Great news! The excellent HBO series about NASA and the American space program is being released on Blu-ray on July 16th. It's touted as being completely remastered in HD, with new CG effects based on NASA reference models. It will also have a remastered Atmos soundtrack. I have the Signature DVD box set that was reissued in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and have always hoped that an HD version would eventually be released. It is still among the best series ever done by HBO and producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg made sure that every aspect of the production was done right. It remains one of the best chronicles of the space program starting with the Mercury program but primarily focused on the Apollo flights. It's also a reminder of a time when this country could still do monumental things. That has not really been the case in recent years but I keep hoping that something (aside from a war) comes along that can rekindle that spirit. I pre-ordered the Blu-ray set today and can't wait for it to arrive so that I can revisit that piece of our history that, like so many Americans, I felt I was a part of.

Oh my God one of the best! This was such a great series.
I hope they release "Band of Brothers" in 4k HDR at some point but this is excellent news. I will be buying this.

And to this day I still love the opening theme song with the montage that goes from JFK's immortal "We choose to go to the moon" speech to the mission patches and clips from some of those missions. The highlight, for me, was always the focus on Alan Shepard (excellent acting by Ted Levine) and his never giving up and staying with NASA after Meniere's Disease took him off flight status from 1963 until 1971. When, after successful corrective surgery, he was named the commander of the Apollo 14 flight the entire nation cheered and he got to hit the "infinite" golf shot on the moon's surface. Shepard was one of my personal heros and I shed a few tears when he passed away in 1998 after battling Leukemia for several years. One of the other highlights was the episode that centered on the Grumman engineers desperately trying to get a working model of the LEM ready for a moon landing. A great cast, great stories and a faithful homage to that wonderful time in our history makes From the Earth to the Moon a must for anyone who grew up in that era or wants to know more about it.

I'm pretty sure that I bought this on WMVHD (1080p on DVD-9) back in the day before Blu-ray was even a thing, alongside T2. I'm sure it will look a lot better using newer codecs on a larger disc!

EDIT: Nope, I was thinking of "Standing in the Shadow of Motown" on WMVHD combined with "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Blu-ray that I already have! LOL

Has anyone gotten a copy yet? I read on other sites this was very rushed to cash in on the 50th Anniversary with the new special effects being of poor quality, colors off, print issues, etc.

I just got it... The colors seem to be like a pastel pallette, it appears that the colors are comparable to the original DVD release.... Some scenes are very detailed and others appear soft. The special effects of the space craft does look a bit simplistic and a bit crude but you have to realize that the show is over 20 years old and CGI back then was not as good as it is now. Taking that into consideration, the CGI is perfectly fine. Scenes of the astronauts in space and on the moon is very sharp. Of course, actual footage from TV broadcasts are very coarse. One thing that bothers me is that the video has quite a bit of combing artifacts in some scenes, such as when the picture scrolls across a TV broadcast image.
See the screenshots below...

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After closer inspection, it is obvious the CGI was updated... It is better than the original but I guess it could be better. My guess is that they did not want to make it that obvious that they updated the CGI to the point that it did not match the original material. Something like how the George Lucas messed up the CGI on Star Wars IV when he re-released it on video. The new CGI seems out of place in the movie...

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There's a lot of chatter on another site about the usual stuff : aspect ratio changes, special effects, colors etc. I couldn't care less. I have loved watching the first three episodes again. Sure this Blu-ray update/conversion has some issues but does anyone really want to go back to the original 1.33:1 frame instead of the 1.85:1 screen? The skin tones in the first episode were, at times, a bland yellowish-orange but at other times they were OK. I thought that the Mercury and Gemini capsules in space looked very good. In the third episode, when Shirra, Cunnigham and Eisle are in the command module getting ready to launch the picture looked almost as good as the Apollo 13 Blu-ray's. Even with it's flaws, I'll take this Blu-ray release over the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio DVD version and the Signature Edition DVD set with its 1.85:1 image. 4K TV's can make up-scaling old DVDs a challenge.

Excited to hear this.

So I watched the "Spider" episode that focused on Grumman's engineers building the LEM. It played as well as it did the first time I saw it on HBO years ago. Matt Craven and Grant Shaud were excellent as were the actors who played the astronauts. What also struck me was the use of Elmer Bernstein's theme from The Great Escape and the beautiful melody that was used during many sequences, especially those with the LEM in flight. The image looked pretty good up-scaled to 4K and whatever cropping might have been done in the conversion to wide screen didn't bother me on bit. This BD set is a keeper.

This is saying a lot for me because Project Apollo is one of the most interesting things but after First Man, Apollo 11, Chasing the Moon and From the Earth to the Moon, I'm almost Apolloed out.

Art

I can't get me enough Apollo although I was only lukewarm towards First Man. I guess that the pacing was to slow for me. I need to watch it again at some point. Last night it was "That's All There Is" and "Miles and Miles", the episodes that focused on Al Bean, Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon and then Alan Shepard respectively. I had forgotten how funny the former was from Al Bean's (Dave Foley) quirky narration to Pete Conrad's wild sense of humor (Tom Wolff explored Conrad's off beat personality and how it hurt him at times in The Right Stuff). And as I said previously, the Alan Shepard episode has always been one of my favorites.

I know what you mean. i warmed up to it and accepted its flaws. I was treated incredibly poorly on another forum when I brought some of them up the most important to me was how damaged Armstrong was portrayed and having almost no humor but this was not him.

Just to mention a few.

1) The Multiaxis trainer scene... actually, the Multi-Axis Space Training Inertial Facility (MASTIF) was not used after the Mercury Seven so none of the New Nine group of astronauts trained on it as shown in the film.
2) Janet Armstrong made a point specifically that Neil took no mementos of the family to the Moon.
3) Whitey on the moon was not released until after Apollo 12 but shown at Apollo 8 rollout.
4) VAB did not have an American flag or NASA logo on the side at the time
5) Clouds at over 100,000 feet in the x15 scene ! ?
6) Armstrong was already commander of Apollo 11 when Deke informed him that 11 would be the first landing attempt of the Apollo program thus he wasn't asked to command after the decision was made about the mission but long before. When he was designated commander he did not know what the Apollo 11 mission would be.
7) Ed White was not training for a walk in space so being the first man to walk in space wasn't expected for Gemini 4. The "getting close on EVA" comment was accurate but rendezvous, docking and proving that human could survive for two weeks in space where the first jobs for project Gemini EVA was expected for much later in the program until Leonov went out then it was pushed up in priority for Whites flight. So his slamming his hand as if he was training to be first when Leonov went out was false.
8) The interiors of the spacecraft were shown as being dirty, corroded and worn looking when in fact , as Jim Lovell, stated each was a single-use item and looked and smelled like a new car.
9) Armstrong was shown with his face torn up after the crash of the LLTV but in fact, only bit his tongue and required no medical attention.

Sorry but some of the stuff was cringe-worthy inaccurate

So what's the consensus; is it worth getting if one has the 16x9 DVD version?

Only my opinion but yes, absolutely. At its worst the image is more than decent and at its best it is very, very good. It looks fine on my 4K OLED set.

I saw First Man in the theater twice, then bought the book it was based on, then bought and read Francis French's excellent In the Shadow of the Moon. I have biographies of Gordo Cooper and Gene Cernan in my queue next.... I rediscovered my love for the US manned space program because of that film. I'm holding out hope that Apollo 11 gets a 4K UHD release, and just this weekend picked up From the Earth to the Moon. It is possible to enjoy a biopic/dramatization for what it is. First Man is a biopic, not a documentary.


One inaccuracy I noted after reading the book was that the Athena target was not launched moments before the crew entered Gemini 8 as shown in the film. You have to be OK with things like that. Think about how long countdowns last, how often launch scrubs occur. Those don't even make it into the first draft (unless you're Alan Shepard on the launchpad and you've just got to pee!).

Yea I made peace with it. (Agena not Athena by the way) I saw First Man in the Theater I read First Man many years ago and reread it after seeing the film. Apollo 11 is now available in 4K from Kaleidescape. I've watched the film through at least five times I really like it.

The issue I had and have about First Man the film is how Armstrong was portrayed. First Man the biography doesn't make him to be the damaged ,flat nearly emotionless and devoid of personality guy the film shows. The autistic head movements in the interviews in the film are not born out by the actual footage of these same press conferences available on youtube. I would have liked a different film of him that was more accurate in both technical aspects but also the real man portrayal .


Art

From the Earth to the Moon, 1966 style:


Courtesy of MIT.

Please note the CDR remains at the controls while the LMP goes out first. This is actually what was expected and why Aldrin expected to be first out.

Art

One of the most fascinating parts of the First Man book was NASA's realization, after the film of the lunar excursion was developed, that Buzz never took any pictures of Neil.

Episode 2, regarding the the fire on Apollo 1, was excellent.

Yes, one of the best episodes in the series IMO.

Art

I really enjoyed episode five where they went through the design and flight of the LEM.

I watched about four episodes the Saturday morning after I got it and was very happy with how it looked and sounded.

Spider--my favorite episode of the whole mini-series.

+1

Outstanding example of real-world old skool engineering.

Best on screen example of the real aerospace/mechanical engineering process and management I have ever seen.

I was lucky enough to participate in that kind of process & environment during my summers interning and first years out of undergrad in aerospace.

My peers from engineering school all did stints at the McDonnel Douglas', Boeing's and Pratt & Whitney's of the world.

The attitudes, process and management (ie "culture") are very different in the auto business

Finished watching the series again from Vudu via the code provided. Watched several episodes from disc.

Highly rewatchable- wife and I used to watch at least once a year from the DVD release, but haven't watched in over 10 years.

Wife's favorite is the El Baz geology episode, my second fav. No suprise as teaching is her business

(A shuttle craft in Star Trek Next Generation was named El Baz in his honor)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/El-Baz


This series was written and executed so well, pitch perfect on all fronts- writing, dialog, acting, production values, soundtrack, sense of awe and wonder, etc.

If there is only one series to recommend to someone re: US Space program of the 60's, this is it.

Another highlight was the Armstrong Gemini save- they showed clearly how dangerous that situation was. When they undocked from Agena- HOLY CRAP!

And the flying bedstead (jet powered LEM trainer) crash- shows why Armstrong was the goto guy for the first landing.

I ran across this 1080p excerpt from The Earth to the Moon:


and the IQ is very good.

I was a bit dissapointed in Chapter eight on Apollo 13 on the one hand, but on the other hand, the story of the actual events have been told elsewhere. So focusing on the seasoned and the rookie reporters was a different take.

On purpose- The Apollo 13 film was already out for a couple years, no need to retread.

The Right Stuff + Apollo 13 + From the Earth to the Moon = everything you need put to film to date for US Space Program from the Bell X1>Apollo

Whatever you think of Musk, gotta admit- SpaceX doing darn cool stuff, making things happen re: "consumer" space tech and hitting a lot of milestones

https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/08/2...c-test-flight/