Disappointing DVD releases

[Miss Chicken]

Have you ever been really disappointed in a DVd release. I don't mean when you don't like a movie you haven't seen before but when the movie/TV series is spoiled because of the DVD release i.e. bad picture quality, poor sound, parts missing, poor extras etc

I recently was happy to locate a second-hand copy of the American release of "Seven Little Australians", a TV series I really enjoyed when I watched it back in 1973. I saw again on TV back in the 1990s. I had no luck at finding an copy of the Australian release.

I was very annoyed to discovered that the last two episodes of the series were left off in the American release. I don't know why, maybe it was thought that the death of one of the children in these episodes was too sad? The story ends abuptly and I am not sure what any viewer who has never seen the full mini-series would make of the ending.

[Lonemagpie]

Warehouse 13 not having the Xmas episodes on the UK sets (and the episodes in the wrong order) is a pain in the arse...

[bigdaddy]

The first 2-3 seasons of Boy Meets World has awesome commentaries but then the later seasons have no extras at all.

Same with West Wing. No commentaries for season 7, we all know why but still feels weird.

[BruntFCA]

I remember pre-ordering Zack and Miri make a porno from Amazon and being really disappointed that Kevin Smith hadn't put any commentaries on it.

[TheSeeker]

I was pretty disappointed with the special features in most of the Harry Potter DVDs. They seemed to be nothing but games for kids. No behind the scenes or "making of" stuff.

[Angel4576]

The West Wing - no commentaries at all on the R2 sets, and very few extras fullstop.

The Shield - no extended season 5 finale. Boooooo!

Generally, although it's primarily the episodes I buy DVDs for, to buy a set and then get no extras always p1sses me off.

Equally as bad are DVDs that list 'scene selection' as an extra. Fook off!

[23skidoo]

Any release that omits original soundtrack music because someone was too cheap to pony up a few extra dollars for the rights. Especially when said music is integral to the story, such as WKRP which had most of its music stripped away and when the first season was released people complained so much they've never bothered with any more. Married with Children replaced its "Love and Marriage" theme song with a stupid-sounding instrumental for its DVD release, even though that's the same as taking All in the Family and stripping out "Those Were the Days" and "Remembering You". It's part of the show's atmosphere.

If you include the 1988-89 revival, 9 volumes of the original Mission Impossible were issued to DVD between 2006 and 2012, with the only extras being some episode promos and a holiday message in the very last set, with Paramount Video not bothering to do a single commentary or "making-of" featurette. And when the first several sets were released, Peter Graves was still alive, too.

A&E and the European companies failing to get Patrick McGoohan to record a commentary for The Prisoner.

The first DVD release of the Audrey Hepburn movie Sabrina was awful - grainy picture, for one thing. They later remastered the film for a reissue and it was 100% better.

Any so-called "complete" release of Apocalypse Now/Redux that doesn't also include the Heart of Darkness documentary.

My biggest beef is that when Blu-ray came out for the first year or so it was common to see the DVD version of a movie include all the extras, as well as extended versions, but the Blu-ray would either be a vanilla (no extras) with the theatrical cut, or the extras would be limited to a commentary, or for some inexplicable reason individual extras would be omitted. For example, one of my favorite extras are gag reels and Resident Evil: Apocalypse had a very funny one that still cracks me up. It's on the DVD, but was not included on the Blu-ray, forcing me to keep both (it wasn't issued as a combo pack). The Blu-ray versions of The Fifth Element and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes omit virtually all of the DVD extras (in the case of Apes, I actually was more interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff than the movie so I've never bothered to buy the Blu-ray).

Fortunately, with the advent of the DVD/BD combo pack I'm running into this less though often the presence of the original DVD extras in the case of reissues is NOT mentioned on the packaging; there have been a few releases I never bothered with initially because I assumed the extras had been cut like with Planet of the Apes, only to find they were there all along - the 2004 Zack Snyder version of Dawn of the Dead comes to mind; I only picked it up because it was on cheap and I was surprised to find the extras - including a related short film featuring Babylon 5's Richard Biggs in his final performance - were included after all.

Alex

[od0_ital]

23skidoo wrote:

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Any release that omits original soundtrack music because someone was too cheap to pony up a few extra dollars for the rights...

The worst case of this was with Quantum Leap. The second season episode 'M.I.A.' originally had the song 'Georgia (On My Mind)' for the final scene where Al talks to Beth while she dances alone. The song is even mentioned by Al to Sam earlier in the episode as bein' her favorite. On the DVD release, it was replaced with a gawd awful lyric-less tune that doesn't even sound like a real song in the history of ever.

In the series finale, Sam leaps into Beth's livin' room at the same moment, and 'Georgia (On My Mind)' is playin' while she dances by herself. And for the fifth season DVD release, the song is intact.

WTF?!?

[Forbin]

The Kung Fu set has the final few episodes in the wrong order. I don't know if they were aired that way or not. There's a trilogy of episodes where Cain finds his long-lost brother that's meant to close the series. The last shot is even Cain saying he must continue his roaming regardless, saying goodbye, and bowing to his family and the camera. And then there are two more random episodes on the disk.

The 1980s Mission Impossible Revival series looks like it was transferred from 320 x 240 Youtube videos!

The one lousy season of WKRP they released suffers from having the actual period rock songs replaced by generic music.

And the above is why we'll probably never see China Beach on DVD. That show was wall-to-wall period music.

[Trekker4747]

Really, anymore, I don't care much about extras on a DVD. So long as the movie is on the disc, in widescreen format (or OAR) and is of a resolution fit for the media (be it BD or DVD) then I don't care what extras are on it or what the menus and such look like.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

- The Blu-Ray of ST:TMP - only includes the damn theatrical cut.

Now don't get me wrong, I know WHY this happened - the new EFX were only rendered at standard definition resolution. But there's no excuse for that. They should have known that HD was on the horizon.

- one of my favorite IMAX movies (Everest) has kind of a piss-poor DVD quality. (I've seen IMAX movies that had decent DVD releases. This was not one of them.) And it isn't even available on Blu-Ray.

- anyone remember MXC? One of its episodes (The Monster Special) has like 3/4 of its content removed from the DVD version because there were so many characters from Ultraman and Astro Boy and there's some kind of licensing dispute.

- The Batman TV series. You talk about licensing disputes...we'll be lucky if this sumbitch EVER makes it to DVD. That one is disappointing for its lack of existence.

[Lonemagpie]

Another thing that bugs the shit out of me is when new movies get a censored-for-a-wider-rating theatrical release on DVD, and the uncut one on Blu Ray - e.g. The Hangover, The A Team, etc...

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Didn't Die Hard 4 have the opposite problem? Its unrated cut is only available on standard DVD, I think.

[Forbin]

The Blue Max DVD doesn't look any better than the laser Disk.

The Star Trek TOS Blu-rays have these stupid cartoony CGI effects on them.

[23skidoo]

Forbin wrote:

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The 1980s Mission Impossible Revival series looks like it was transferred from 320 x 240 Youtube videos!

Yeah, I wasn't very pleased with the quality. Thank heavens I have a plasma which is a bit more forgiving on lower-resolution video. Anyone watching this on a full 1080 LCD or LED must find them unwatchable. (It's a reason I chose plasma.)

The one lousy season of WKRP they released suffers from having the actual period rock songs replaced by generic music.

And the above is why we'll probably never see China Beach on DVD. That show was wall-to-wall period music.

Occasionally you will actually encounter recent TV series releases in which this happens to, which I find unacceptable. No TV or film production made in the last decade or more should even consider using a piece of music that hasn't been fully licensed for home video release. We can forgive WKRP and China Beach for not having the paperwork in place because at the time there was never any expectation of a retail market for TV series. But there's no excuse for any show made since about 2000 or 2001 not to be rendered fully intact on DVD or Blu-ray.

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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- The Blu-Ray of ST:TMP - only includes the damn theatrical cut.

Now don't get me wrong, I know WHY this happened - the new EFX were only rendered at standard definition resolution. But there's no excuse for that. They should have known that HD was on the horizon.

So THAT'S why they didn't do it. I was wondering (and not including TMP on my list above was an omission on my part). Same with the music issue - nothing produced since the advent of DVD (never mind Blu-ray) shouldn't be upscaleable. And if Paramount is willing to shell out the coin for upgrading TOS and TNG for HD release, why wouldn't they pay for the effects on TMP:SE to be fixed up too? Hopefully Robert Wise's revised masters still exist and can be upgraded at some point. (I'm usually against revisions to films and TV shows, but given the story behind TMP and the fact Wise never got to release the film the way he wanted it, and was involved in the revision himself, I make the TMP:SE an exception, as opposed to what Lucas has done with his films which is more "tinkering" than "fixing".)

Alex