Endless Summer: 30 Years of H&A - Tuesday 17th July

[Sally Keating]

12 hours ago, dee123 said:

Judy's comments seemed all over the place if she hated Alisa's death and the way she was treated why come back to be that "evil" Alisa when Alf had his brain tumor?

I don't get all these comments about Judy. She's allowed to not like one aspect of her 13 years on the show lol. Why shouldn't she come back to do the brain tumor story? I don't see how disliking one aspect of a 13 year stint is such a big deal. It's not like she said "I hated it, I was disgusted, I'd never work with those people again." For goodness sake she had an opinion and for the record, it's an opinion that most fans agreed with. Ray Meagher also said he didn't like Ailsa's death scene, does that mean he should have quit and never filmed another scene ever again too?

Blowing things way out of proportion here

[Helena]

I watch home and away on 5 star and the picture quality for me is excellent

[Homeandawayfan.]

14 hours ago, James Martin said:

Old tapes and also different cameras and lighting techniques.  That makes a big difference.  You've also got to remember TVs have got bigger and flatter since the 90s.  I particularly remember the Summer 2012 reruns on 5* looking far better on a CRT than they did on a flatscreen set.  CRTs generally are more forgiving of certain artefacts than their LCD, Plasma and LED successors are.

I imagine what really causes the issue is "zooming" in a 4:3 picture into a 16:9 frame - which is why the post-2001 stuff didn't look quite so bad.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure Home and Away is shot progressive now as opposed to interlaced (the change happening when HD came in in 2003) so including old interlaced shot clips in a progressively shot show may induce conversion artefacts.

Would love to see Melissa George back but only Alf and Irene would remember her of course.

Good to see Debra too.  She's not been back for a while, but if Morag gets an onscreen funeral I think you could reasonably expect Pippa to return for that.  Potentially a way to bring Emma back as well if Dannii Minogue is up for it?

Although in regards to "old tapes" Neighbours has released 1986 episodes on DVD and they are in good sharp quality original images. It says they are adherent to their original masters so are in no way remastered, not one bit. It could be old tapes but it is probably more the fact that as you say, 4:3 picture format from 30 years ago does not fit very well into modern TV's so the picture quality is blurry.

1980s TV picture quality was sharp and good, as I can remember it in the late 1980s. Yes as you say, TV's have become bigger and flatter since 1988 and 4:3 format being zoomed into a 16:9 frame.

[Summer's Bay]

A friend of mine from the UK recorded this for me so fortunately I was able to watch it not long ago. A few things, in my opinion

 

-I believe someone mentioned it already but there was a real jump from 1988 to somewhat present day which was odd but the producer mentioned on Instagram that he has hours or tape and it was really difficult to cut out and put in what would be relevant, I understand that based on the current product and demographic

-I fast forwarded a lot of the interviews by the recent actors and wish there was more of a balance(and less Kate). It was nice to see Alex, Nicolle and Judy  but is a shame the producers didnt ask more of the actors who appeared in 1988 to make an appearance...or maybe they did and they had no interest , either way, that was disappointing. 

- In my opinon, the reunion between Ray/Alex/Nicolle was underwhelming,I wouldve liked to see Nicolle and Judy reunite but it was nice that Ray stilll had great memories of them

-In my opinion there is a different type of chemistry between actors on screen when they are dating secretly and regardless of the little awkward display , in my opinion there was something going on between Alex and Nicolle. That is their business if they choose not to make it public knowledge but their responses and body language told a different story

-Nicolle mentioned in an interview that after she left, she wasnt getting any acting gigs and that is when her husband persuaded her to go and further her education but hopefully, now that her children are grown and she was on the the Home and Away set, that might open some doors for her because her talent is definitely wasted 

-In general the show was sort of underwhelming but hopefully all the extra footage is put on a DVD and sold, in my opinion that would be a good compensation 

[c120701]

I actually remember seeing Nicolle & Alex in panto together back in the early 90s.

I think the next year was Mat Stevenson, with Linda Hartley & Kristian Schmid from Neighbours, although Kristian has since been in Home and Away. He came back the next year as well.

[James Martin]

17 hours ago, Dan F said:

Not to mention if you were watching on Freeview in the UK the picture quality of 5Star is shocking anyway, which certainly wouldn't do the old footage any favours. If I remember rightly the channel is not even broadcast at the full SD resolution, so the old footage would be going through many up and down conversions...

I watched it on My5 where the picture quality was fairly OK.  Certainly better than linear 5*, which as you say is atrocious.  It probably is full SD res, the issue is it's compressed to hell compared to, say, the SD channels on the PSB muxes, and consequently massive amounts of picture information get lost.  Again, watch on a widescreen 28" CRT from the late 90s/early 00s and you can't tell the difference.  If you're watching on a 1080p, or worse 4K LED set, then it's upscaling a picture that's already been compressed badly and you're at YouTube circa 2007 quality.

Can't vouch for Sky or Freesat but it's awful on Virgin too (which may well take its feed off-air from DTT, they do this for quite a few channels.)  I don't think I've bothered with first look since I got an HD telly, ironically just after the From Day One run finished, I love the almost cinematic production values of H&A now to the point it's doing it a disservice watching in SD.

[c120701]

I doubt Beau Brady would’ve agreed given the way he left as I don’t think it was his decision and purely speculation was maybe to do with the Bec break-up. Plus there was his drug conviction last year.

I’d have liked Isla Fisher, or even some more footage of people like Debra Lawrance.

[Dan F]

1 hour ago, James Martin said:

Certainly better than linear 5*, which as you say is atrocious.  It probably is full SD res, the issue is it's compressed to hell compared to, say, the SD channels on the PSB muxes, and consequently massive amounts of picture information get lost.

Just doublechecked the recording and it's broadcasting at 544x576 (see below for cap without AR correction) as opposed to 720x576 - so that coupled with the already horrendous compression explains a lot. Certainly always been noticable in the past when trying to get decent screencaps for early eps!

Spoiler

But anywhos, we've become a little sidetracked in discussions more suited to the likes of TVF

Moral of the story, can't really judge the quality of old eps when they've been upscaled/cropped, downscaled to below their original res, and then upscaled from there. It looked as good as to be expected on-demand anyway.

58 minutes ago, c120701 said:

I’d have liked Isla Fisher, or even some more footage of people like Debra Lawrance.

Apparently they did want to get Isla but there were scheduling conflicts.

[Red Ranger 1]

Finally got around to watching it and I was pretty impressed. Let's be honest, they're not going to make a prime-time documentary for the few of us who can recite every wedding on the show, they're going to make it for people who watch the show casually or watched it back in the Shane and Angel days and fancy a nostalgia-fest.It's not going to be full of detailed discussion of every behind the scenes decision or interviews with someone who was in it for six months in 1990 and has barely acted since.The interviews were good for what they were and there was a decent selection of clips.I was actually surprised at how little there was of Chris Hemsworth, just a few clips of his character's wedding and an anecdote from Ada Nicodemou.I did wonder if we were actually going to see Danni Minogue in the show, since it took a long time to get an Emma clip, but we got some good ones in the end.(I always remember that Neighbours documentary only had one clip of Margot Robbie that they showed at least four times.)Everyone interviewed seemed to talk positively about the show while occasionally acknowledging something that wasn't as good.

My only real bug bear? If you're going to show Alf and Sally's farewell, show the proper one, not the inferior remake. It felt like some bored researcher looked up Sally's last appearance on Wikipedia and didn't bother reading the fine print.But it had me laughing and smiling throughout and it did what it was meant to do.Not sure what Vanessa Downing feels about the show these days, since I believe she did leave by choice because she disagreed with the way the show was going (in 1990!). Roger Oakley might have been more likely, but to be honest I don't think he could have said anything that Ray Meagher didn't, and the latter's kind of the show's patriarch these days.

[Dan F]

3 minutes ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

If you're going to show Alf and Sally's farewell, show the proper one, not the inferior remake.

Yes that did jar a bit, cutting to that when Ray & Kate were clearly talking about her proper departure.

But then they oddly included the hug from 2008 right at the end of the sequence....so they obviously had the right footage to hand!