It's about damn time! The first ever clip for the high definition, Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Next Generation is finally out, showcasing a brilliant new universe of crystal-clear aliens and an unfiltered Picard. It looks absolutely lovely, as you can see from this clip of the two-part series premiere, "Encounter at Farpoint."

To get this glorious look the technicians had to go through hell and back, here's a little snippet of labor intensive work that went into this collection from the press release:

Transferring STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION to high-definition presented numerous challenges – The series was originally shot on film and then transferred to videotape, which was used to edit episodes together. In order to create true HD masters, CBS is going back to the original uncut film negative – all 25,000 plus film reels of it – and cutting the episodes together exactly the way they originally aired. The visual effects were all shot on film and will be painstakingly recompositioned, not upconverted from videotape. The newly cut film will then be transferred to true high-definition with 7.1 DTS Master Audio.

A sampler of three episodes (titled Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Next Level) will be available on January 31st. The rest of the 178 episode catalog won't be ready until much later.

[via Trek Movie]