Disappointing DVD releases

[Kirkman1987]

The Star Trek DVD releases were pretty good, but I will say the packaging (talking about region 1 here) was awkward as hell.

I also don't like that they keep releasing TOS in airdate order.

[Brikar99]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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

That's correct. Fox gave some excuse about how they couldn't get the unrated one out on Blu-ray in time, so they just went with the PG-13 version.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Yippie ki yay, melon farmer.

[Lonemagpie]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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Yippie ki yay, melon farmer.

More accurately "yipee-ki-ay, mother-*Bang!*"

It's an odd one, in that some of the lines in the PG-13 version are actually better - specifically when McClane avers that he'll go to the place where the bad guys are holding his daughter. In the unrated cut he says "get my daughter back, kill those motherfuckers" but in the PG-13 it's "get my daughter back, kill everybody else" - but the intonation on that is hilarious cos it so totally plays to knowing that there are no innocent bystanders and so on. It's just in the delivery, you know.

Anyway, what I was referring to is a regional thing, where the theatrical release is cut for a 12 or 15 rating in the UK, and that version is on DVD, with the US theatrical version (or unrated extended one) on Blu Ray as a 15 or 18...

[Worf2DS9]

Forbin wrote:

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

Same issue with "Cold Case", which has several period-specific songs in the flashback segments each episode.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

More disappointments:

- the first Blu-Ray versions of Gladiator and The Fifth Element, which were of horrible picture quality.

- the standard DVD of 2010. It wasn't even anamorphic!

[ManOnTheWave]

The region free copy I got of Zatoichi The Last was horrible. The video played at a different rate to the audio, and often froze. Just terrible quality.

The third series of Black Books had no commentary despite the previous two series having commentary on each episode.

Many TV series put out by Showtime have no extras pertaining to the series. Often times they come with an episode of another series as an extra. Usually something I have no interest in watching.

[ATimson]

23skidoo wrote:

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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?

CBS are the ones who have the rights to the television shows and are paying for their upgrades, not Paramount.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I always assumed that there wouldn't have to be *that* much done to TMP to qualify it for Blu-Ray release. The effects would have to be 're-rendered'. What exactly does this involve? Not doing them all over again from scratch, I take it. Re-rendering, isn't that a bit like re-compiling a computer program?

[Allyn Gibson]

23skidoo wrote:

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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.

Malcolm in the Middle is the poster child for this.

The first two seasons were music-heavy. The third season onward were music-free. The studio paid for the music clearances for the first season DVD. They scheduled a DVD release of the second season for late 2003, but the middling sales on the first season scuppered the release since the studio had hard stats that it wasn't going to be cost-effective to license the music. So even though seasons three onward are "in the clear" in terms of music licenses, because the studio won't release season two on DVD, they won't release the rest of it, either.

The whole series, with altered music, is available on Netflix. And it does appear that the UK is finally getting Malcolm in its entirety on DVD this year. So there may be some movement on finally getting the complete Malcolm on DVD.

[ATimson]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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^ I always assumed that there wouldn't have to be *that* much done to TMP to qualify it for Blu-Ray release. The effects would have to be 're-rendered'. What exactly does this involve? Not doing them all over again from scratch, I take it. Re-rendering, isn't that a bit like re-compiling a computer program?

Yes, but you have to meet several criteria for it to be applicable:

1) You need to have the original source files. (With the death of Foundation Imaging, they may have been lost.)

2) You need to have the version of the software used to create the files, or they need to open trouble-free in newer versions of it.

3) The source models need to have enough detail in them to be suitable for HD resolutions.

If any one of those three conditions fail - two technical, one time-and-money in the original implementation - then they'll need to be putting a lot more work into bringing the effects up to HD spec.

I know that Pixar had to put quite a bit of time & effort into getting their Toy Story files "modernized" in order to create the rerenders for the 3D releases.

[23skidoo]

ATimson wrote:

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CBS are the ones who have the rights to the television shows and are paying for their upgrades, not Paramount.

So? CBS is just a TV network. Paramount spends billions on movies; surely they can spare a few pennies to upgrade one movie. If anything, this matter of semantics utterly exposes how unacceptable it is for them not to have done this already.

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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The whole series, with altered music, is available on Netflix. And it does appear that the UK is finally getting Malcolm in its entirety on DVD this year. So there may be some movement on finally getting the complete Malcolm on DVD.

These days I prefer to see shows released in their entirety in one set rather than piecemeal. Yes, even if it's taken to ridiculous extremes like the 1,200-episode Dark Shadows set that just came out. Malcolm in the Middle is a good example of why they should just do the whole thing at once, same with Black Books (per the earlier comment that the third series was lacking commentaries). The world is still waiting for a 2nd Season release of Better Off Ted. It's not letter-to-the-law of the thread topic, but I would add "no releases of later seasons" as a disappointment for many series. Fans of Kojak and Mary Tyler Moore Show had to wait years before anyone bothered to release later seasons of those shows; I'm actually wanting to see later seasons of Cannon but it doesn't appear likely to happen. That's why I'm glad they released all of Six Million Dollar Man in one set, or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (initially; they've since reissued just the first season), or even Dark Shadows. They also gave up issuing individual seasons of Law & Order and just put the whole 20 years out at once.

It's expensive, but for fans it's better than waiting a decade.

Alex

[Mr. Laser Beam]

23skidoo wrote:

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They also gave up issuing individual seasons of Law & Order and just put the whole 20 years out at once.

AFAIK, the individual season sets are still coming out.

[ATimson]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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AFAIK, the individual season sets are still coming out.

Yes, they are - whatever the next season was (season 9?) is coming out this summer.

On the other hand, at this point it's basically "free" for them to do future releases; the full series set was a box of what will be the individual season releases, right down to the UPC barcode on the back of each.

[Mooch]

DVDs? Talk about old school! :P