"Quincy, M.E.", Season 3 where are you? - Page 5

William,

 

As I said before: You're welcome!  

 

 

Cees

 

 

NOTE: Part-quoted post is post #36 on page 2 of the thread How "realistic" is finding your "Holy Grail"? in the TV on DVD folder.

 

 

Did you know about the third season having been released on Region 4 (Austrailia), with the fourth season coming out next month? Will email Madman to find out if there are any music edits.

Hello,

I received my QUINCY SEASON THREE Region 4 DVD Set from Madman today.

Although announced on their website that it contains a booklet, in my DVD Set NO booklet is included.

On the backside of the DVD Set there is also no booklet mentioned or listed - unlike their BANACEK,
MCCLOUD, MCMILLAN and ELLERY QUEEN DVD Sets where the booklet always is listed as a content
on the DVD Set backside when one is included.
Can it be that QUINCY SEASON THREE indeed does not include a booklet at all?

If someone has the QUINCY SEASON THREE Region 4 DVD Set from Madman too, I would
really appreciate if he could give me some Info on the booklet issue.
Thanks for your help, Klaus.

Maybe it was an isolated incident with your copy of Madman's release of the third season of Quincy, M.E.? It still has on Madman's website listing page for the set, a booklet listed under the Special Features heading.

 

Was thinking about getting the Region 4 third season set of Quincy, M.E.. However, VEI may continue Quincy, M.E. on Region 1 (or are VEI's sets Region 0?).

Madman sets do play on multi-region DVD players though, but not on Region 1 players (are Madman sets Region 4 encoded?) and Region 2 players (and yet other Region 4 titles I've tried on Region 2 players do play on them (the Blackjack volumes).

 

Didn't mind the Darkroom booklet myself. Sometimes you don't want to be spoilt too much with the descriptions of the stories.

 

 

Any word yet on when Madman will release the fifth season? Four month gap between Seasons 3 & 4, so I was going to have a wild guess at March 2012.

Their website shows a release date for season 5 of March 21, 2012

http://www.madman.com.au/series/home/16314/quincy-m-e-the-complete-fifth-season

Great news. Must have been added today as I checked Madman's website yesterday and only the third and fourth seasons were on there.

 

At this rate, Madman will have released up to the seventh season by the end of next year (if the four month gap continues between seasons).

Was the NBC Mystery Movie opening shown for the 90 minute 'second season' episode "...The Thigh Bone's Connected to the Knee Bone...", when it was originally shown on NBC?

I'm curious about the Madman releases of Quincy. Where are they coming from? Are they from network prints or are they from syndiction (i.e., hacked up for commercials)? What is the quality of the DVDs?

I already have a number of episodes of Quincy following the Universal Studio releases of Seasons 1-3 so I don't need to order something that would be similar to what I have already. I don't have the complete series, but I do have what I thought were the better episodes after Season 3 which are on fifteen DVDs. They are, of course, edited for syndication from the Hallmark Channel. A few from A&E.

I have their Season 4 release and will get their Season 5 as well, unless there's word of Universal intending to start it all up again, but that of course would only be Season 4 which I have now and no guarantee of a Season 5. The old circle, basically. Or should that be circus. So far they haven't continued with McCloud either, a title Madman's probably bound to complete. Anyway, whether or not the Aussie release of Quincy is syndication episodes I'm not sure, I don't have those to compare, but my guess is they're complete as Madman wouldn't give us anything trimmed. At least I hope not. The picture quality looks okay to me, nothing spectacular mind you but just fine enough. Alas no subtitles, though.

How many minutes do the season 4 episodes run?

According to the madman website, season 4 runs 1127 minutes,
and the wikipedia episode guide says 23 episodes, so that's 49 minutes
each for the 1978-79 season. That could be right.

Grant

The episodes are uncut, but there is that slight PAL speed up.

Do you know there's speed-up for a fact (i.e. you've seen them)? There will only be speed-up if they were working from film prints. I figured it was quite possible that they were given PAL masters that were standards-converted from NTSC transfers. If that is the case, then there would be no speed-up (and if the runtimes sound right for a 1979 show, then that's likely what it was: PAL, but converted from NTSC tape masters.

I would agree with the speed-up. The episodes run in the 47:15-ish range (I would say that's about average, some a little more some less.) When I originally got the set, i thought there might be cuts or something, but the speed up is particularly noticeable during the theme song and the Universal logo at the end - all of that sounds like it's at a higher pitch. It's not really noticeable (to me at least) during the episode.

Yes, there is definitely speed up; that 47 minute running time even includes the episode preview. It isn't ruinous, especially given uncut episodes and nice looking prints, but they are sped up.

thanks for the info. I was going by DeRosa's post saying approx. 49 minutes each, which would have been about right for non-sped-up shows of that vintage.

The box does say 1127 minutes, which would indeed work out to 49 minutes per episode, but that number must have been calculated either by Universal or by Madman just doing arithmetic because the episodes all run 46+ minutes plus a preview. I'm sure Madman intended no trickery; just an honest mistake on their part, though it does show we should always take advertised running times with a grain of salt.

The running times should be accurate and not based on those from Universal otherwise it's misleading to buyers. Shorter run times show whether they're edited or not and that would be information a buyer would want to know.

Are these only in PAL or are they also available for NTSC? If PAL, there's no reason for me to bother with them since I don't have a dual region DVD player.

Again, the running times are shorter because of the slight speed difference, rather than any edits. Unfortunately, season 4 (and soon, season 5) of Quincy are not yet available anywhere in Region 1, so PAL is the only option for unedited episodes at this time.

Yes, I would have to agree that the prints look fantastic and the speed-up thing is not a bother even in the slightest. Madman's service was top-notch as well, I pre-ordered these and had them in my hands (in the US) on November 16th, same day as they were released.

PAL/NTSC and DVD regions aren't the same thing, though. If the boxset is region-free (as foreign DVD releases sometimes are), your only concern would be whether your player is capable of converting the PAL signal to NTSC (which many DVD players--though not all--can do, often 'behind the scenes') or not, or if it can output a pure PAL signal if your display can handle it.

It is a compatibility issue, but one totally separate from region compatibility.

Definitely a worthwhile distinction, but the Madman releases are not region-free either.

Ah!

Part of the reason I even bothered to make the distinction is that, quite often it seems, several Australian released are encoded region-free, particularly if it's a title they expect to do a fair amount of export-related sales on (Darkroom, for instance).

If that is the case, then I may have been hasty. My copy of Darkroom is labeled Region 4. If it is, in fact, secretly encoded region-free, then maybe the Quincy set is the same. Neither will play on my Region 1 DVD players, but if you are correct about Darkroom, then it may just be the PAL thing.

If it is a region issue, the player will typically display something of that nature in it's display at the player itself. However, if it is a NTSC/PAL compatibility issue at your display, the player will not know that and it should show a normal display for playback.

if it's a region issue, you should get a "wrong region" message (or something similar) on your television (and perhaps on the front panel of the player, too).

Although several players will convert PAL to NTSC on the fly, there are some name brands (Panasonic and Sony are perhaps the most notorious) whose US players are intentionally engineered to be NTSC-only by the manufacturer. No idea if you'd get any kind of error message in those cases.

There are many cases (particularly in Australia) where the package may display "Region 4", while the discs themselves are actually encoded for all regions. The Umbrella releases of ITV sitcoms (Man About the House, George & MIldred, etc.) were one such example.

I know there is computer freeware out there for PC or Mac that you can download and use to tell what region(s) a particular disc is encoded for (assuming your computer has a DVD drive).

My old Denon displays a message on screen, as well as the player's display when attempting to play an invalid region. I mentioned the player display in this case because the person wasn't sure if it was a display compatiility or region code issue. So this approach might narrow it down for them.

Also, even when it comes to players doing on the fly conversion, it may not be capable for all inputs connections. For example, i have a Marantz that can perform NTSC and PAL conversions on component but not on HDMI. That makes me think the capability happened to be available within a chipset along the analog path but not within the digital path.

Both my Samsung and Sony players show a compatibility error message with Darkroom.

Same here. My copy of Darkroom is labelled as Region 4, but (as discussed earlier on in this thread) will not play on a Region 2 player (only a multi-region player). Did get a "wrong region" onscreen message with Darkroom on a Region 2 player. Yet the two Blackjack (Austrailian detective series) DVD volume sets, which are also Region 4, will play on a Region 2 player.

I believe that any shows that are from Universal and licenced to Madman have to be set for region 4.