Warner Archive Discussion Thread (FEEDBACK) - Page 107

And yet for all the dissing of Alpha and apparent unconditional love for WB by Archive apologists, no one can answer the question of why WB, having at the very least the same technology and access to material as Alpha, cannot release their product as pressed DVDs and at the same MSRP, which is $7.99? 

I don't mind being classified as an Alpha apologist and we should ultimately agree to disagree on the comparisons between the two companies, but after decades spent combing through obscure archives all over the world just to see ANY extant copy of something that is rare and I needed to see, I'm grateful for the effort Alpha does given what they have. I don't need Criterion or Masters Of Cinema quality on everything I own nor do I expect it.  A lot of the time I'm just proud to own a piece of obscure cinema history and experience it whenever I want, especially when I know first hand how rare it is and no one else is ever going to release it. To me companies like Alpha and Mill Creek are just as significant as Criterion when it comes to preserving ALL of film history and not just those titles that come with a built-in pedigree.

The bottom line is that I have about 60-70 Alpha titles in my library and no Warner Archives.  Bring down the prices to Alpha levels and I will buy some with no more expectations than I have when I buy an Alpha, but I will be just as happy to own.

The arguments are endless in this thread, but the bottom line is that there's room for all sorts of cinephiles and DVD collectors and if the Archive makes you happy, it's not up to me to convince you it shouldn't. 

That's the beauty of the phrase  "We can agree to disagree." Time to move on.

Let's stop with the "Archive and Alpha apologist" comments!

Such a debating tactic adds nothing to the discussion at hand.  Thank you.





Crawdaddy

They didn't mind the screen captures I included from a title I reviewed favorably, THE BABY MAKER, so I think your hypothesis is incorrect. They didn't post the review because it was negative and pointed out what a horribly distorted and pixilated mess was issued on their DVD of DREAM LOVER.

Why should they set such a low price point when they can get more $$$ and they are supplying a superior product? I'm not one who thinks a pressed DVD is immediately superior to a DVD-R at all - it has to be more than that. I have had a few Alpha DVDs and they were of extremely poor quality, and were hardly worth the $4-$5 I paid for them. Aside from a very few Warner Archive titles that were of low quality, their product is uniformly superior and their titles in more demand. That being the case, they can charge more. 

Could Alpha charge more than their $7.99 MSRP for what they deliver?

What I don't get is how anyone who's never seen an Archive title can complain about the initiative, or why they would want to in the first place. But so it goes on the Internet.

The same could be said of a pressed DVD.

Doug

I said I didn't own any, I didn't say I haven't seen any. In fact, I have seen about 33 of them thus far and am unimpressed, but that is already evident in my posts.

And Robert Crawford, I agree with you regarding the "apoligist" remarks adding nothing to the debate. I was trying to indicate that there are unconditional defenders of anything and everything and such minds will most likely never be changed, for better or worse.  For the sake of the discussion, it should have been phrased differently, no matter how I might personally denominate these people or myself.

I have well over a 1000+ Sds and I can tell you I have not had one that I had to return....BUT, with these, pixelation on everyone, almost the same cost and one freezing up, that is one too many!!!

I've never played an SD and wondered if it owuld play.

I don't know that I'm an apologist for the Warner Archive program, but I do know that if it weren't for this program, most of these films would never be available on DVD or any other format. The Bribe is an example of a film that while not perfect (some parts of the film suffer from a little wow in the audio, and would require serious restoration to correct) it is a perfectly watchable DVD of the film, and is head and shoulders above anything I've seen from Alpha. Putting crap onto a pressed DVD doesn't make it anything but what it is, and in my opinion doesn't elevate the quality of the product.  The fact that it is on a DVD-R is irrelevant to me. Its just the medium, its whats on it that counts.

Now I've only bought about 7 or 8 titles from Warner, and one from Universal, but so far I have to say that for a program that is somewhat "back door" I'm very impressed.

Doug

I've had a few DVDs and a couple blu-rays that while they worked when I first got them, stopped working after a few months or a year.  So far with the titles I've bought I've seen no pixelization to speak of. Most are encoded at about the same bitrate or slightly higher than TV show sets are, around 4.5 to 5.6mb on average, some peaking around 7 or 8.

Doug

I have over 125 Warner Archive DVDs and had to return only two of them as defective. I just had to return my THE FUGITIVE: Season 3, Volume 1 because it froze and pixilated and it was a pressed DVD. I won't go further and list many other pressed DVDs than did not play properly.

Simply my way of saying a properly burned CD on a superior DVD-r is no better or no worse than a pressed disc as far as reliable playability goes.

That's terrific. Although i own no WB archive discs i have been reading this thread on occasion -- it sounds like they've ironed out some of the kinks.
That they've provided you with a service that's laudable is great. To me, the program had all the appearances of downgrading the product without a corresponding move on price -- sort of like a four-star restaurant farming out its orders for steak to mcdonalds, but charging you the same filet minon price.
I can't deny that there is also more product available thanks to the corp's newer, laxer care in what they are selling. However I will continue to argue that nearly 1/3rd of what has been thrown into the archive bin were items that were in the queue for regular pressed releases -- they have some fine Crawford, Gable and Cagney movies that would have done well as standalone or packaged dvds, to name just three.

Because I would love to take part in this program, but my quality standards will not allow me to.  If WB were to change a few of my primary concerns, there are at least a dozen titles that I would order tomorrow.  As it is, I'll wait for them to air on TCM and record them on my own DVD-R.



I can't speak for your experiences, but I have nearly 3000 DVDs.  Aside from the debacle better known as Universal DVD-18, I have never purchased a DVD that would not play.  I have had a smattering of titles with minor skipping, but that was usually fixed by cleaning the disc, or trying a different player.  Nothing even close to 1-2% drop out rate that some in this thread consider acceptable....and I'll repeat my primary concern.  I rarely watch a title that I've purchase within the timeframe allowed for me to return said title.  If I was paying $5, I would take that chance, but at $20 - NO WAY IN HELL!

Then I guess Warner doesn't have to worry about getting your money with that $5 pricepoint.





Crawdaddy

I have probably around the same number of DVDs. I've had a hand full, maybe as many as 10 fail after some period of time and a few right out of the box. Interestingly enough I've never had a DVD-18 fail, and I own quite a few Universal TV shows.

Doug

I bet Warner makes money on these DVDr's even if they only sell 2 or 3 dozen copies. Some of the titles i have seen, i would be shocked if they sold many more than that! I am not saying that's all they sell, i am just saying i bet it doesn't take long for them to see a return on these things.
But some of the titles probably do NOT sell that many copies.

I do not own any, but i have seen one.
A friend bought The Man From Atlantis. It looked OK. PQ looked like it was taped off a local 80s TV broadcast. Colors would shift, the print was a little faded. But i could watch it...i will not buy it...ever.
I have said it before, and will say it again. Why would i spend my Blu-ray budget on a DVDr?
Shoot, i have spent less on a Blu-ray, than what i have seen these things sell for!

Oh well, i do not lose sleep over it.

Well, I see it maybe differently than some here on the movie Bd.  I've bought a few DVD-R's from WB Archive but that's most likely all I'll buy from the site.  The ones I've bought are the "Barker" Tarzan set and "The Brass Bottle" ('64).  I didn't have personal copies of any of these movies and they had been on my list for a long time.  I bought the Tarzan set at the discounted price they were offering a while back.  The only one I bought at "list" price was the Brass Bottle and I bought that one from Amazon.  I forget...this one was from the Universal Archive and not WB.

Anyway, although I don't buy Alpha releases, I understand that there are different types of movie collectors out there.  I know that "Point Blank" is a collector for additional reasons, particularly interested in the "history" angle of broadcasting and as such, Alpha offers collectors such as him, an additional outlet to add to his collection.

Me, I classify myself as a minor-league collector compared to most at HTF.  My DVD collection is small compared to what I've read here over the years at HTF with members' collection #'s.

I have what I consider to be a slightly tighter tolerance for video quality than the Alpha and "PD quality" transfers on DVD but that said, my "video Q" line is not close to always requiring near-perfect transfer Q.  I''ve not yet entered the BR mkt but I watch all of my DVD's via a Sd Upconvert player on a 50" 1080p Plasma TV with HDMI cables.  That is good enough for me for the foreseeable future.

I usually draw the line at video Q somewhere around the "16mm un-remastered" line as far as my primary interest, which is TV/DVD collecting.  I typically won't buy that Q of releases as I made the decision to watch DVD's where the transfer Q doesn't distract me from the actual show or movie that I'm watching.  But that's just me.

Having said all that :)  I do like the Archive programs since, unless I'm being naive, I see it as the only way we'll see a lot of the un-released (no pressed releases) movies getting into our hands as collectors.  I don't have a DVD-Recorder setup at home since I've found that nearly all of the movies & TV series that I'd collect are available or partially out there (TV/DVD shows).  Plus, I choose to put that time investment into other things vs recording frequently onto DVD-R for my collection.

I don't agree with the archive list pricepoints, but as we all know here, if one waits, we can usually get these titles at a discount with online coupons or occasional deals at the archive sites.

I think I may be more tolerant than a lot of other collectors regarding the archive programs since my "wait" list is very small compared to most HTF'ers lists.

The UCLA restoration of MAMMY will be released on April 6 via the Archive.


http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/movies/dvd_extra_restored_mammy_coming_RzR7pKTsuF01t3C6KOUY3J

Hmmm, they spend all this time and money to restore the film and then just throw it into the archive? 

Something tells me they'll sell more copies this way than releasing it on SD DVD.  I doubt any major retailer like Walmart or BB would carry it on their shelves.






Crawdaddy

I wonder why they couldn't do both. 

At least on a particular title like this.  That is, if there were retailers who wanted to carry the title. 

"I wonder why they couldn't do both" It's simply not cost effective, that's why.

Could anyone post a list of pre-code Archive DVDs? Thanks. A while ago I posted the list of films in the Film Noir #5 box.At this time though the set still isn't listed by Warner. The previous sets sold an average of about 60,000 copies. It would be sad if this wasn't enough for the powers that be at Warner. Some good news though is the Monogram Charlie Chan set is official for June.

Here's my tracking list of titles up to 1936

Warner never released Scaramouche in the UK, so I sent to France for it. The two disc version was the cheapest, & it was a nice surprise to find the 1923 Rex Ingram version as an extra on disc two.

Thanks very much John!

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and have a problem I hope someone can help with.

I recently purchased 2 Warner Archive titles from an online seller (I'm in the UK and Warner dont ship overseas) but when I received the dvds I was unsure if the were genuine or not.  I know the archive titles are DVDr's but I was concerned that the picture sleeve was simply a computer print out on perforated paper!  Is this how they are sent or have I received a pirate copy?  I expected the picture sleeve to be a standard officially printed glossy sleeve.

 Any help at all would be appreciated.

 Nick

I've bought many Archive titles and they seem to have the same sleeve paper as on standard dvds . 

I mentioned the picture quality issue with the Warner Archive DVD release of THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE months ago, but now I have a comparison that helps illustrate my point.

 

Press play on both clips and then mute the sound so you don't hear the echo - if both play at the same time you can look from one to the other and REALLY see what I'm talking about.

 

Here is the film as recently broadcast on TCM. It doesn't look great, but at least there is detail in the lighter areas of the frame.

 

 

And here is the film on the Warner Archive DVD. I believe it to be the same transfer, but a "correction" was put in during encoding to increase the contrast throughout the entire film. Apparently, it wasn't monitored and resulted in all the blooming in the lighter areas of the frame. Check out the sky and how it pulses and disappears into a white blob! How could Warner Archive release this when TCM broadcasts the film without this error?!!?!

 

 

Anyone else have any comments?

Edited by Chuck Pennington - 6/16/10 at 4:24am

Chuck, the comparisons you posted undeniably prove that someone was asleep at the switch at Warner Bros. I do know that there have been layoffs on the tech end of studio dvd transfers like everywhere else in the country, and quality control is no doubt suffering as a result. It is a shame, however, that when a second-tier title like ENCHANTED COTTAGE gets a dvd release, it is almost certain to be the one and only we will ever see (at least in my lifetime), and when it's as bad as the Archive transfer, and a print from TCM is actually preferable, we begin to truly discern the sad state of affairs in regard to catalog releases. The good news is that not many of the Archive titles look nearly as bad as the one you illustrate, but at a retail price of $20.00, it is a travesty.Hopefully Warner Bros. will see your post and, if they have a sense of accountability, will respond to it.