Twilight Zone (Original Series) Season 1 Comes to Blu-ray

Awesome.

$100 is too much.

I'd like to get this series on Blu-Ray, but $50-60 is about the limit per season.

I bought S1-3 Definitive Editions,need 4 and Five, paid $25 each for the sets and I'm happy with them, they look decent on my Blu Ray player, $69 + is way beyond a reasonable double dip,I'm contented with the DVD's

"In addition, I did two new audio commentaries for the TWILIGHT ZONE BLU-RAY DVD, the spectacular first-season episode “The After Hours” starring the stunning Anne Francis and directed by my friend Doug Heyes, and “The Time Element,” the famed lost first pilot of TWILIGHT ZONE. The Serling script was shelved by CBS in 1958 and then filmed as an episode of DESILU PLAYHOUSE starring William Bendix. This episode has never been on home video and will be a remarkable extra for the set."

http://marczicree.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/lost-mars-savage-donut-pink-5/



"Just finished doing the audio commentaries for THE TWILIGHT ZONE — fifty-two episodes, one third of the entire series!"

http://marczicree.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/richard-donners-nightmare-at-mgm/



Sounds like this new set (and the seasons to follow) are gonna be STACKED. $100 MSRP (with most sale prices being around $65-70) seems more than reasonable. That's only $2-3 per episode.

Son of a (expletive deleted).

So now they get The Time Element?!? For mother****ing blu-ray?

Well now I'm going to have to buy the damned set.

I had no intention of upgrading, but now...

Yes, I know... no one is holding a gun to my head. But damn it, "Definitive" ought to mean "definitive"! And that's what they called the DVD releases!

Which no good 3 Stooges fan should be without... Joe "Curly Joe" DeRita has a brief, supporting role as the Pearl Harbor bar drunk.

I completely agree. Plus, wasn't the S1 set $120 MSRP when it had the book in it? If it wasn't $120, it was definitely $100 MSRP when it first came out so I see no reason to expect the Blu-ray to be cheaper than the DVD set.

Question: if one already owns the entire series on standard DVD, why would you shell out more money for the same thing? Is the "improved" quality that important given that the standard DVDs look great as is without BlueRay. I don't get this compulsion. As for the lost episode "Time Element" included on the Blue Ray collection, great - I'm sure there are ways of watching the episode without having to shell out $100 for the who season.

The only reason I'd buy Blue Ray is if I didn't already own the series on standard DVD. This is not an attack on Blue Ray but on double dipping especially if you're essentially buying the same show twice.

Then again, I did re-buy my album collection to CD but the reason for that was not only because of the better quality in sound [which audiofiles will differ] but more importantly, they were fazing out the turntable.

Just a thought.

I'd like to see The Twilight Zone in the highest qualty possible. And while the DVDs do look great, there's almost no chance that the Blu-rays won't blow them out of the water simply because of the increase in resolution between the two formats.

So it is safe to say we can expect each season to be released with even more extras than the previous box sets? I will still hold onto my DVD sets just in case if isolated score tracks etc are not carried over.

I really hope the packaging is nice and sturdy and will look great. It would be cool if they did some nice packaging in the same form as Criterion where they don't use ugly blu cases but have a classy look. :-)

I agree with you completely. I double dipped on a few movies because the DVD's were really poor or in the wrong aspect ratio, and the BR's were cheap catalog titles. Otherwise, I am happy with high quality DVD's that I already own (Star Trek TOS, TZ), and saving my money to purchase things I don't own yet. I will always consider a BR over a DVD, it just depends on the price difference, and high priced double dips don't qualify. Now if money were no object then I'd be all over this release.

As much as I really, really, really love TZ, after Columbia House, Image DVDs and then the remastered re-releases, I can't justify spending yet another small fortune on this collection.

That is true, but I doubt I'll buy this series for the third time on disc.  I bought it the first time it was released on SD DVD with the Image releases then a second time with the definitive collection.  The third time on blu-ray won't happen unless I can purchase them on sale.





Crawdaddy

I also own the Definitive sets and, though I love Blu-ray, just can't justify the expenditure for this entire set in the near future as a great improvement over what's already awesome. I also, blasphemously, happen to like the anamorphic quality of the DVD sets filling my screen, and am not a stickler for seeing this 4:3 with bars.

And I've been recently watching many of these with my 13 year-old son, who is now a big fan. (And boy was it hard to get him to watch B&W initially).

I have all five seasons on DVD (some I still haven't even opened yet as they are part of an enormous backlog) and as I would like to have the BD quality and any many extras as seen fit to release, I think this time, for once, I'll wait until perhaps the inevatable complete series BD set is released, or at least until the individual sets go on sale at Costco for a significant discount.

I can understand people's double-dip/price concerns. Fortunately, in this case I have yet to buy the DVDs, so for me this is a no-brainer.

I buy Bds whenever the choice exists on something I don't own. And for the things I do own, I upgrade to the Blu's quite a bit- even on things that might only be a casual interest. I'm fortunate to have a pretty good A/V set-up and the difference in quality is appreciated when the Blu is rendered 'source faithful'.
That said, I'm willing to bet (and think it's a pretty safe bet) that the practical, relative difference to most peoples eyes, mine included, will be far less significant going from the definitive sets to the Bds, than it was going from the original Image DVD releases to the Definitive DVD sets. Better compression used on HD masters from better elements soundly trumped what were likely LD era masters with noticeable compression related artifacts.
For people who never owned the Definitive sets, or are otherwise new to the show such as younger viewers, then yes, the Bd is a no brainer and a great opportunity. OTOH,  these same people would still benefit from the far better bang-for-the-buck value found on the now greatly price reduced Definitive sets. They can all 5 seasons for less than the cost of two discounted Bd seasons and won't be giving up all that much in terms of PQ.

It would be nice if they skip the nonsense and offer Thriller on Bd from the get go. If I have to buy it on DVD, I won't be upgrading anytime soon after.

So far, I haven't seen the need to upgrade from my currant system (I still have most of my VHS Tapes, and as long as they still work, there's no need to replace them!).

IMO, If it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!

It's my understanding, when you watch a BD, the original aspect is locked in, and you can't stretch it to fit the screen as you can with DVDs. This is obviously great for technical purists, but I don't mind watching older TV shows with the image stretched for a HD television screen.

Good to hear this series is coming. I've been waiting for an indicator on what, if anything, can be done to videotape transfers for BD. It'll be interesting to see how high-def handles those terrible-looking episodes.

Nothing more than a guess but I think they'll end up using the same transfers that were used on the DVD set (i.e. they'll be in standard def since the source is videotape).

There would be no reason not to upscale them to 1080p on the disc themselves rather than allow various players and monitors do so, IMO. Of course we won't know for sure for a bit, as they're all in Season 2.

Why do they have to use videotape transfers? Wasn't this show filmed?

Too cheap to go back to the original film elements?

There were six episodes shot in the second season that were shot on tape as a cost cutting measure. The other 150 were filmed and The Definitive Edition DVDs (and presumably the Blu-rays) went back to the original camera negatives for those episodes.

For at least a half dozen season 2 Twilight Zone episodes, there are no "original film elements", only videotape.

The producers were looking for a way to cut production costs. So, they shot around a half dozen S2 episodes on videotape. IIRC, they either didn't like the look of the finished episodes, or decided that using videotape for TZ would limit the types of stories they could do, and they went back to film.

Thanks, didn't know that.

Certainly doesn't seem like much of a problem. I'll likely get these when they see a discount and I'll be happy as long as the filmed episodes look good and they upscale on the disc those 6 taped episodes.

Thought daytime tv was pretty much all that was being taped in 1960/1961.

The "Definitive" editions of the Twilight Zone are among the very best TV-on-DVD ever done. I doubt I will be getting the BDs, simply because I am happy with the DVDs. However, it makes sense to reissue the series, since it should be in the highest quality possible for future generations and those who haven't bought them already -- assuming of course that all of the extras from the DVD sets are migrated over.