6M$M and Bionic Woman Region 2 release 09/26/05?

Hey Joe,
I used the cover images (which show the episode titles) and a 25+ year-old recollection from a single semester of high school French to accomplish the task.  Most of the titles were pretty easy, especially since they follow in proper order (except for the first two volumes containing the 3 pilots and first 3 eps.)  Others I used online translation to confirm.  There are interesting changes to some of the eps' titles, such as "Bionic Badge" is known as "The Retirement" (Noah Beery's character is a retiring cop.) 

I'd also buy WHJ just for the proper title treatment, even if only in French. Perhaps one could create a disc using the video file of the French disc and matching it with the audio from the UK one? Hopefully someone will confirm its status soon.

The interlacing issues of the Mex Season 1 set are irksome, but I just watch them on a smaller 25" monitor and they look fine. I figure they still look much better than the original broadcasts ever did, considering I watched most of them on a 19" B&W with "rabbit ears".

I'm tempted to get the two volumes containing the VOST eps ("Thunderbirds"; "Bionic Boy",) but I think I'll wait to get the Season 4 set from Italy in September.  I was fairly pleased with their Season 3 set, so it'll be worth the wait.

As far as whether TV history is OK to rewrite... Certainly, but only if it's a Lucas or Spielberg production.  

 Italy? France is issuing the season in a box on Sept 22nd, but I've not heard yea or nay with regards to continued releases in Italy. If so, great news.

I'm hoping the Germans get on the stick. TBW Season 3 was outstanding, I'd love to see that level of QC for Six.

The sound and picture ganging between French and UK releases of WHJ is similar to what I was thinking, but since the UK release is a great transfer (of TBW) I'd probably just cut in the relevant changed credits from the French release rather than using all of thier video - hypothetically, of course. 

About the odd sequencing of the 1973 movies with Season 1. My guess is that The Solid Gold Kidnapping, got pushed back due to it being… not so hot, especially as a two-parter. The French have only Wine Women and War in the original Suspense Movie format, so my view is that its distinct qualities put it up first, separating it from the series. Population Zero, the series premiere is prioritized understandably. It is followed by the "retrospective" version of the original Movie of The Week, which had been altered (in many ways) to conform it to the series, both the gross running time issue, as well as the titles, the little retconning shots of the flight stick from The Deadly Replay, etc. I suspect the 90-minute version of The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) would have been placed first in order had they included it rather than The Moon and the Desert (Parts I and II). 

On the interlacing matter: I've got an Oppo player that is ideal for upscaling through HDMI (the DV-981HD). It loves every disc I've thrown at it -except El Hombre Nuclear. 

In the future, SDTV sets will get more and more rare. This year's mandated shutdown of analog TV broadcasts in the US is accelerating equipment upgrades, and 480i material simply isn't handled well by many flatscreens or scalers. Shows shot at 24 have no excuse for this type of transfer (well, money).

On Wine Women and War, the interlaced format creates artifacts during motion due to the C frames getting mixed by DCT compression. So 3 out of every 4 frames look "better than we've ever seen them," while the C frames degrade in proportion to the amount of motion in the shot. Not bad but we can do better.

Between scaling issues and the C frame issue it's a no-brainer to do the authoring to the 480p spec- and you get to ditch 6 frames per second, leaving more room in your "bit budget."

I'm sorry to bore you all with the rehash. I sincerely doubt Universal would roll out an R1 release with interlaced transfers. OTOH, the R1 'Six Millian' (sic) thread here gets no love for a reason. Not holding my breath. Maybe 2012 if this new movie isn't vaporware. Good to have all these issues out during the delay, though, perhaps the discussion can help the quality of an eventual release in its country of origin.

I dig the avatar Matt!

 

Edited by Joseph Burns - 7/23/2009 at 07:16 am GMT

I checked the website http://www.musicafilm.it/movie-dvds/the-six-million-dollar-man-season-3.html and season 3 is no longer available.  Any other website where I can order it?

Try this: http://film-dvd.dvd.it/dvd-serie-tv/produzione-straniera/l-uomo-da-sei-milioni-di-dollari/l-uomo-da-sei-milioni-di-dollari-stagione-3/dettaglio/id-1940146/

HTH

Thanks.  How do I register?

 I don't have any good news for non-Italian speakers on that. Since a page translator will mangle form submission, I had to have a Google translator page open next to the form and pasted sections for translation so I could figure out the blow by blow. I wouldn't want to do that again. Sorry. 

Following up on MattHR's great list of the French singles, here's an update:

The French releases have now spanned all of Season 4 and have released the first volume of season 5, a first anywhere. 

26) Death Probe Part II // Danny's Inferno // The Fires of Hell
27) The Infiltrators // Carnival of Spies // U-509
28) Privacy of the Mind // To Catch the Eagle // The Ghostly Teletype
• Season 5 (!):
29) Sharks Part I // Sharks Part II // The Deadly Countdown Part I

Woo-hoo! Now if only they had the original English audio.

I am still looking for a site where I can buy the Italian Six Million Dollar Man.  The one site shows it as not available and when I wrote them they said it will not be available on their site again.  Any news of a UK or Aussie release?

Heavens to Mergatroid - has anyone compiled a matrix of what country has what releases with what languages? I'm so lost I have no idea whats out where and in what shape.

Tony,

I'm more familiar with the Bionic Woman series. Plus, that's the only 1 of the 2 shows that's available in all 3 seasons in R2.  The 1st 2 seasons are available in either R2 or R4.  I have the R2 S1 and the R4 S2 sets.  The transfers are identical between R2/4 with the differences being in the language selections and the menu layouts.  The R4 sets have a Dutch language selection.  Both have the original English language track available.  Transfers are (imo) excellent quality, especially the S1 BW set.  The BW episodes in the S1 & S2 sets are uncut as far as all scenes intact.  My definition of "uncut" regarding the bionic shows differs somewhat with other collectors in that I'm mainly interested in all of the original scenes being intact from their original airings.  Some of the collectors consider the S1/2 DVD releases as being "edited" in the sense that they are not presented in the exact format as was aired in the 70's, ie, a BW episode may have originally aired as a 6M$M episode back in '76/'77 but is presented in the DVD releases as a BW epsidode.

The BW S3 sets are available in France and Germany.  I'm not as familiar with the Italian S3 set so I won't mention that further here and let others contribute if so inclined.

I don't have the BW S3 German set but I know some in the states that ordered that one from Amazon Germany and have received it here.  The transfers are good and the set has the original English language option.  The French S3 release does not include the original English sountrack.  I'm trying to wait it out for a BW S3 release in the UK or Australia before buying the German set.  I might get the German set if we don't see a UK/Au release by early-mid of next year.

I only have the 6M$M S2 set from R4 Australia.  As with the BW sets, there's several language options with the original English track as an option.  I didn't get the 6M$M S1 set since I'm mainly interested in that series where the "crossover" episodes with Lindsay Wagner are included in Lee's show.  The other reason that I haven't bought the 6M$M S1 set is that, unfortunately, the 6M$M transfers weren't nearly as good as the BW transfers.  I don't know the reason for that, other than possibly that the original 6M$M masters weren't in as good a condition or the DVD releases for that show were taken from lesser-quality versions.

 A brief rundown on Six releases:

UK- There were 3 'single' releases before the season boxes, the quality was good for season 3 episodes but poor for earlier material. Then the boxes for season 1 and 2 came out with irregular quality (ranging from good to abysmal), and 2 errors: season 1's Operation Firefly is missing the 'boat whittling' scene, and season 2 merges The Bionic Woman with The Bionic Woman Part II, removing some shots from Part II in so doing.

Italy: I only have Season 3. The color quality is flat and looks to come from an old transfer, there are burn-in text translations for the episode title and signage in the episodes. Original english soundtrack is included. Welcome Home, Jaime is missing as it has been since 1978, moved to The Bionic Woman season 1. The Secret of Bigfoot (both parts) is missing, apparently this was never shown in Italy, not sure why. TSoBF was on one of the UK singles, so you can get it on DVD still. The season 3 material on the UK singles is head and shoulders above this release in quality, but the Italian release is the closest to a complete season 3 collection in english right now.

Mexico: Season one here has the holy grail for "Original Broadcast Version" fans: the three 1973 TV movies in their 90 minute form. NTSC transfer means the audio is without the PAL 4% speedup, and the color correction here is quite good, yet the transfer is marred by interlace issues.

France: The French have been releasing the shows without english soundtracks, so I've not gotten them. In addition to season boxes, the French have issued DVD singles- which have now spanned all of season 4 and even cracked the lid on season 5. Two episodes, The Bionic Boy and The Thunderbird Connection, are VOST, ie with original english sound. The episodes are presented in syndicated, two-part form. I'm given to understand that the French have the original version of Wine, Women and War instead of it's 2-part re-edit, and Six includes Welcome Home, Jaime - I don't know if this is the original credits or not.

There are rumors the Germans may be doing a release; I hope so, The Bionic Woman season 3 was top quality.

Obviously I'm one of those Mr. Willis referred to as to my criteria for satisfaction; I will say that getting the shows out as syndicated would still be a marked improvement. Good unedited transfers, original soundtracks, broadcast versions, in that order. I won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The syndication changes were a bitter pill, but the priority at this point is to get the releases up to the 1978 level. I would love to have my complaints reduced to the persistence of those 9 changes, rather than complaining about poor and incomplete releases.

Of course, I'd love to have no complaints at all. If we can get them, I'd like the original broadcast packages. The 3 TV movies are the important things- the reassigned episodes should be restored and the movie events rejoined, but the 1973 movies are the main complaint. The crossover episodes would be a great gift if both shows could have them rather than the Solomonesque solution from 78, and the movie events play better at one sitting, but the 73 movies were demolished by the reedits. I could go on and on. 

Joseph,

Excellent 6M$M summary post of the overseas and Mexican releases.  It's definitely more of a challenge collecting the 6M$M non-domestic series vs the Bionic Woman show.  I lucked out since I'm mainly a BW fan.  Thanks for the confirming info on the German BW S3 set.  That one's getting harder to resist/wait for a possible UK/Au release.  That may never happen but I'm hoping since the S1 & S2 sets made it to releases.  Plus, I like the S3 cover art that the German set chose for the picture of LW.  That was one of her early publicity photos and although it wasn't a screen cap or revelant photo from S3, it's a personal favorite of mine.

The nice part for me is that the S1 & S2 BW sets contain the original scenes as aired in '76-'77.  One of the early S1 eps "A Thing of the Past" was edited by almost 4 minutes in syndication so with the R4 DVD release, I saw almost 4 min's of scenes that I hadn't seen since '76.

There were actually 4 UK "single" releases:

Vol. 1:  "Secret of Bigfoot" Parts 1 & 2 (S3); "Seven Million Dollar Man" (S2) This volume is missing its title on the DVD spine.
Vol. 2:  "Day of the Robot" and " Run, Steve, Run!" (S1); "Return of the Robot Maker" (S2) These 3 eps form the "Dr. Dolenz" robot trilogy.
Vol. 3:  "Hocus-Pocus", "The Price of Liberty" and "The Bionic Criminal" (all S3)
Vol. 4:  "Population: Zero", "Doomsday and Counting", and "Survival of the Fittest" (all S1)


As Joseph stated, the UK transfers of the S3 eps are superior to those on the Italian S3 set.

I'm getting ready to bite the bullet and possibly order the S3 set of BW. Does anyone have suggestions on how to order from a German language site if you don't speak German??

http://www.amazon.de/Die-sieben-Millionen-Dollar-Frau/dp/B001K90M08/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1253480627&sr=8-1


I ordered mine from Amazon.de (their German site). The site's layout and ordering system uses the same process as the U.S.'s site, so it was easy to follow the steps without knowing the German language.  Also, if you already have an Amazon account, your info will work on the German site, too.  Piece of cake!

So are the German BIONIC WOMAN releases the best in the world? 

As for SM$M - are the Australian DVD the same as the UK ones?

I'd say so.  The UK, Australian, and German sets all share the same excellent transfers.  The UK and Australian (via Universal Playback) utilize the same (boring) package art, while the German sets offer snazzier (and space-hogging) DigiPak designs.  None of the sets' packaging accurately depict the particular season with proper photos, but the German sets at least include liner-note inserts, albeit in German.

As with BW, the SMDM UK and Aussie sets are also the same -- but they are nowhere near the quality of the BW transfers.

Denny,

The German S3 BW set is the one to get for that season.  As far as the S1 & S2 UK & Au sets, I have viewed both and the transfer quality is the same for both sets as Matt mentioned.  The only differences are with the box covers and the menu layouts.

Hank, regarding navigating the Amazon German site pages, it's true that the overseas Amazon sites are layed out close to the same as the US site but I used one of the online language translator sites to walk thru the purchase procedures.  It worked pretty well for me. 
I used the translator site here but there are other sites as well as this one.  As Matt mentioned, you can use your existing Amazon US username and password with the overseas Ama sites.

What about the menus on the German release? I'm assuming they're not in English. Are they easy to navigate?

i wish the studio would just release this series in North America. I believe it would be hot series.

We have a thread for Region 1 Here. Certainly my interest in Region 2 would fall off considerably if there were a domestic release. 

Looking forward to the day that other thread is rife with news of the upcoming release.

i am also looking and hoping they will release 6 Million dollar man in Region #1.

 

6MDM is one of the few remaining shows I wouldn't hesitate to buy on DVD in region 1.

 An update on the French Releases:

30) Deadly Countdown, Part II // Bigfoot V // Killer Wind

31) Rollback // Dark Side of the Moon // Dark Side of the Moon, Part II

32) Target: Steve Austin // The Cheshire Project // Walk a Deadly Wing

Only four more issues to complete the series, albeit en français, on the DVD format. At least to the point of mirroring the syndicated release, if not the broadcast originals. They might squeeze it into three, if they showed The Lost Island as a movie, not as a two-parter, but they won't, so Moving Mountain will be by itself, or they'll stick with 2 per for the last couple to even it out.

Can anyone here speak to the picture quality of these releases?

I haven't read thru this whole thread, so my apologies if this has already been posted, but I just recently saw that episodes of the original Bionic Woman are available for streaming on Hulu

I've been waiting for SMDM and BW for years.

From what I know, their release on DVD is no closer than before.
It's too bad that greed rules everyone.

I doubt either will make it to DVD or Blu ray.

I have all SMDM from SciFi channel from 1995. Very poor cable picture quality.
I also have a few favorite episodes I taped off NYC channel 5 via antenna in 1978/79, etc.

I bought BW on DVD (VHS copy) at a comic convention. They didn't have SMDM, but BW DVD was better quality than what I taped of SMDM in 1995 off cable.

The best thing to do is to get as many fans as possible to write (old fashioned mail) to Universal and all other parties pleading for them to come to terms. Otherwise, many of us will probably die before they ever release SMDM or BW. And by that time the younger people will not want to buy SMDM or BW.

Some of the most popular and award winning shows of the 1970's are not being fully released due to lack of sales. I have All in the Family seasons 1-6 and Mary Tyler Moore season 1-4 for many years now. MTM just came out with season 5. I wrote to (postal mail) President of Sony Pictures about All in the Family and have not even gotten a reply why they stopped releasing it after season 6, yet Married With Children is coming out with season 10! I wasn't a great fan of MWC, but did enjoy some episodes. But MWC can't come close to All in the Family or MTM show.





Edited by fredm6463 - 10/28/09 at 11:00am

Writing Universal can't be bad so long as you are polite. There is some discussion over at the Region 1 Thread of the Hulu release and the potential legal progress it may represent.

I'm sure Universal is well aware that the generation that has nostalgia for the Bionic stuff won't be sitting cash in hand forever. Can't hurt to sent actual snail mail, though. Those Sci-Fi channel broadcasts were horribly edited; you definitely need to upgrade those copies. 

I'm sure that the shows will be released on DVD at some point. Blu-Ray isn't a format that's seen many TV releases, particularly old shows. Star Trek, and now the Prisoner come to mind. I'd love to see the original TV Movie, or the first episode with Jaime, in HD, but let's not get ahead of ourselves: we need the shows released on DVD in Region 1, in unedited broadcast versions remastered. Then we can talk upgrades. 

I just finished going through the French SMDM Season 4 set.  What a mixed bag it is. 

The episode breakdown:

DISC ONE
The Return of Bigfoot-Part I *
The Return of Bigfoot-Part II *
Nightmare In The Sky
Double Trouble

DISC TWO
The Most Dangerous Enemy
H+2+0=Death
Kill Oscar-Part II **
The Bionic Boy-Part I ***

DISC THREE
The Bionic Boy-Part II ***
Vulture of the Andes
Thunderbird Connection-Part I ****
Thunderbird Connection-Part II ****

DISC FOUR
A Bionic Christmas
Task Force
The Ultimate Imposter
Death Probe-Part I

DISC FIVE
Death Probe-Part II
Danny's Inferno
Fires of Hell
The Infiltrators

DISC SIX
Carnival of Spies
U-509
Privacy of the Mind
To Catch the Eagle


* Part I is the typical syndi version (with only the ..."on the Bionic Woman" text cut from the "To be continued..." tag at the end.  Part II (originally a Bionic Woman episode) is presented with its usual SMDM syndi main title, but features its original BW end titles and original BW ep credits ("Special Guest Appearance by Lee Majors as Col. Steve Austin")

** The inclusion of Kill Oscar-Part II, without Parts I and III is very odd, to say the least, since all three are included on the French BW Season 2 set.  What's more odd is that this ep, originally a SMDM ep, is shown here with the BW syndi main and end titles.  The ep credits feature the orig SMDM font, but no Majors or Wagner guest credit.  The inclusion of this ep causes two 2-part eps (Bionic Boy and Death Probe) to be split over different discs.  An unnecessary annoyance.  Without it, all 2-parters would have been combined on the same discs, and Disc 6 would have only had four eps, instead of 5.

*** The Bionic Boy is presented in its 2-part syndi version.  Contains original English track w/ optional French subs.

**** Thunderbird Connection is presented in its 2-part syndi version.  Contains original English track w/ optional French subs.


OTHER TID-BITS

• All other (besides BB and TC) eps have French dubbed tracks with optional French subs.
• Some eps feature original English ep titles with and/or without French translations, while others have the French title only.  Some eps have seemingly random portions of their ep credits replaced with video-generated replacements, albeit in English.
• Box cover features a main shot from Season 1, while all smaller inset pics are (correctly) from Season 4.
• Unfortunately, the transfer quality is what we've come to expect from these various non-U.S. SMDM releases, that is to say they suck...bigtime.  While more color-accurate than the U.K. sets, the French transfers are not much better than the SVHS tapes I made from Sci-Fi 15 years ago.  They are clearly from smudgy/soft/hazy composite video sources (with the exception of Kill Oscar-Part II, which utilizes the same excellent transfer as the BW sets.)  It's a real shocker to see the difference in quality of KO2 and the other eps.  Another reason why it should not have been included: it makes all the other eps look like crap by comparison.
• As far as any editing, I noticed a few eps' timing at around 43:00, so, even in PAL, they're probably a bit short.  I won't know until I watch them.

Does this have English tracks on all episodes?

 Wow, Matt, that's a shame. Thanks for going through that for us. 

I would support the inclusion of KO2 if it had the original titles and "On The Bionic Woman" at the end. Otherwise it's redundant of the BW set, and as you say forces a rollover of the other 2-parters. Bionic Boy and Thunderbird Connection shouldn't be presented as 2-parters, they would save disc space with the movie versions. 

Transfers seem to have taken a holiday when it comes to Six. Serves them right to be shown up by Kill Oscar 2. I think back in 05 when there was a rumor of a release and TBW showed up in a promo, that the Bionic Woman got a good transfer then, but the opportunity passed before Six got the treatment. 

cajunhillbilly: As Matt noted, only The Bionic Boy and The Thunderbird Connection are available in English.