Gladiator BD exchange - Page 2

I received my replacement 13 days after sending in the original.  I had delivery confirmation on my return and I had it exactly a week after it was received.

Upon watching the remastered film, I can see where someone thought they needed to use a lot of DNR.  It has a lot of grain and scratches for a movie that's only 10 years old.  I haven't watched the entire movie yet, but it was mostly noticeable in the first scene where Maximus is a gladiator (not in Rome, but his very first fight after Oliver Reed's character buys him and has him trained).  It's easy to tell the difference between this version and the other, even when I haven't seen that original mastering in about 11 months.

I got my replacement disc about 5 days ago.  I'd really like to see some statistics of how many of these PHE has shipped out.

I just picked up my exchange at Best Buy.  I thought I would wait and sure enough they had the yellow ones in.  I did the same with Private Ryan. Best Buy can print up a sales slip if you paid with your credit card. I just did not want to wait for the mail order route.  So Best Buy has them if some of you have not exchanged yet and bought them at BB. 

got it today, fedex, storm and all, so i know what is playing this weekend

It's been seven weeks so far and nothing. I wish there was someone at Paramount I could call. The answering service handling the exchange calls say there's nothing they can do.

I sent my disc in on Friday September 17 and received my replacement yesterday, Tuesday the 28. Granted the return address is Valencia and I live in So-Cal, so people across the country can expect a little bit of a longer delay, but overall 11 days (and 4 of them were weekends) is not too shabby.

Funny though, it came with only a white sleeve and I asked myself "great, how in the world am I going to tell if I got the corrected disc?"

Played it and it became very obvious immediately. Due to whatever overprocessing was done in the original disc, the reddish/orange smoke of the opening credits always looked like a digital mess and the letters weren't crisp/sharp. On this one, as soon as the opening credits rolled, it looked very filmlike. I had my answer right then. To double-confirm though I watched the first 30 minutes and the difference is night and day. Especially the scene with the flaming arrows. Most of those were "deleted" as noise in the original release, and they are there in all of their glory in this version.

Best of luck to those who are still in need of a replacement. Do call the number and send it in, they will replace in a timely manner. But be prepared, have the blu ray (and its case) on hand when you call in.

Thanks, Carlo.  That's very helpful. 

I think my time is now right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Todd H 

It's been seven weeks so far and nothing. I wish there was someone at Paramount I could call. The answering service handling the exchange calls say there's nothing they can do.

I, too, have been waiting for seven weeks and nothing has shown up. Not only do I not have a remastered replacement, I now have have no copy of Gladiator at all! Pretty crappy P.R. if you ask me. The operator I spoke to at Paramount indicated the best she could do was leave a message for "whoever" to return my call within 48 hours. It's been that already, and this is the second time I was told that in the past ten days! I am starting to grow very angry with Paramount. Months ago, I bought the Blu's of both Gladiator and Forrest Gump and mailed in (separately) two coupons for $10.00 rebates on the upgrades from DVD. I received only one ten dollar check back.

Way to go, Paramount... you're batting zero!
 

Sorry to hear that others are having bad experiences. It cost me a little more (I think under $3 total) but I sent mine certified mail USPS so I could track it and prove I had returned it. Luckily I didn't need to resort to that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carlo Medina 

Sorry to hear that others are having bad experiences. It cost me a little more (I think under $3 total) but I sent mine certified mail USPS so I could track it and prove I had returned it. Luckily I didn't need to resort to that.

I also sent mine by Certified Mail USPS and received a replacement disc very quickly.  It seems likely that returns by Certified Mail are receiving priority from the studio.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carlo Medina 

Sorry to hear that others are having bad experiences. It cost me a little more (I think under $3 total) but I sent mine certified mail USPS so I could track it and prove I had returned it. Luckily I didn't need to resort to that.

Sent mine the same way so I know it arrived. The problem is nobody at Paramount can tell me anything. The people at the 888 number are absolutely clueless. If I had a dollar for every time they told me "someone will contact you within 48 hours" I could buy a new disc. Paramount's customer service blows.

Still not a sign of any remastered discs in Canada. I'm sure Paramount will try to sell all the originals before they send out new ones. None of the stores know anything about replacement discs, it's a big secret up here! I'm just glad I don't have to go through sending the thing back and waiting. If the new discs never show up here, so be it. I'll just stick with my old dvd.

 ^ Interesting you should say that. I saw the remastered one and discussed it with the manager at a Blockbuster store (in Canada) over a month ago. He had coincidentally just watched it the night before (it was a rental). Apparently some of the closed stores in California shipped their disc inventory to Canadian Blockbusters. What I am getting at is it might be worth a look there for a pre-viewed BD cheap, after all it's hardly a new title, not even new to BD as far as most are concerned. [Never had a problem with a pre-viewed BD from there, they clean up nice, wouldn't buy such DVDs though.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Todd H 

It's been seven weeks so far and nothing. I wish there was someone at Paramount I could call. The answering service handling the exchange calls say there's nothing they can do.

I sent mine in regular first class mail and had my replacement in hand after approx 2 weeks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich 

I sent mine in regular first class mail and had my replacement in hand after approx 2 weeks.

You're lucky. I know mine arrived but nobody knows what happened to the disc after that. I even called Fed Ex and they don't have any records of anything sent to my home in that time frame. I guess it fell into a black hole at Paramount Home Video.

I'd like to thank the Paramount rep here at HTF for all the help he or she gave me in getting my replacement disc situation taken care of. It is very much appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Todd H 

I'd like to thank the Paramount rep here at HTF for all the help he or she gave me in getting my replacement disc situation taken care of. It is very much appreciated.

Ya gotta love happy endings...

Todd,

Appreciate that.  That's the first thanks we received

which sort of surprises me based on the original complaint.

Paramount really stepped up efforts here which is no 

surprise to me.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronald Epstein 

Todd,

 

Appreciate that.  That's the first thanks we received

which sort of surprises me based on the original complaint.

 

Paramount really stepped up efforts here which is no 

surprise to me.  

Another reason why I love this forum. This place never fails to surprise me, even after over ten years of being a member. It was a nice surprise finding a PM in my box after returning from vacation at Disney World. Thanks Ron. You always come through for us.
 

You know, I come to the realize that I should count my blessings when it comes to a corrected release being available after something like Gladiator.  I bit on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when the price went down, and after reading a subtitle track that is distractingly incoherent and does not even work well in its own context, what I wouldn't give for a trade-in program that would give me a good chance of getting a copy with any sort of competent subtitle track.

I have ordered from Gladiator from Amazon (they should be shipping it with How To Train Your Dragon), and worse comes to worse they ship the old one, there is a path that leads to a good release.  The same cannot be said for other titles.  Thank you Paramount for providing this for Gladiator.  I hope  a few upset reactions to some hiccups or the fact that it was not a true recall in various forums and threads will not discourage other manufacturers from taking similar action.

This is a real mess. I checked with Amazon before I ordered and they said that they only had the NEW version.

Well you know what happened

I called Paramount to confirm that I received the old version.

They made me open the package and read the code off the inner hub.

Amazon offered me a refund but it is probably faster to just exchange the movie with Paramount.

I'm reading a wealth of comments over on

Amazon by peopel who are still receiving the

old version of Gladiator.

I wanted to purchase it from Amazon, but I

think I am going to wait it out a few months

until I am positive they have deleted that stock.

For those who really want it, I'd recommend buying from a B&M because let's face it, Gladiator isn't a "New Release" anymore, so that old stock at Amazon and other big online discount retailers could last months or years. Hell, whose to say they aren't putting the newer version "on top" of the stack of BDs and inadvertently selling those first, and so you could risk getting an old copy no matter how long you wait.

I want to save $5 as much as the next guy, but at a certain point, if I love the movie and the only way I can be assured of getting the new stock is by purchasing it at Best Buy, then that's how I'm going to get it. Because if you buy online and get the old one, you're going to lose that $5 in shipping the disc to Paramount anyway...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronald Epstein 

I'm reading a wealth of comments over on

Amazon by peopel who are still receiving the

old version of Gladiator.

 

I wanted to purchase it from Amazon, but I

think I am going to wait it out a few months

until I am positive they have deleted that stock.

Ron, again, what is the surest way to confirm a copy is the new version? I've read that the yellow bar code is not necessarily indicative, then some say it is, other say the new one doesn't say 2-DISC set on the back, etc. I will buy it form Best Buy, but want to be sure.

If it has a yellow bar code, it is the new version.

^^ What Carl said. I haven't yet seen evidence of someone buying a yellow UPC code version reporting that it was the old version. Someone speak up if this has happened to them!

Received my replacement Monday and wow what an amazing transfer. Kudos Paramount.

Todd,

Good to hear.

This is now at the top of my must buy list.

What I plan to do is buy it from the studio

store when I go to Paramount in a few weeks.

I feel that's the only way I can be assured of

getting the newer version.  I don't feel safe

purchasing from Amazon.

So they finally got around to identifying the corrected version with a yellow bar code? I have yet to see any copies with yellow bar codes in the stores in my town. They are all still white stickers.

Maybe they're counting on some Black Friday deals to flush the rest of the old version out of stores' inventories.  I think this was $9.99 at a lot of places last year.