video does. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/4 "2019-02-06T03:26:37Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > Twilight Zone was probably shot on film, and DS9 on video. > > They were likely both remastered, but film gets much better results from that than video does. I did some research. Its complex. I didn’t research TZ specifically, but with TOS it was a matter of just cleaning up the film and new effects and such. TZ was probably all shot on film except a few eps that are plainly video and look like 50’s soap operas. DS9 was shot on film but transferred to video and apparently would be even harder to make HD then TNG was and that was extremely difficult. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/5 "2019-02-06T04:16:22Z")
DS9 was shot on film, but the effects were done on video, same as for TNG, so the effects would have to all have to be redone, and doing so is a lot more expensive than a simple remaster of the film (which is mostly just scanning the film in and then some minor automatic cleanup). And the TNG remaster didn’t sell well enough to do that again for DS9, so there are no such plans. From what I remember of the Twilight Zone, it didn’t use a lot of effects. It’s also older, and so the video copy is likely in worse condition, meaning remastering the film copy can improve it even at sub-HD resolutions. I would guess the really fuzzy ones are ones where the film was lost, and all that is left is a copy of a copy. Though the copy may have been film: it could have been telecined–recorded directly from a TV onto film. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/6 "2019-02-06T09:27:45Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > DS9 was shot on film, but the effects were done on video, same as for TNG, so the effects would have to all have to be redone I should have thought of this possibility. Given [the results when Buffy tried to do this for its remaster](https://gizmodo.com/oh-dear-buffys-hd-makeover-is-a-total-mess-1671812347) - long story short, virtually anything they could have done wrong, they did - (I haven’t seen the TNG one, since I didn’t like TNG enough to revisit it), it’s probably for the best they decided not to try. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/7 "2019-02-06T13:32:43Z")
Some episodes of Twilight Zone were shot on video (like the one with the Dead Grandma on the Toy Telephone. Several websites claim there were six video episodes – [‘The Twilight Zone’…The Six Video Tape Episodes – Eyes Of A Generation…Television's Living History](http://eyesofageneration.com/the-twilight-zone-the-six-video-tape-episodes-its-been-a-while-since-we-c/) ), but I think most were on film. There was an entire season of one hour long episodes, as opposed to the half hour ones that the rest of the seasons were > [@](#): > > Due to budgetary constraints in its second season, the network decided to cut costs by shooting some episodes on videotape rather than film. Because videotape was a relatively primitive medium in the early 1960s, the editing of tape was next to impossible. Thus, each of the six episodes was “camera-cut”, as in live television, on a studio soundstage, using a total of four cameras. The requisite multicamera set-up of the videotape experiment pretty much precluded location shooting, severely limiting the potential scope of the storylines, and so the short-lived experiment was ultimately abandoned. The limitations of using videotape (e.g., it could not be edited as cleanly as film, and its visual quality was poorer) led the network to switch back to film for the rest of the series, despite the greater cost. The six videotaped episodes were titled: The Twilight Zone: The Lateness of the Hour (1960); The Twilight Zone: Static (1961); The Twilight Zone: The Whole Truth (1961); The Twilight Zone: The Night of the Meek (1960); The Twilight Zone: Twenty Two (1961); and The Twilight Zone: Long Distance Call (1961); and then transferred to film for broadcast, which saved the producers about five thousand dollars per episode. > **[The Twilight Zone (TV Series 1959–1964) - Trivia - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052520/trivia/)** > > The Twilight Zone (TV Series 1959–1964) - Trivia on IMDb: Cameos, Mistakes, Spoilers and more... ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-original-twilight-zone-eps-remastered/829043/8 "2019-02-06T14:31:43Z")
All other things being equal, black and white is sharper than colour.