Disappointing DVD releases

[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]

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]

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.

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]

^ 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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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

 

[Forbin]

DVDs? Talk about old school! :P

Hey, I still have Laserdiscs and Beta tapes!

 

[gh4chiefs]

^ 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.

Dammit, that pisses me off. I bought the Die Hard set some time ago and kind of put it away and never got around to watching it. It shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I just find it irritating that when you shell out money for their product, they aren't giving you what you saw at the theater.

 

[ATimson]

Dammit, that pisses me off. I bought the Die Hard set some time ago and kind of put it away and never got around to watching it. It shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I just find it irritating that when you shell out money for their product, they aren't giving you what you saw at the theater.

Uhh... they are giving you what you saw at the theater on the Live Free or Die Hard Blu-ray.

 

[Star Wolf]

What disappoints me is when only the first season is released. And when you are missing part of a story because of a crossover episode.

 

[Jono]

I find it disappointing that in the past region 4 releases often lacked the special features of their R1 releases. It happened a lot a couple of years ago, but in more recent times I've come across it less.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

What disappoints me is when only the first season is released. And when you are missing part of a story because of a crossover episode.

I was pleasantly surprised by The Bionic Woman which came with cross over episodes from The Six Million Dollar Man.

I was unpleasantly surprised when the audio went out on a second season episode of the The Bionic Woman.

 

[Brikar99]

^ 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.

Dammit, that pisses me off. I bought the Die Hard set some time ago and kind of put it away and never got around to watching it. It shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I just find it irritating that when you shell out money for their product, they aren't giving you what you saw at the theater.

ATimson is right - the 'Live Free or Die Hard' blu-ray is the theatrical version, which was rated PG-13. The DVD on the other hand, had both the PG-13 theatrical version and the unrated version through seamless branching.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Well I guess my memory is messed up then, but I recall him saying the MF line as he shot Tim Olyphant at the end of the movie. Guess it's just such an expected thing for him to say that my memory fills in the blanks even though you're telling me I didn't actually see that the theater.

 

[MacLeod]

Different extra feature for the regions, there is very little reason as to why a region A or B should have different features.

 

[Sephiroth]

what annoys me is half seasons. It's a shitty attempt at a double dip and I refuse to bite