Warner Archive Discussion Thread (FEEDBACK)

I received an email from Warner about their new WBshop website yesterday. I just happened to check it out to find some 140 classics offered exclusively from their store! All titles are $20 and all ship only to the U.S.

Check it out here without wasting a single moment:
WBShop

Titles include:

All the Gable and Turner pairings
Most of the Gable and Crawford pairings
Several Norma Shearer films
Several early Garbo films
Several Crawford films
Several westerns
Most of the remaining Cary Grant films owned by WB
Some rare musicals (including 2 of my very favorites; Painting the Clouds with Sunshine and Three Sailors and a Girl!)
Some silents

All kinds of well-known titles of all kinds:
Made in Paris
Three Comrades
Sunrise at Campobello
The Beast of the City
The Money Trap
Lepke
Carbine Williams


Rare titles like:
I Was an American Spy (out of circulation for years)
Close to My Heart
So This Is Love

There are previews of most of the titles on the page for each.


A BIG, HEARTFELT THANK YOU to Warner's for this terrific opportunity. Prepare for my BIG order!

If anyone can find ANYTHING to complain about this, they can only be absolute killjoys !!!

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Any word on whether these are DVD-R's? While something is certainly better than nothing, this would be a half measure in my opinion. If they're actual manufactured DVDs, then I'm all in!

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This is INCREDIBLE!!!
Several titles that I've been wanting.

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Well, they don't ship outside the US, therefore nothing of interest for me.

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Now it's gone up to 150 movies.

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This is a great idea. Although there's nothing in this list that is a must buy at the moment, I look forward to keeping an eye on what titles they add. Hopefully some Elizabeth Taylor films.

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If you live in the US. Otherwise, it's crap.

Hopefuly, these "exclusives" will go on a general release sooner or later.

They just don't learn, do they. Non-US-buyers aside, sticking discs in a niche like this never sells as many units as putting them in every online store, and some highstreet stores, ever does.

What's with the studios and all this "exclusive" bull? You'd think they sat down and discussed how to sell as few of them as possible.

"Hey, lets put them up for sale on a website most people never visit, refuse to ship them outside of the USA, and charge $20 a disc for obscure titles"

Yep, that should do it, alright.

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Or find that they can't actually buy the ones they would love to get hold of.

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Some nice surprises! Obviously this is a limited edition on some rare titles. Two of my 'most wanted', the 1927 Garbo-Gilbert silent romance Love and the original (and superior) 1968 version of Sweet November starring Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley are there too. A big suprise was the 1965 Brainstorm with Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis (I think I'm the only person who's seen it!). Wonder if Girl of the Night is coming up soon. A lot of Ann-Margret fans will love seeing Made in Paris on DVD at last, and a lot of Gable, Crawford, and Shearer! I just love Idiot's Delight.

Still no word on:

You're A Big Boy Now
Last Summer
A Man Called Dagger
Youngblood Hawke
Claudelle Inglish
Party Girl
Between Two Worlds
The Hard Way

Marlowe or How Sweet It Is!, yet They Only Kill Their Masters is in the collection. I'd love a James Garner boxed set!

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This link shows the 150 instead of 140
WBshop.com - The Official Online Store of Warner Bros. Studios: Warner Archive

Looks like they're still updating the site.

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How do you get the 20% discount? Apparently it's not automatic.

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D.I, DOC SAVAGE, and CRESCENDO? Yes! Suprised they didnt do a regular release of RAIN PEOPLE and COUNTDOWN as a Altman set. I do hope these are in it's OAR, and they are not DVD-R's.

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This story was not supposed to break until Monday, however I am
not surprised by the manner that it was and the fact that we ended
up not being able to break it to you in the manner we were promised...

That being said, this is something that had been in the planning for
quite some time.

For years Warner has resisted releasing small catalog titles in
fear that they would not sell. There are too many obscure titles
in studio libraries that never see the light of day simply because it
costs too much to replicate them on a large scale only to see a small
percentage of purchases.

All that is about to change in a huge way.

Warner is going to roll out a "made to order" program where they
will be offering very rare and obscure catalog titles to the public
that can be ordered online and will be replicated according to demand.

Let me explain further....

Every few months Warner will release a "wave" of new titles for this
program. They will range from silent films, forgotten classics and
even small films from the 70s-90s. They will not be mass replicated
to be sold in stores. Instead, anyone that wants a title will go to
Warner's website, order it, and have it sent to their mailbox within
three days. The titles will only be replicated according to the amount
of orders received.

The titles will arrive in regular packaging with artwork and a printed
label on the DVD.

The quality of these DVDs (and I forgot to mention these are only DVDs)
are as good as anything you would expect the studio to release. They
will be in their proper aspect ratio, 16x9, and with the necessary audio
codecs. Nothing will suffer when it comes to presentation quality.

The DVDs will cost $19.95 each

What this program will allow the studio to do is to release films it
never was able to make previously available to the public.

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I'm disappointed; obviously that I can't get at them, but also at the price point. For the marketing boys, this probably makes eminent sense - low quantity runs, top dollar, no competition, seemingly no DVD extras to shell out for.

I'll be very interested to see if these are on DVD-Rs, and if any effort has gone into the transfers.

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This is the way to go, selling direct. Warner gets all the money, so small runs of little known films still make money for them. Other studios should follow.

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Thanks for the clarification and info! I was suspecting that that may be the case that they would be replicated on demand, thus cutting out all the mass manufactuing costs and tons of unsold product laying around. This is really exciting news and could change how the industry handles classic or niche library titles.

Out of this first 150, there are about 15 that I definitely want. A bunch of these never had a VHS release. I'll be placing that order this weekend. At $20 each, that's going to cost me about $300, but considering if these ever got pulled from WB's site, think how few copies of some of these titles will exist! Totally worth it.

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I'm a little uncomfortable with this on-demand concept because it sure smells like DVD-R. There are already reports of some of the Amazon on-demand products misbehaving in some consumer players so I'm pretty leary of discs that haven't actually been pressed. Guess I'll play "wait and see" because there are certainly a number of titles I'd be willing to jump on. Been waiting for a release of "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" for a while now.

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Too Hot to Handle -- finally! Thank you, Warners.

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I just dipped my toe in the water and ordered The Crowded Sky. If I'm happy with the disc then Warners is going to see a lot of my money in the coming year.

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Unless I am mistaken, there is nothing wrong with having the titles sent to a US address to a friend or relative who can just send them back to you. I am in Quebec, Canada. Several major companies which did no ship to Canada in the past (but do now) told me themselves there was nothing wrong with doing this in the meantime. They simply do not want to have to deal with time-consuming forms to fill out for foreign countries and shipping charges that are different everywhere. If this is accurate, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from ordering those titles. You pay your duty fees/taxes when the parcel reaches you so it complies to the laws of your country.

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Like some others here, I'm cautious about this news. It sounds great for now but I'll need some info from HTF'ers after they receive one before looking into buying from the site.

Are they DVD-R's or factory pressed?
Are the transfers comparable to mainline releases?

As some here have mentioned, DVD-R's can be a gamble on playback issues. I've run across a few that won't play on my Pioneer (Std) player but will play ok on a JVC.

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Well, I just ordered four of them. I hope they are better quality than the transfers on TCM. At least they won't have the TCM bug in the lower right corner.

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Now, I feel very embarrassed Since I received the news by email yesterday, I never expected this was any kind of a "big secret". And wanting to share the great news with everyone, it never occurred to me I was actually spilling the beans in the process. Friends call me the "Keeper of the secrets", but in this case, I had no idea this was "hush, hush". My sincere apologies for breaking the news in this manner then. I truly did not mean any disrespect to anyone.

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There is nothing to be sorry about. That's just the breaks. I was interviewed by AP the other day about this marketing concept by Warner and was sworn to secrecy, but now the cat is out of the bag.





Crawdaddy

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I'm guessing you just stole the big studio chat thunder for tomorrow!

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^ Yeah but now people are even more jazzed for the chat.

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I wouldn't feel bad at all. It's silly for Warners to "swear" some to secrecy and then send out emails where folks can click on a link and find it with no problem.

Pfffttt!

I assume that when Ron wrote "I am not surprised by ... the fact that we ended up not being able to break (the story) to you in the manner we were promised...", he meant he's not surprised Warners claimed this was gonna be a big reveal then allowed it to be easily found by anyone browsing their site.

BTW, I ordered Too Hot To Handle and Abe Lincoln in Illinois, both long overdue on disc.

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Great news! Can't wait to hear more about this Monday night!

CineKarine - don't feel bad....I first read about this on another website where someone got the same e-mail you did. Warner's web team is the one who pulled the trigger too soon. This is going to be all over the internet by end of day.

Ron's message explicitly states these are "DVDs" so I have no qualms or worries whatsoever about this program. I do feel for our non USA friends but surely they will find ways to get these titles via their USA contacts.

Mega, mega thanks to WHV for rolling this out.

Steve

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Since at least THE TEMPTRESS is already available on DVD, could this mean that some of these titles will later go on general release?

Very disappointed that they don't dispatch to outside the US. Not everyone knows someone there. And since I could easily get 20 titles out of the list (ok, over a period of time), it's $400 they'll lose of my money.

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I hope at some point they can/will release complete sets of various shorts they own. The Crime Does Not Pay or Joe McDoakes series are some I'd like to own but it's doubtful they'd get a mainstream release.

I'm also curious if there's any chance of something like this for Blu-ray titles. If these 150 can't get a SD release then it's doubtful they'll ever have a straight Blu release.